CITYSCOPE

We’ll continue to hear all kinds of speculation about who’s going to ran for mayor next year, but political insiders are saying not to pay any attention until Mayor Starke Taylor gets around to announcing his plans. Mayor Pro Tem Annette Strauss and former city councilman/ DART board member Lee Simpson have already said their plans are contingent upon Taylor’s decision to seek another term or not, and now former congressman Jim Collins is saying the same thing. None of the potential candidates has any quarrel with the mayor; i.e., none of them has any desire to tangle with him in an electoral contest. Taylor says he has promised Strauss a decision by late August or early September, as soon as the city council has put the final touches on the city budget for next year. Collins, who’s been informally sampling opinion on whether to make the race since talking with Taylor in April, would appear to be a formidable candidate, judging from the strong popularity he enjoyed within his North Dallas district during his fourteen years in Congress. But it’s one thing to run for Congress and quite another to run for a local office, say the political pros. Collins’s particular brand of conservatism may have suited his former constituents very well, but may not be enough to guarantee victory in a city-wide race. “I told him that it’s a full-time job, and that he needs to understand that the mayor is supposed to be mayor for all the people,” says Taylor. “He has to stay in touch with all the diverse elements of the city.” By the way, in a letter to the city secretary’s office accompanying his formal designation of a campaign treasurer (he named himself), Collins twice referred to his “good friend” Starke Taylor by misspelling his good friend’s first name. Maybe it was a pitch for the bad spellers’ vote….

Despite all of the attention being paid to the city budget and the possibility of a tax increase, the talk on the street is that the Dallas Independent School District’s impending tax hike-somewhere in the vicinity of 6 or 7 percent-has done more to irritate homeowners. Of course, older taxpayers tend to gripe more about school taxes than city taxes because they don’t receive any direct benefit from DISD- never mind that many or most of them were themselves educated in public schools that were supported by property taxes. Add to that fact the recent appraisal notices that raised many property owners’ valuations-an automatic tax increase, unless the tax rate is adjusted-and you have a nice volatile mix. Making matters worse is the recent power shift within the school board, once Anglo-controlled but now dominated by the minorities. “It’s got a lot of people in my district upset,” says one Dallas City Council representative. “I held a constituent meeting recently where I expected to hear a lot of gripes and complaints about the city’s tax situation, but all they wanted to talk about was the school district. It’s not pleasant to contemplate, but the truth is that a lot of white property owners in Dallas don’t like being in the position of paying the larger share of taxes to support the district while being on the losing end of the votes.”

Assistant City Manager Jim Reid has become the target of some outside interests who would like to see him canned. The complaint against Reid: that he allowed the city planning staff to exceed the general boundaries of the Planning Policies Issue Paper, a plan for redefining the city’s zoning ordinances that the council approved two years ago. The subject was broached in May with at least two members of the city council, both of whom said they were asked by constituents whether they’d support a move to fire Reid. Both said no, and added that as far as they knew, the matter is now a dead issue. Whatever the merits of the accusation, it has already been dealt with privately, say sources, in meetings involving Reid, City Manager Charles Anderson, and Mayor Starke Taylor. For the record, the City of Dallas has had three major officials in charge of land use planning in addition to Reid since the early Seventies-Weiming Lu, Jim Schroeder, and Jack Schoop-and all three were purged after constant attacks by developers and business interests who favored the laissez-faire approach to growth. Lu and Schoop are long gone, while Schroeder has moved to another city department….



Is Eddie Bernice Johnson acting like a “sore winner”? Some members of the Dallas Area Women’s Political Caucus believe so after having seen a June 20 letter in which she resigned her membership in the organization that she helped found. Johnson, who won the Democratic Party’s June 12 runoff election for the state Senate District 23 seat, said she was leaving the DAWPC because it endorsed her opponent, Jesse Oliver, contrary to a longstanding pledge to endorse the woman “in any political race unless she was opposed to equality and progress for women.” Johnson goes on in her letter to accuse both the local and state Women’s Political Caucus organizations of losing their primary purpose: “You must not continue to mislead women into believing that the Women’s Political Caucus is a woman’s organization that promotes women.” Charlotte Taft, who chaired the DAWPC’s candidate screening committee, says the decision to endorse Oliver was not made lightly. “This was not an easy one. We knew that going in, and it’s my sense that the members struggled with it,” says Taft. At the general membership meeting in which the screening committee presented its recommendations, however, none of Johnson’s supporters showed up to back their candidate. “There was a strong sense of the membership that Jesse Oliver would be more effective as a state senator on the issues that concern us,” says Taft. Johnson’s reaction, she says, may show that the DAWPC’s concerns were valid. “We’re disappointed that she’s not able to say we’re still on the same side. I think that a candidate when running for office has to realize that people have to make some tough decisions, and this one was really a tough one. Her decision [to resign] is a poor one in my estimation. This is not the way to proceed, and we’re hoping that she will not make this a loss for the issues that concern us.” Johnson could not be reached for comment….