REVENGE OF THE LIBERALS?

Here is the latest in the seesaw battle of wits and votes between Dallas’ so-called “business community” and the self-styled “neighborhood interests” -liberals, planners, preservationists and everyone else who has never felt comfortable with (or accepted by) the city’s traditional power structure.

City Councilman Lee Simpson and City Plan Com-mission member David McAtee are among those mulling over the creation of what could be the outsiders’ equivalent of the Dallas Citizens Council, which has served the insiders so well for so many years.

Like the Citizens Council, the new group could serve as watchdog, lobbying arm and campaign aide for its members. But so far, McAtee says, it’s still just an idea being kicked around “by a group of people who have been involved with local issues.”

The problem, Simpson says, is that no one knows how the group should be assembled, or what it should do, other than serve as “the framework for input that reflects the broad range of people in the city.”

As things stand now, he says, the business community is ably represented by the chambers of commerce and by people such as Citizens Council Executive Director Alex Bickiey, who is paid to spend his time watching, organizing and lobbying. “There is nothing wrong with that,” Simpson says, “except that the people who are represented [by such organizations] all tend to have the same point of view. We don’t have much of a ’Citizens Common Cause’ in Dallas.”

Whether the creation of some type of neighborhood confederacy would be good for the city is a matter of some debate.

Bickley and his associates say that the neighborhood groups too often think only of themselves, without proper regard for the health of the entire city.

Simpson, on the other hand, contends that money and organization have for too long given the business community-itself a special interest group from his perspective-a lopsided advantage on crucial issues.

The biggest fights among City Council members for the past several years have involved matters of zoning and transportation. The idea of an alliance of neighborhood power groups seems like a natural product of those battles.

The neighborhoods caught the traditional power brokers off-guard after the 1975 switch to single-member districts, electing councilmen such as Simpson and winning fights such as the Crosstown Expressway brouhaha.

But those gains stiffened the resolve of the Citizens Council and the various chambers of commerce, which came roaring back with victories such as the approval of the Abrams Road bypass around Lakewood Shopping Center and the rejection of stringent noise controls at Love Field.

To be effective, the new coalition would have to be up to full steam before next year’s city elections. “Steam” means having issues and candidates to agree upon – something that may be difficult for the “neighborhood” representatives, who in the past have found themselves at cross-purposes.

But McAtee thinks the issues may present themselves. One possibility: transit and the controversial expressways suggested in the Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s mobility plan, presented in May to the state highway commission.