With the city’s budget problems, it might seem like a bad time for the council to be asking for a salary increase. Nevertheless, Councilman Al Lipscomb says he intends to lead the push to get a pay hike proposal before the voters, if and when the subject of a City Charter revision election comes up. Lipscomb has long believed that council pay-currently $50 per meeting for each council member-is shamefully inadequate and ought to be hiked. Critics of the status quo say the token salaries keep lots of capable people from running. The trouble is. voters are hard to budge on this issue, whatever the economic climate.
The Dallas Mavericks’ abrupt departure from the NBA playoffs had severe economic ramifications beyond what the team itself suffered (a loss of up to $1.2 million in revenues for the organization if it had staged only three more games on its home court, and a share of upwards to another $80,000 for the players). For instance. Reunion Arena lost an average of $40,000 per game for each playoff game that was not staged there, says arena manager Wil Caudell. Add to that the income lost because arena people had to clear the entire month of May for both Mavericks and Dallas Sidekicks playoff games-which meant turning down some lucrative concerts. The Mavs’ fall also meant losses at the clubs and restaurants in the West End. which do big business when the team is at home. Steve Schiff, owner of the popular Dicks Last Resort, estimates that his club would have netted around $15,000 in the next playoff round,
The reverberations from Annette Strauss’s victory over former Republican Party council chairman Fred Meyer in the April mayor’s race are still being felt among partisans of both parties. Die-hard GOPers were seething and promising “we won’t forget this” after the runoff because they felt that certain Democratic members of the Strauss campaign team were gloating too much about their victory. Revenge came sooner than hoped for. however, with the Gary Hart debacle; some of those Strauss people were longtime Hart supporters and influential advisers in his camp.
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