We know that Mike Rawlings is confused about what city he is mayoring. Don’t blame the City Council if it is confused, too. At last week’s Wednesday retreat, Council members were given a presentation by a Dr. Neil Kleiman, professor of policy development at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, on how Dallas stacks up against other cities. Impressive as his resume is, Dr. Kleiman doesn’t seem to know where Dallas is. His presentation was about how the Dallas metro stacks up against other metros. The Dallas metro happens to include Collin County and sometimes (depending on the definition) it even includes Tarrant County. Collin County is booming. Tarrant County isn’t doing so bad itself. So the Dallas metro looks great. Everybody already knows that, and I doubt they needed Professor Kleiman to tell them. But the city of Dallas? Not doing so great. In fact, the city of Dallas looks fairly dismal.
It gets worse. The Council was told that the Milken Institute ranks Dallas #7 among best performing cities. Wrong. That was the Dallas metro again. It was told the Brookings Institute [sic] ranks Dallas 4th “in combined recession and recovery.” Wrong. That was the Dallas metro again (and the metro ranked 3rd, not 4th).
Is the Council even aware that everything Professor Kleiman told them was wrong? Should they ask for their money back? I don’t know. But maybe they should ask City Manager A.C. Gonzales, who presumably invited Professor Kleiman to speak, if his obfuscation was deliberate or if he knows what city he is managing. How is that city doing, Mr. Gonzales?
