Tomorrow’s biweekly City Council briefing promises to be far more exciting than a biweekly City Council briefing has any right to be, with two of the three major ongoing city scandals slated for discussion and plenty of time still remaining for additional scandals to come up before the 9 a.m. kick-off. That’s in addition to several new elements of dramatic subtext that have lately come into play thanks to the recent appearance of viable electoral challengers in districts that desperately needed them, plus the usual sexual tension.
Things start off mundanely enough with two sets of “consideration of appointments” sessions pertaining to city boards and commissions, as well as DFW Airport’s board of directors, followed by a briefing on the Southern Gateway Public Green Conceptual Plan that concerns development of I-35 and which may or may not end in recriminations and tears.
Thereabouts we come to “The BIG Picture 2017 Capital Bond Program: Follow Up Information — Briefing Schedule and Citywide Designations,” which may potentially yield new clues as to why Dallas’ Shadow Oligarchy has essentially vetoed a May vote on a much-needed bond package by refusing to pay for pro-bond TV ads unless the package is altered in certain unspecified ways, and what it says about Dallas that our mayor essentially came out and said as much two weeks back (that this dystopian scenario may itself be a cover story, given that several council members have already made strong cases that it doesn’t make much sense as presented, is probably even more telling). I’ve prepared for the discussion by reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York and watching RoboCop 2. You should prepare by reading my piece on the last briefing from two weeks back and watching RoboCop 2.
Then we break for lunch. I’ll probably go get a calzone.
Afterward, we return to the bond affair with a separate briefing focusing on “street conditions,” which, we’ll no doubt learn, are poor. Then we move on to the second of three Dallas super-scandals with “Police and Fire Pension Update,” wherein we’ll hear more about the rather extraordinary mismanagement of billions of dollars in city funds intended for retiring cops and firemen (the matter of the misused HUD funds will have to wait for another day).
Next up is a discussion of “Reality Based Training Centers,” which one might hope to be intended for certain members of the Council itself but most likely refers instead to the ultramodern training facilities Dallas police have been requesting, perhaps with the intention of living in them upon retirement. Things wrap up with “Community Development in Dallas,” a frighteningly broad topic that could theoretically involve anything from the city’s glorious campaign against the roving hordes of feral dogs that now rule large portions of southern Dallas to the proposed construction of a pyramid, sound of geometry and otherwise adequate to preserve the souls of our Shadow Oligarchs while they await passage to the afterworld.
Tune in tomorrow. All shall be revealed.
