News broke this morning that at its meeting yesterday the board of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System voted to stop looking for a solution to the glare problem that has caused damage to the neighboring Nasher Sculpture Center:
“The DPFP Board has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the members of the pension system and to provide long term benefits for the Police and Fire Fighters that have served the City of Dallas,” says Dallas City Council member Lee Kleinman via email Friday morning. Kleinman is one of four council members of the fund’s board, along with Kingston, Scott Griggs and newcomer Erik Wilson. “At yesterday’s Board meeting a motion was made to discontinue efforts to seek a resolution. Despite my advocacy to continue, other Board Members believe it is prudent to provide certainty. Except for my vote, the Board stood unanimous. While this outcome is personally disappointing, I must applaud the efforts and sincere dialogue of all stakeholders in this process.”
Griggs wasn’t at yesterday’s meeting, and Kingston, who worked behind the scenes to resolve the issue and come up with a fix, had to leave before the vote was taken due to a prior obligation. Wilson voted for the resolution to kill the deal with Hines.
Back in May, it looked like the building was closing in on a solution, but guess that didn’t work.
It doesn’t seem like Museum Tower is on the right side of this fight, so I can understand the disappointment of those seeking to protect the Nasher. However, just having read about this, I happened upon a post by Rudolph Bush on the DMN‘s editorial blog that put me in a Jim Schutze-ish frame of mind — that maybe this dispute is just a fight among the rich people over the protection of rich people’s things.
That’s probably an overreaction, but Bush does remind us there are far more important issues for our city to confront:
We need to acknowledge that wages for low-skill labor just aren’t adequate to people’s sustenance needs. Those wages need to come up to help free people from subsidy.
People also need access to quality health insurance at a fair cost, something the healthcare exchanges appear to be offering. People who are one medical emergency from financial disaster are in trouble.
Finally, we must examine the causes of ballooning wealth for a select few as wages stagnate for most people. Plutocracy and democracy just don’t function well as a pair.
It’s a shame that Dallas has a greater percentage of people beneath poverty than other major Texas cities. It’s even more shameful to consider as we look out upon our shining skyline of extraordinary wealth.
If we don’t address this problem, it’s hard not to wonder whether we are building a city on a bed of sand.
