This season, the Dallas Mavericks decided to try something off the court. Twenty local artists got a chance to illustrate a home game through the team’s Posterized series. Clay Stinnett imagined a grizzly bear in Elvis garb fighting a horse and a cowboy. (Mavs vs. Grizzlies, Feb. 5.) Skyler Thiot drew a basketball hoop standing tall over the Dallas skyline. (Mavs vs. Kings, Feb. 12.) Mariell Guzman infused Dallas’ landmarks with bright colors, imagining an upside down Brooklyn in black and white. (Mavs vs. Nets, Jan. 2.)

“Most people don’t realize that Dallas actually has a burgeoning art scene. It really has since the ‘80s. But right now it started to get to much more of a fever pitch as more investments, more people move from the coast to the Dallas area for different reasons,” says Dale Alexander, the vice president of the Mavericks’ Creative Studio. “We knew that there was an opportunity there.”

The team prints 100 posters for each participating game and sells them for $20 a pop. The proceeds benefit the Mavs Foundation. It wouldn’t have been possible without Chris Paliotta, a local designer who served as the project’s point person.

“I actually only knew a small handful of artists first-hand from our list,” Paliotta says. “As for the others, I’ve been tracking their work over the years through social media. It was really important for us to incorporate and tap into several different types of visual art, from the street art world, to printmaking, to comic art—we wanted to capture it all.”

More than a year after the city started fining contractors for illegally occupying streets and sidewalks, staff believes they aren’t going far enough. As such, they’re asking for Council approval to charge contractors higher fees to work in the public right-of-way, both as a way to generate revenue and to get them to finish their jobs quicker. They also want to increase daily fines.

The City Council’s transportation committee was briefed on the plan on Tuesday, learning that Dallas has the lowest lane and sidewalk closure fees of all the major cities in Texas. That causes streets and sidewalks to remain closed longer than needed and sometimes to even be used for storage of equipment.

Under the new fees, a 61-day closure of a 100-foot lane would jump from $366 to $1,514. The fee per square foot doubles after 121 days and triples after 180, hopefully incentivizing contractors to hurry up. (If you’re in and out within 60 days, you’ll pay just $.012 per square foot a day. If your work takes up the right of way for 180 or more, you’re looking at $.096. It hikes to $0.288 a day if your job occupies a second lane or sidewalk.) The city estimates it will increase revenue from fees from $1 million to $3 million in 2021 and, as a byproduct, “incentivize contractors to remove their barricades as early as possible.”

If you’ve been following this website for any amount of time, you’ll recognize our Dallas Hates Pedestrians series. North Oak Cliff Council member Chad West even brought it up during the meeting. The very first of those, published a whole two years ago, expressed pent-up frustration over this very issue: a mess of equipment near a downtown parking garage that swallowed up a full lane of traffic as well as a sidewalk.

“I am so happy this topic has been brought up,” West said. “If you go to a walkable city like New York, you’re never gonna have a sidewalk that’s closed off for weeks at a time without scaffolding to walk under.”

Dallas County Foots the Bill For Last-Minute Poll Workers. The parties usually bring their own judges during primaries, but both sides fell short of requirements this year. County commissioners approved $359,000 to fill the gap.

DISD Names a New Chief Auditor. It’ll be Alan King, on an interim basis, after the board accepted Steven Martin’s resignation Tuesday night amid criticism. King helped end the Dallas County Schools fiasco and has worked as DISD’s chief financial officer.

Boy Scouts File for Bankruptcy. It could mean that a lot of people who say they were sexually abused as Scouts don’t get their day in court.

Lowest Greenville Getting Big Apartment Building. Eight stories, 230 units, just south of Sam’s Club behind the 7-Eleven.

Dallas is getting closer to imposing new rules on scooter companies that will likely impact the time of day you can ride and, the city hopes, will incentivize companies to keep sidewalks clear of piles of toppled-over machines. The city is also working out a new fee structure to drive revenue for much-needed infrastructure repairs that could include dedicated bike lanes.

After a four month extension in November, the city’s dockless mobility pilot program ends next month. City Council is set to vote in new regulations on March 25. City staff has been locked in negotiations with scooter operators Uber, Bird, Wheels, Lime, and Ojo, plus stakeholders of highly traversed neighborhoods like Deep Ellum and Uptown. It presented the results of those negotiations, which are still wrapping up, during Tuesday’s meeting of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee.

We’ll start with the fees.

I joked this morning in Leading Off about saving the Leaning Tower of Dallas, that stubbornly un-demolished part of the old ACS building off Central Expressway. Well, now someone has started a Change.org petition to make the thing a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The petition, started by Jimbob Dallas, reads:

Over the past few days, The Leaning Tower of Dallas has become the city’s largest cultural icon. After making national headlines, we are finally famous for something other than the JFK Assassination. Unfortunately, the demolition will be completed soon to make way for even more hideous shops and condos for the bourgeois residents of Uptown Dallas. We need to act FAST! We need to reach out to local officials to save our new historical landmark. You wouldn’t tear down the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Great Pyramids of Giza and replace them with condos would you?

If anything, do it for the memes.

So far, six people have signed it. So you’re saying it has a chance.

The days of Airbnb hosts skirting local taxes could be coming to an end, and the city of Dallas may soon consider other new regulations to the short-term rental industry.

On Tuesday, city staff briefed the Quality of Life, Arts, and Culture Committee on their options for regulating a growing industry that brings out all the neighborhood complaints you may imagine: noise, parking, overcrowding, trash. They are also a way for out-of-towners to find a cheaper and more neighborhood-inclusive route into the city, and for Dallasites to earn extra income. It’s a conversation that brings out strong opinions. While other cities have already codified significant regulations of the industry, it’s just beginning in Dallas.

The city has already decided to enforce its rule that hosts pay hotel taxes. It hired a technology company in November to scour the web for addresses of short-term rentals. Only 400 have registered with City Hall so far, bringing in about $245,000 in taxes. Staff has identified 1,200 “registration pending” short term rentals in town, which are Airbnbs and others that hadn’t bothered to notify the city. There could very well be more.

Getting those operations registered is the first step, and it’s more complicated than you may think. Staff says that the city has engaged operators like Airbnb but has faced reluctance to charge local taxes through the app. (Airbnb has reached similar agreements with other municipalities, however.) That means an extra burden falls on the hosts, some of whom may only make something like $1,000 a month, according to Kris Sweckard, Dallas’ director of sustainable development and construction.