STREET TALK

At a city council briefing in mid-March, council member Al Lipscomb abruptly interrupted a presentation by assistant city manager Jim Reid with a question to Mayor Annette Strauss: “Do we have a mechanism in place to call in the National Guard if we need them?” The mayor, surprised by the question, said nothing. But council member Jerry Rucker retorted, “Why? Are you expecting an alien invasion?” Lipscomb re-pied that he thought the mayor should be prepared to call out the guard because of “this modern-day Führer here in Dallas. ” It wasn’t clear just to whom The Lip was referring…



Things continue to get hotter for city manager Richard Knight, who, having been urged by the council to ease the strain on his beleaguered staff by hiring a new assistant city manager, has found himself under pressure from the black community to choose a minority. It’s no secret that the city manager has come under fire by some minority leaders who don’t think Knight is “black enough”…



Despite its new-found legions of Blue Backers, the Dallas Police Association may have cooked its goose a long time ago on the issue of hiring additional police officers. According to council member Lori Palmer, during final budget go-rounds last August, the DPA said they could do without the hiring of 150 new officers in exchange for adding merit pay hikes for existing police employees to the city budget. Even Chief Billy Prince endorsed the measure. But a few months later, when police reform became a hot issue, the efforts of council members to champion the DPA cause seemed long forgotten. The question now is, who’s going to carry the torch for the union this time around?