“In the last year and a half, I’d give what the City has done in violent crime an A+, in job creation an A. But in services and code enforcement, we just haven’t gotten it done.”
That’s Mayor Steve Bartlett’s assessment of the past 18 months in Dallas…what do you think?
Actually, it’s unfair to judge our mayor – positive or negative – based on this one comment. After all, this is just one of the comments he made during a 45-minute interview one recent Saturday afternoon in his City Hall office.
But unfortunately, one sentence often is all we hear from our mayor and other elected officials – one brief comment, one 15-second TV moment – when they asked to comment on the complex issues that affect our lives.
So we’re trying something different this month: We asked our mayor questions designed to shed some light on neighborhood issues such as crime, education and code enforcement. They we sat back and let him answer in as much or little detail as he wanted.
Here’s a sample of what you’ll find in this interview:
- “We have to stop beating ourselves up and telling ourselves that somehow other school systems or private schools are somehow damaging to our City. They’re not. They help give people other choices, just as a good school in the neighborhood from DISD gives you that choice.”
- “I think that Dallas had been a successful city historically, but unfortunately, only successful for whites, and often only for whites in the middle-income and upper-middle-incomes. What we’re building now, in the 1990s, is a city that is successful for the whites but is also successful for African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians, so that everyone is included.”
We think you’ll learn something useful about our mayor and our City from this interview. So turn down the television, flip to Section C in this month’s Advocate, and wee what our mayor has to say.
Dallas Mayor Steve Bartlett served several terms in Congress, representing a North Dallas district, before he was elected to a four-year term as mayor in 1991. In his City Hall office on a recent Saturday afternoon, Bartlett met with Advocate Community Newspapers publisher Rick Wamre and contributing editor Jeff Siegel to discuss his plans for the second half of his term, the tasks facing the month-old City Council, and the problems and challenges facing the City and its neighborhoods.
Bartlett on City Government
Advocate: What’s the biggest challenge facing this City Council?
Bartlett: It’s important to note that the challenges facing this Council, while not lesser challenges than those facing the prior Council, are challenges that one can look at and believe are do-able. The challenges appeared a couple of years ago to be so overwhelming as to cause people to give up on Dallas.
Two years ago, we had a crime rate that had gone up every year. We had outward migration from Dallas that had reached staggering proportions. We had a City government and a City Council that was in such disarray that they were watching videotapes of us in Atlanta.
Today, the news is that we have restored a sense of normalcy to Dallas City Hall. It’s not perfect, but we’re making democracy work.
The first important thing for the new Council is that it begins with a sense of normalcy, begins with a sense of policy and orderly debate on the issues and not on personalities. And it begins with the basics of crime reductions and job increases. The challenges, while they are still great, are at least accomplish-able.
The challenges are, number one, to keep the heat on crime, and to not be satisfied with the current crime levels. While they are still less, they are still much larger than we can accept.
Number two, to increase job creation in Dallas and to compete with our suburbs in ways that cause jobs to come to Dallas.
Number three, to nail down the City’s new-found commitment to inclusion and diversity and an orderly debate at Dallas City Hall.
And number four will be to incorporate all of those successes to the neighborhood level so that we can take the issues that face Dallas as a whole and build those successes in neighborhoods: home ownership, single-family mortgages, neighborhood-based policing, better code enforcement – all of those issues that affect people where they live.
Advocate: As mayor under the Council-manager form of government, you don’t have the power that most people associate with mayors: You can’t hire and fire, you can’t veto legislation, you can’t prepare a City budget. You’re just one Council member among 15. Is there a problem where people think you can do things that you can’t do under this form of government?
Bartlett: I think I can do these things under this form of government. I’m happy with the form of government. The form of government is given you by the charter. It’s not something that is a variable in the equation.
I live my life in a way in which I realize that when something has to happen for the success of the people of the City of Dallas, then I use the system to make that happen. It’s a Council-manager system in which the mayor, under this charter, has some stronger powers than it used to. It’s not just one of 15, although the mayor still doesn’t hire and fire people or propose the budget.
I have several powers that I use to cause the City government to move forward. For example, it’s my requirement under the charter to set the agenda for the City on an annual basis with a State of the City message, and to lay out for the Council and the manager a set of expectations and goals for what we expect to achieve in the coming year.
I find that with the kind of Council that I have – that is a Council of good will and who are very close to their constituents – the Council will then respond in pursuing that agenda. They may decide to do it this way or that way or some other way, but by and large, the Council will respond to that agenda, as will the manager.
The charter gives me the responsibility to appoint the chairman of boards and commissions – whether it’s the Park Board or the Urban Rehab Board or the City Plan Commission or the Community Development Advisory Committee. The board chairmen then feel a sense under the charter of responsibility to move the City in the direction that I articulate.
The Council rules give me the responsibility to set the agenda for the weekly Council meetings. I do that in a way that is designed toward moving us down a road that is coherent.
I don’t have the power to hire and fire, I don’t have the power to set the budget, but I do have some authority beyond just simply being one of the Council members.
Bartlett on Crime
Advocate: You’ve mentioned crime and code enforcement, which are two issues of special interest to our readers. The new police chief, how do you see his role in doing the sorts of things you just mentioned – given that Chief Rathburn did the job and now he’s not here (after taking a job as chief of security for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta).
Bartlett: I believe now, and I believed then, that Bill Rathburn was the best police chief in the country and that it was a real loss for Dallas to lose him. I’m not going to go around in sack cloth and ashes to try and remake history, but I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a loss. It was a significant loss.
The challenge for the new police chief is to keep the heat on with his leadership, to insist that the police department and the citizens understand that you can’t reduce crime merely by passive activities. You have to come up with new and increasingly creative ways to identify criminals and to either incarcerate them, run them out of town or to get them out of the crime business. It’s not easy to do, and it’s not something that will just happen by passive activities. That’s the number one challenge of the new police chief – to show that leadership to step up enforcement. Number two is to nail down or to complete the cycle of neighborhood-based policing. Bill Rathburn started that, but neighborhood-based policing is still much more of a concept than a reality, and I think the new police chief has to have the organizational skills to take essentially the same amount of money – perhaps a little more – and to convert that money by reinventing government into neighborhood-based delivery of crime prevention.
He’s going to have to be willing to do things differently, and that was the strength of Bill Rathburn. Frankly, I think it had been the weakness of the Dallas Police Department historically. We always do things because that was the way we had always done things.
And Bill Rathburn came in and said: “Here’s about 50 new ways to do things.” He didn’t take a vote on it, he just said do this, this and this.
The third challenge will be one of continued discipline and professionalism of the troops, which clearly the City Council and the City stand behind and the police department heads instituted in a no-nonsense approach to discipline. The police officers are disciplined and held to standards in ways that are not debated. That has resulted in a dramatic increase in the professionalism of the Dallas Police Department and an increase in their own safety.
There were fewer incidents of police officers being hurt, because of those new standards, and I think the new police chief has to realize that you have to fire people when they are out of line.
Advocate: But from a continuity standpoint, what can you do to keep the next police chief here? Rathburn was a good chief, but he wasn’t here very long, and neither were the couple of chiefs before him.
Bartlett: I think the Council will debate the issue of a legal contact. I don’t know if that will be approved. By and large, City Councils are reluctant to go against the recommendation of the manager. But I think the City Council will at least consider the issue.
Given the need for continuity with the police chief, is it worth breaking from the 30-year-old status quo – the 50-year-old status quo – of no contract for the police chief to get a five-year commitment from the police chief?
I think it is. The manager has told me that it’s not, and the Council has really not considered it. And I don’t know that we’ll actually ever get to the point where the Council considers it, in part out of respect for the city manager. But it’s a legitimate debate that we ought to have.
Now, the core of that debate is that a contract with the police chief does not mean that you can’t fire the police chief. It means you set in advance terms of the termination similar to the contract with the Mavericks’ coach. It does not say that Quinn Buckner cannot be fired.
Advocate: You’ve been talking about the need to do things differently, that Bill Rathburn did things differently and that the new chief needs to do things differently. You’ve been here a couple of years now. How difficult is it to crack the City bureaucracy, to get the City to do things differently?
Bartlett: I’m a political science student as well as a practitioner. I’ve learned how to do it. I can tell you categorically that city governments can change, that they can be made to change, and that change has to come from the impetus of the citizens.
So all the major and the Council members do is take the direction and impetus of the citizens, and then if they’re good, they find ways to implement those directions. If they’re not good at it, then nothing happens, and the citizens are rightfully frustrated.
What I’ve learned as the mayor is that I shouldn’t try to manage things, or micro-manage those changes, but what I will not do is to give up on the need for the changes, and give up on having the changes.
So I used every technique of leadership that I could find, and a few that I didn’t know about, to cause those changes to happen.
For example, it’s my conviction that the City of Dallas desperately needed to compete with our suburbs for jobs and for corporate relocations. And the result, as you can see in front of you on my desk, are the proposals that the City has made for specific corporate relocations in the last 18 months. And we secured some 50 of them.
One of the reasons I leave them on my desk is that every day, no one from the city manager’s office can mistake the message: that corporate relocations are important to the people of Dallas. There’s a couple of dozen of them over there.
Then there’s violent crime. I said on behalf of the citizens of Dallas that we would, without any excuses, in 1992 reduce the number of violent crimes in Dallas in absolute terms in all four categories.
And we were prepared to do whatever it takes, short of violating the Constitution, to reduce violent crime.
And the result is that the city manager and the police department got real serious about accomplishing that because people, through the mayor and the Council, were telling them that they had to.
Yes, change can occur, and it can occur faster than anyone can imagine. But we have to force the change, and not manage the change, through the adoption of policy goals.
Advocate: You say the new police chief will have to do several things that have never been done before. Can you give us some examples of what you think the new chief will have to do?
Bartlett: By my count, we made about 50 different changes under Bill Rathburn. There are some things you can debate whether it was a change or a continuation, so some people would say only 30 or some people would say 70.
Roughly, there were four dozen changes under Bill Rathburn – specific new ways to reduce the numbers of violent crime. They included a whole variety of things: mobile storefronts, bicycle patrols, neighborhood-based policing, gang suppression units.
Most of those ideas, though, are only in the embryonic stage, and so my belief is that most of the changes the new police chief will implement will be changes that are part of these 50 new ideas. And there may be some additional ones that the new police chief thinks of.
For example, the gang intervention unit. We made the biggest change in the gang intervention unit in the police department when it organized a specific gang suppression unit.
In addition to education and recreation and basketball and social work, which we also do, we also have a gang suppression unit which identifies the most violent gangs in the City of Dallas, identifies the gangs and the leaders, identifies the crimes they’ve committed, and arrests them and incarcerates them.
This has resulted in a 28 percent reduction in the number of gang members, and an even greater reduction in the number of violent crimes that the gangs commit in the City of Dallas in one year.
Mobile storefronts: the old style of doing things was the fixed storefront, the storefront that was in a shopping center that good people came to and criminals didn’t. I think we have to be prepared to replace some of those fixed storefronts – and some of them we don’t want to replace, because they are a big part of the community – but others tend to be dull and lifeless.
We have to have the political will to replace some of those fixed storefronts with the mobile storefront, which is the large, technology-filled RV that goes and parks in front of a crack house and captures, with bicycle patrols, the six square blocks around the crack house and runs criminals out of that area.
That’s going to take some political will on behalf of the City Council, which will be a real test.
Third is bicycle patrols for commercial areas. I’ve got to say that the bicycle patrols Downtown and on Jefferson Boulevard have worked dramatically well, which tells me that Audelia Road and Lakewood Shopping Center and the Casa View/Casa Linda/Buckner Boulevard/Garland Road area are ripe candidates for similar bicycle patrols, which can really run the bad guys out of town or cause them to get a real job.
The fourth is one Bill Rathburn just scratched the surface on, and that was neighborhood-based policing. That is to assign some numbers of officers to strictly patrol a certain neighborhood and not respond to 911 for the whole City, but to patrol that neighborhood and to respond to calls in that neighborhood and to work with the people who live there to reduce crime there.
Where we’ve done it has worked well, and we need to extend it.
So most of the ideas have already sprouted a little seedling, and now it’s time to nurture them.
Bartlett on Code Enforcement
Advocate: That brings us to code enforcement. One of the biggest concerns for our readers, especially in Lake Highlands, is the number of substandard and empty apartment buildings. Donna Halstead, who represents Lake Highlands on the Council, has been working pretty hard to solve the problem. What else can be done?
Bartlett: One is better code enforcement, with the apartments specifically. Second is a willingness to remove apartments that are vacant or near vacant or dilapidated. You have apartments that are reasonable places for people to live and people are living in them, or you should have a vacant lot. Anything in between is a disaster.
Neither I nor Donna Halstead has the perfect scheme for how to arrive at that. We do enforce the code, and I think we’re doing a better job of enforcing the code than we did a few years ago, but it’s still probably one area where the City Council and the city manager are still working to get better at.
Advocate: How are you going to do that? People tell us they see a lot of problems on their streets, but they never see anyone from code enforcement.
Bartlett: You’ll see an increase in proactive code enforcement, which is picking up the enforcement complaints before they are complaints – picking them up because you see them.
The difficulty is that the private property owners are asked to make the repairs, and if you have a lack of mortgage money for construction, then all of the code enforcement in the world goes for naught until you’re ready to tear it down.
The one good news, the glimmer of hope, is there will be a substantial increase in our emphasis on single-family homes and on single-family mortgages. Some of the relief to the apartments will come from the construction of more new single-family homes, either on the same sites where the apartments used to be or with new construction in the same neighborhood, which tends to stabilize the neighborhood, regardless of what’s happening in the apartments.
It’s a back-door way of getting there, but part of the problems with code enforcement will be solved with new construction on vacant lots.
Advocate: If we understand correctly what you’re saying, you’re kind of caught in a Catch-22. It really doesn’t make any difference if the City goes out tomorrow and hires hundreds of new code enforcement officers. The key is that as long as the people who own these apartments don’t have money to make repairs, not much is going to happen.
Bartlett: That’s what I’m saying, and I regret to say that it happens to be the truth. Code enforcement, as a term, sounds good – “Well, I’m going to go and enforce the code” – but what that means in the City is that I’m going to give someone a ticket, a $200 fine, if they don’t put in a $200,000 improvement.
Well, if the guy doesn’t have $200,000 for the improvement, he either abandons the property, or he pays his $200 fine, or he hires an attorney, or all of the above. But from the satisfaction of the neighbors, it still doesn’t get the $200,000 improvement made.
I cut my teeth on code enforcement in Dallas back in 1970, so I don’t back off as far as taking a strong code enforcement stance. But the goal of enforcement is to get the repairs made, and not simply to push paper around. And it’s tough to do with an absence of mortgage money.
Advocate: So what you’re saying is that we need to take the same approach to code enforcement that you are suggesting we take with crime. We need to try to do something different because the old ways of doing things won’t work.
Bartlett: I’m looking for different ways of doing it. It’s not an area that I think we have succeeded at. We’ve got some good people at the City working on it, but we still haven’t achieved a level that I consider a success.
The other way we’re looking at is to actually use some of the City funds to back up various repair and rehabilitation loans. There’s not enough money in the City treasury, nor should there be, for the City to make repairs to people’s private property.
But there could be enough money to provide loan guarantees to mortgage companies to make those repairs. And that’s one of the areas that I think will increase over the course of the next couple of years.
In the last year and a half, I’d give what the City has done in violent crime an A+, I’d give what the City has done in terms of job creation an A, but in services and code enforcement, we just haven’t gotten it done.
Bartlett on Being Mayor
Advocate: You gave yourself grades earlier. Do you think your boss – the people of Dallas – see the job you’re doing the same way you see it, or is there a problem getting your message out? Do the people appreciate what you’re doing?
Bartlett: I think so. It’s a big city and big-city politics, so you’re close and up front. Every time somebody hiccups, or the dog next door barks and wakes you up in the morning, it’s the mayor’s fault.
At the same time, every time Mobil Corporation decides to stay in Dallas with 2,000 jobs, or the Incredible Universe comes in and brings in $1 million a year in sales tax, it’s to my credit.
Yeah, I feel good about the message. I feel better about the results that this City, that this Council has achieved in the last year and a half, than I do about the communication of the results. But I feel pretty good about the communication.
Advocate: How many hours a week do you spend as mayor?
Bartlett: I was asked that the other night on KRLD, when I was on the “Alex Burton Show.” I assumed I was spending 40 or 50 hours a week. But my wife was listening to the show, and she said, “Are you crazy?”
So I counted it up, and I spend between 65 and 70 hours a week on mayoral duties. I spend another 10 to 12 hours a week on my business. I’m a partner in a manufacturing business. I put a lot of work into those 12 hours.
I spend the rest of the time going to ballgames and with my wife and my two college girls.
Advocate: What part of town do you live in?
Bartlett: I live in North Dallas, at the Tollway and LBJ
Advocate: What has been the biggest surprise about being mayor? Have some things been harder or easier than you expected?
Bartlett: The biggest surprise is how fast you can cause change to occur, when you focus on what change ought to be, articulate how to get there. The biggest surprise is how fast the City’s body politic will respond to that change and figure out ways to move in that direction.
There’s an enormous amount of goodwill in this City that will cause that change to happen if given a chance and if people are given political or psychic awards for having attained that. You have to show a little patience and a little sense of humor, but the biggest surprise is how fast the change can occur.
We don’t necessarily see it in Dallas because we’re close to it. We see all the bad stuff. It’s like looking at the “before picture” and the “after picture” in a diet ad. When you see both pictures, you still think of that person as the “before picture.” When you close your eyes, you still think of that fat one.
Let me tell you something neat that happened the other night {at a dinner party}. A guy walked up to me, he’s the marketing manager for a new Dallas corporation, and he got here in March. He attended the March 17 Dallas City Council meeting. He has attended two more since then.
All he knows is the “after picture” – March 17, 1993. He never saw the “before picture” in the diet ad. All he knows is the City Council he has seen since March of 1993.
The guy walks up to me, and he says, “I’ve lived in 10 other big cities, and the last one was Pittsburgh, and this is such a wonderful Dallas City Council. They are so kind, considerate, courteous, informed, and the policy debates are just incredibly positive.”
He said: “How long have you been able to get this done this way in Dallas? This is wonderful.”
And, of course, the other people who were standing with me at the dinner party started snickering.
He says: “What are you all laughing about? For example, that big fella?”
And I said: “What big fella?”
And he said: “That big fella who sits right next to you. He is just incredibly kind and courteous. I’ve never met anybody quite like him.”
And I said: “The last meeting before this Council was elected, that big fella {Al Lipscomb} threw a chair at the rest of the Council.”
And this guy from Pittsburgh looked at me and said: “No, I’m talking about somebody different. You’ve got it wrong.”
That’s really how far we’ve come. It’s just that we in Dallas still remember the “before picture.” The amazing thing to me is how fast the change has happened. It’s only been 18 months since 14-1 was put in. That’s excellent.
Bartlett on Zoning
Advocate: This question goes back to the zoning and code enforcement we were talking about. One of the biggest concerns for people in East Dallas is what is going to happen on Greenville Avenue south of Mockingbird – is it going to be developed piece by piece, as it is now, or is there a chance for some sort of planned development?
Bartlett: I don’t have a crystal ball. There has been a struggle – a polarized struggle – on Greenville south of Mockingbird for more years than one can imagine. It’s been characterized as the homeowners vs. the restaurants.
I think that’s the wrong way to do it, but I’ve felt like that for 15 years, and I haven’t figured a way to break out of the trap yet.
My belief is that the right way to do it is an orderly plan for what the commercial strip along Greenville should look like, and how the parking should be achieved.
The recent decision about parking on Greenville {in which the Council denied restaurateur Phil Cobb permission to use several vacant lots for parking} was not decided because the Council believed the piece of property shouldn’t be used for parking but because of this great fear that somehow it was going to be the camel’s nose.
I don’t think you should zone by the camel’s nose. You should zone based on what the use of that property should be.
The homeowners in the M Streets are among the most valuable and strongest assets in the City of Dallas. Their properties and their quality of life need to be not just preserved, but enhanced. That can and ought to be done while also enhancing the commercial strip along south Greenville.
But for 10 years now, we’ve been in a battle along south Greenville, as opposed to an orderly planning process. Can we get to an orderly planning process in the next two years? I don’t know.
I think we can, with some political leadership both from the Council and from the residents and the commercial property owners in the area. But we’re not on course to doing that.
I’m only the mayor. I’m not the czar. I can’t pronounce it done. It would be my hope that we moved toward that. We don’t seem to be moving in that direction. We seem to be locked in this battle where {people say to each other} I remember what you said to me in 1979, and people can often recite what day it was and who said what to who, 15 years ago.
Advocate: Then would you be in favor of getting a group together from the homeowners and the business owners and sitting down and coming up with a solution?
Bartlett: I am in favor of that. It’s my impression that everybody’s been burned a couple of times before, and that it hasn’t taken. Perhaps in the coming year, give the unpleasantness of the situation, we can accomplish that.
I don’t predict it, but yes, I’m in favor of it. There are all sorts of other areas in Dallas where that’s been successful, and if we use that on south Greenville, it will be successful also.
One day, we’ll find someone who is such a brilliant individual and who will also be the czar, as to actually figure out the Mockingbird-Greenville-Matilda intersection…That’s an example – a small example – of how we in Dallas are learning to stop ignoring problems thinking they will go away.
That intersection has been messed up for 15 years. Everybody knows it. It’s not like it’s a secret. That’s a premier site for a supermarket. It will serve all of East Dallas, much of the Park Cities, bless’em, I want them to bring their sales tax money over and spend it at Kroger’s, and most of the Village apartments. It’s a tremendous site.
But in order to use that site, the City has to do its part to redo the intersection. That’s going to require some engineering and some political courage.
I believe that we’ve got both in the City of Dallas, but I’ll tell you in about six months.
Bartlett on Schools
Advocate: We realize you don’t have a lot to do with the Dallas Independent School District, but that’s one of the things people look at when they see the City. What can you do, as mayor, to improve the situation in the DISD, since the perception of the DISD seems to be negative?
Bartlett: I think there is a negative perception. I think that’s because there are, in some part, negative realities about the DISD.
I think the first thing I can do as mayor is to convey to the citizens of Dallas the reality of the DISD. That’s not to say you gloss it over and say everything is perfect. But it is true that there are a number of good schools in Dallas, and in East Dallas, that are among the best schools in the nation: Lakewood, Woodrow Wilson, Stonewall Jackson. There are a number of schools that are excellent schools, so that’s a reality.
Reality number two is the DISD schools are improving rather dramatically. Sixty-two percent of DISD students now go to college. DISD now has the highest test scores of any year since 1982.
Reality number three – there are other school systems available to City of Dallas residents other than DISD that don’t damage DISD because they’re available, but they do fill the City of Dallas because the systems are available.
Richardson school district in Lake Highlands is the classic example, but so is Terry Ford’s East Dallas private school, and so is Lakehill in East Dallas.
We have to stop beating ourselves up and telling ourselves that somehow other school systems or private schools are somehow damaging to our City. They’re not. They help give people other choices, just as a good school in the neighborhood from DISD gives you that choice.
My first job as mayor is to try and articulate the reality, and the reality is pretty good, some good choices in the City of Dallas. The second thing is to use whatever resources I have as mayor to improve the schools in Dallas. That is not cheerleading, that is actually changing [things].
The Dallas City Council formally adopted a resolution – the only city in the state – urging the state legislature to adopt accountability in the school reform package. Accountability means that the Texas Education Agency, if a school is failing and has been notified and continues to fail for three years, then the parents in that school get vouchers to be able to go to any school they want to in the state. That has a way of really getting the attention of the local principals and the local school board. And the City Council of Dallas adopted that resolution.
I also used the resources of the City to improve the schools in the nature of security; working with the school district in land assembly with streets, alleys and vacant lots; and scholarship money, whether it’s cash endowments for teachers for their performance review or scholarships directly to the students, which I just distributed.
In addition to articulating the diversity of availability of good students in the City of Dallas, I also used some of the assets of the City to improve the schools.
Bartlett on race
Advocate: There seems to be a lot of sentiment in some of the districts, especially in Larry Duncan’s district, for example, that minority voters should be represented by a minority Council member. How do you feel about that?
Bartlett: We’ve made more progress on racial inclusion and racial diversity in the last two years then we’ve made in the last 30. I think that Dallas had been a successful city historically, but unfortunately, only successful for whites, and often only for whites in the middle-income and upper-middle-incomes.
What we’re building now, in the 1990s, is a city that is successful for the whites but is also successful for African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians, so that everyone is included.
I think that the actual progress toward that has been faster in the last two years than any of us care to admit.
In Larry Duncan’s case, that was a legitimate campaign issue. One of the candidates contended that in order to represent a majority black area, you had to be African-American. The other candidate contended that, no you didn’t, that you had to be the best available City Council candidate.
The voters listened to both arguments, and no one got particularly emotionally upset about the arguments. You couldn’t have said that two years ago. Two years ago there would have been debates that curdled your milk. Now it was simply two candidates expressing a different point of view.
The voters listened to both sides, made up their minds, and life goes on. They went to the polls and voted. That’s normal. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
The old chair-throwing, anger and hostility, as well as shutting people out and not listening, that was the abnormal times we went through in Dallas.
It is normal to raise issues like that, it is normal to present the issues to voters, and to let the voters decide. And life goes on.