I will start out by thanking Lake Highlands for allowing me to continue serving our community as your representative on the Dallas City Council. The election is the 5th of May, but I am running unopposed.
Please go to the polls and vote “no” to a council pay raise. I do believe that council members should receive an increase in compensation, and I put up a proposal to do that by raising our per diem to $500 on a maximum of 70 per diem dates per year. If you show up for the meeting, you get paid; if you don’t, you don’t get paid. My proposal failed, with Lois Finkelman, John Loza and Mayor Kirk voting with me. Instead, the council voted to go with a $37,500 salary.
Under our charter, we have a city manager form of government where the council functions as a board of directors setting policy. A salaried group moves toward a group of micro-managers that will create larger office staffs, car allowances and district offices in their neighborhoods. Please vote “no” and force the council to come back with a compensation plan that matches our form of government or call for a charter review commission that will examine our system of government and make recommendation of how we can better represent our city – or decide that we don’t need changes. If you would like to discuss this before the election, please call me at 214-670-4068.
Thanks all 300 of you that showed up for our retail town hall meeting on March 29. Jim Christon did a great job of showing us what we have, and a great job of listening to what we want. He and his group told me that they could not believe the community turnout and response. One of the central themes that came out of the meeting was to “Shop Lake Highlands.” We want our new stores, but we need to shop what we have and ask those stores to stock what you want to see. I hope my next article will have more good news of results from our meeting…like the rumor of a Chick-Fil-A that is supposed to come to our area.
One last good news story for Lake Highlands is the potential for an addition and renovation in the $3 million range to the Audelia Branch Library. The 1998 bond issue allows for a $700,000 renovation, but the recently released library master plan allocates additional unreserved funds for this upgrade. The council will hopefully vote favorably on this soon, and work could begin as early as 2002. Many thanks to Debra Brown, our District 10 representative on the library board for looking out for our neighborhood.
