On May 7, you, the electorate of District 10, honored me by returning me to the Dallas City Council for a second two-year term. I am grateful to you for allowing me to continue to work for the changes in District 10 that I started during my first term as your councilman.
I pledge to you that I will continue my efforts with the Dallas Police Department to lower the crime rate in our area so that we can once again walk any street in the district without fear. Chief Brown and the men and women in blue are working hard to raise morale and, as a result, better performance standards within the Northeast Division.
I pledge to you that I will continue to expose bad ownership and management practices among our multi-family neighbors. However, you need to know that the State Legislature is in the process of taking the teeth out of Senate Bill 1010, passed in 2004, which gave city attorney offices across the state broader powers of enforcement for criminal activity than they have ever had.
At least the Legislature is allowing us to keep the code violation fee structure in place that was adopted by the City Council last year and that became effective Sept. 1, 2004. That fee structure will continue to make it very expensive to be a bad operator/owner in Dallas. Just ask the ownership of Newport Landing, White Rock Trail, Sutter’s Wood and Toscana. I expect big changes in coming months because of the additional operating costs of these and other complexes in District 10.
Finally, I pledge to you to continue all-out efforts to make the Skillman/”Walnut Hill” Town Center a reality during this second term. In fact, we are well on our way with two major developers at two locations along Skillman and one along Royal for major residential/retail/office development on land currently being used for aging and poorly operated multi-family complexes.
We will never remove all multi-family from this district. We do not want to do that anyway, as 60 percent of Dallas residents must, or choose to, live in multi-family housing. A balanced mix of multi-family and single-family developments makes for a healthy urban environment.
We are truly an urban neighborhood and no longer a suburban neighborhood. As Chief Brown told us at my last Town Hall meeting, we must, as single family homeowners, reach out to the many good folks in the area complexes and help the 90 percent good, law abiding citizens clean up their living conditions with the same vigor we show ridding ourselves of the 10 percent who refuse to be law abiding.
Again, I thank you for allowing me the distinct honor of serving you downtown on the City Council.
