Council Member Wants to End Veteran Homelessness. Chad West, an Army vet and chair of the council’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, said yesterday that he and the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance are aiming to house 100 vets in 100 days. Beyond that, he wants to find every local veteran a home. Veterans can get federal vouchers from the Dallas Housing Authority.

Landmark First National Bank Tower Will House Downtown Dallas Inc. The building’s $450 million renovation will be finished this year, and Downtown Dallas Inc. will be the first major tenant. Kourtny Garrett, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc., says: “We have been champions of this project, and it was a unique opportunity to put all of our operations under one roof.”

Number of DFW Democratic Voters More Than Doubled On First Day of Polls. On Tuesday, the first day of early voting, the number of Democratic voters more than doubled in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton counties from the same day in 2016.

The Dallas Morning News’ wrongheaded editorial about bail reform is being amplified by two of our city and state’s most prominent public officials. Mayor Eric Johnson and Gov. Greg Abbott have both tweeted it out, spreading its conflations and fear mongering.

The News’ editorial board, or an online producer, has also changed the headline of the editorial from “Is Bail Reform the Cause of Dallas’ Climbing Crime?” to “What’s Causing Dallas Crime to Spike?” The original headline is still contained in the URL for the piece. The new headline is a softer path to connecting the city’s rising violent crime rate to bail reform and District Attorney John Creuzot, who has championed the policy and others like it.

Here is my colleague Zac Crain, writing last week in response to the editorial:

Bail reform is about reducing a jail population that is largely made up of pretrial detainees, people who can’t afford to get out, even at seemingly low amounts like $500. Across the country, almost two-thirds of people incarcerated locally have not been convicted of anything. In Texas, it’s 70 percent.

We’ve written a fair amount over the past couple years about bail reform, a national movement—often court-ordered—that aims to eliminate cash bail for low, nonviolent offenses.

A little history lesson here.

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.