Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Lupe Valdez Owes Back Taxes. She apparently owes $12,000 in property taxes on seven properties in two counties. She says she’s paying them back in installments, and apologized for forgetting to put one of the properties on her financial-disclosure report. Typos, she said.
Hearst Laid Off More Than a Dozen Journalists in San Antonio Yesterday. The Houston Chronicle, a Hearst paper, broke the Valdez story yesterday. Around the same time it was publishing, 14 journalists were laid off at its sister paper, The San Antonio Express News. This isn’t entirely local, but one of the layoffs was Peggy Fikac, one of the finest statehouse reporters in all of Texas. That impacts all of us. The news came the same day that the Census announced that San Antonio added more people last year than any other city in the country.
Summer Is Here. Apparently we’re staring down five straight triple digit days next week, starting Wednesday and lasting through Saturday. Afterwards, it will probably feel like less of a blast furnace, but we’ve only just begun.
The Same Company That Redid the Statler Has Started Work on the Cabana. Centurion American plans to sink $230 million into the redo of the 56-year-old Cabana Motor Hotel. When it’s done, there will be 262 rooms with restaurants and a 140,000 square-foot apartment tower. The hotel sits on Lower Stemmons between downtown and the Design District. It was built by the same architect who designed Caeser’s Palace and Circus Circus in Las Vegas.
