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Mike Rawlings Defends ‘No Labels’ Effort. The attempt to attract a viable third-party candidate to the 2024 presidential ticket failed, with No Labels deciding to hang it up for the year. Former Mayor Mike Rawlings was chairman of the effort, and he tells the Dallas Morning News that “the courage wasn’t there by some candidates, because this was going to be hard.” He said the top of the ballot was offered to “less than a handful of people.” He says he still believes in the movement.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Came to Town. He was here to celebrate an $80 million infusion of federal funds to help pay for capping Interstate 35 near the zoo and turn it into a park. Attendees got a sneak peek at some of the plans.

Chiefs Receiver Rashee Rice Admits to Driving Smashed Lamborghini. Lawyers for the former SMU standout held a press conference to admit that their client was driving the Lamborghini that caused a multi-vehicle crash on Central Expressway, then walking away from the scene. Rice’s attorney, state Sen. Royce West, said police do plan on filing charges soon.

Clouds Persist in Eclipse Forecast. The question no longer appears whether it will be cloudy, but how dense will the cloud cover be. There will be thinner clouds higher in the sky, then, at some point, thicker clouds will settle in closer to earth. Higher clouds will allow for filtered sunshine and probably a glance at the big show. The thicker clouds would mean an overcast day where it’s difficult to see. And, of course, we still don’t know which we’ll get.

Fair Park’s finances are being audited after its nonprofit manager “notified the city of financial concerns” related to a sub-contract with the operator. The nonprofit Fair Park First is the boss of the Oak View Group, which runs the daily park operations. In a statement, Fair Park First CEO Brian Luallen said the organization learned “a little more than a week ago” that the Oak View Group “may have inaccurately, and we hope inadvertently, allocated and utilized restricted funds raised by Fair Park First for daily park operations.”

“If the inaccurate and unauthorized reallocation of funds occurred, it is a significant matter and shakes our confidence and trust,” the statement reads. “If we discover any restricted funds donated to Fair Park First were utilized incorrectly, we will do everything in our power, in partnership with the City of Dallas, to ensure those funds are returned and redirected as envisioned by the donors.”

Luallen said Fair Park First engaged Malnory, McNeal and Company, PC to conduct the forensic audit in “close coordination” with the city of Dallas. Philanthropic donations are generally intended for capital improvements across its 277 acres—especially building the much-anticipated community park in place of surface parking lots—and not operational expenditures.

“We have formally given notice to Oak View Group of our intention to investigate this matter fully, hopefully in partnership with them, so we may provide robust assurance to our donors investing in Fair Park’s future that restricted funds were allocated appropriately,” Luallen said.

In a letter sent by its in-house counsel, the Oak View Group said it did nothing wrong: “we vehemently deny any wrongdoing on our part with respect to the use of restricted funds. We are confident—and have documentation to support—that all uses of donated funds were with the full knowledge and approval of Mr. Luallen, acting on behalf of Fair Park First.”

The City Council was briefed in closed session yesterday to seek “legal advice of the city attorney regarding the city’s management contract with Fair Park First.” The Dallas Park and Recreation Board is hearing the same thing behind closed doors today.

Nobody on Council or the Park Board would comment. But the city confirmed the audit and issued a statement last night: “Fair Park First, the city’s nonprofit Fair Park manager, recently notified the city of financial concerns related to its sub-management contract with Oak View Group, the entity that manages the day-to-day operations of Fair Park. The city takes these concerns seriously and is taking all necessary and appropriate actions to protect the city’s interest. The city is committed to financial transparency in all its operations, including Fair Park, and will work to maintain the continued vibrancy and success of Fair Park.”

To understand what’s going on, we need to go back to 2018 when the Dallas City Council unanimously voted to privatize Fair Park. Under the conditions of the contract, the city retained ownership of the park’s acreage and buildings but allowed a for-profit operator—then called Spectra, which was acquired by Oak View Group in 2021—to fill its buildings and open spaces with events and other programming. It also ran day to day operations.

Fun With Voting, Part I. A user on X claimed that more than 1.2 million people in Texas registered to vote without a photo ID, alleging that it opened the door for undocumented individuals to vote. Then, the owner of X, Elon Musk, retweeted it. On Wednesday, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued a statement that basically tells everyone to simmer down because it’s not true.

Fun With Voting, Part II. Votec Corp., a voter registration management software company, is asking several counties in Texas to pay a surcharge to keep it afloat. The company assessed a surcharge of $66,000 for Dallas County and $40,000 for Collin County. The company has done business in Texas for at least 20 years and is one of only three companies certified to manage voter registration data. 

Chiefs WR Rashee Rice Meets With Police. Rice says he met with police Wednesday and took responsibility for his part in a hit-and-run, six-vehicle crash Saturday. Dallas police said that two cars connected with Rice—a Lamborghini Urus SUV and a Chevrolet Corvette—were racing when they caused a chain reaction collision on North Central Expressway near SMU. The occupants of both cars allegedly left on foot. Rice’s alleged involvement is still unclear.

Pay More Before Flying the Friendly Skies. Parking at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport will cost more starting May 1, with rates increasing by $2 to $5 a day, including a $3 increase just for the pleasure of passing through the airport. (DART fares start at $2.50, and the Orange line will take you to the airport.)

West Dallas has long been the city’s epicenter for the neighborhood-led fight for environmental justice. Its residents have pushed back against lead smelters and concrete batch plants for decades, challenging the city’s decisions to allow industrial operators near homes and schools and churches. The fight continues even today, 40 years after the RSR lead smelter shuttered, as its residents organize against a long-standing shingle factory.

This weekend, the choral group Verdigris Ensemble will tell its story through a collaborative mixed media performance called Mis-Lead at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. It is a novel approach to a complicated topic. The 60-minute piece weaves music composed by Kirsten Soriano with recorded interviews from West Dallas community members. It includes poetry, visual projections, Dallas City Council transcripts, and a documentary by the director Michael Flanagan. All the components tell the story of a community that is still suffering the effects of environmental injustice.

During the production, 16 singers will sing lyrics taken from the poetry of Maya Angelou and Octavio Paz. They will use buckets, oil barrels, and other tools as percussion. Interspersed in the production is film and still photos from West Dallas, newspaper clips, on-camera interviews with community members, and transcripts from public meetings.

Sam Brukhman, the choral ensemble’s founding artistic director, says a conversation with Dallas Free Press executive director Keri Mitchell several years ago sparked a desire to tell the stories of Dallas, especially those that have seemingly been lost to time. He’s done that with Mis-Lead. 

Brukhman says he and Mitchell—who is one of his “favorite people”—met in 2019. He reached out after a reading a story she wrote for the East Dallas Advocate about inequities in admission practices at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Verdigris had just started an initiative at Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy in Oak Cliff to provide free vocal coaching to students interested in auditioning to attend Booker T. Their conversation freewheeled into a discussion about Dallas history.

“She’s just a nerd and I love that about her, because she loves to look at archives, and it’s awesome,” he says. “During the pandemic I started asking her about all these Dallas stories that we haven’t talked about.”

The two realized that Verdigris’ immersive, out-of-the-box approach to choral music could lend itself to telling these stories.

You might have hired Nick DiGennaro at one point to play classical or jazz guitar at a cocktail reception. The Dallasite recently retired from performing and is now focused on bird photography. You can check out some of his images over at Fine Art America.

Yesterday DiGennaro posted some great bald eagle photos to the private, apostrophe-starved Facebook group White Rock Lake! thats my hood. I find it interesting that a couple years back a nesting pair of eagles took up residence in a tree at nearby Lake Highlands Park (aka the rugby fields) and the entire place had to be fenced off to accommodate the federally protected birds. Now we’ve basically got a fishing show with an eagle as a host being filmed on the reg at the lake.

Anyway, DiGennaro said I could share his pics, since most folks don’t have access to that Facebook group. Here’s another image from him. He caught a red-tailed hawk’s failed attempt to swipe the eagle’s catch.

Bethany put up a post today about the mysterious “Project X” currently up for consideration by the Dallas City Council. Are the Chiefs returning to Dallas? Probably not. But also maybe definitely.

She referred to a mostly unrelated 2004 DVD that we have in our possession that is also titled “Project X.” It arrived in our office many years ago in an envelope sent by an anonymous tipster. The DVD was produced by Halff Associates for the Cowboys so that Jerry Jones could show the city of Dallas his fever dream of a stadium near downtown, on the banks of the Trinity River. Obviously this was before the city of Arlington coughed up the cash to lure the team west.

Do you know how difficult it is to get images off a DVD? I found a portable player in the office. Apparently my laptop’s USB adaptor doesn’t pump enough juice to drive the thing. But! We’ve got an old iMac with a built-in DVD drive that I was able to fire up.

The DVD contains a single two-minute CGI flyover video of the imagined stadium. Its roof appears retractable and extends over a pedestrian plaza. Canals weave through the entire project. It could have been pretty cool. Just for fun, here are two more images that have never before been shared publicly:

Last week, we pointed to a mysterious item on a Dallas City Council committee agenda that at the time seemed to potentially involve the Dallas Mavericks. But now we have a new theory.

At the time, a joint meeting of the Dallas City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention and the Council Economic Development Committee included an agenda item slated for closed session, where the two committees met privately with attorneys. Dubbed “Project X,” there were just a few vague clues: “Discuss or deliberate the commercial or financial information that the city has received from a business prospect (“Project X”) that the city seeks to have locate, stay or expand in or near the city and with which the city is conducting economic development negotiations; and deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentive to such business prospect.”

The same day the committees met, we floated the theory that Project X was potentially about the city making plans to keep the Dallas Mavericks away from the suburbs. Now that the team has new majority owners and a deal with the American Airlines Center that ends in 2031, it would make sense that the city would want to begin negotiations sooner than later.

But a new team has entered the arena, thanks to a late evening tweet from Mayor Eric Johnson.

City of Dallas Warns About Eclipse Plans. City Hall hosted a whole press conference yesterday in the Flag Room to warn residents not to travel too far from their homes to watch Monday’s eclipse. They’re worried about traffic, mostly, and predict that 90 percent of the city’s 35,000 hotel rooms will be reserved by Monday.

Dallas Anesthesiologist IV Tampering Trial Underway. You’ll recall the bizarre, tragic story in 2022, when Raynoldo Ortiz was caught on camera tampering with IV bags before surgeries. Prosecutors say he injected the bags with dangerous drugs that led to cardiac events. Another anesthesiologist, Dr. Melanie Casper, died that June after taking an IV bag home to rehydrate while sick. His trial on 10 federal charges is now underway, and one of the five patients who had to be resuscitated testified that she feared she would die.

Hello, Beautiful Weather. It’s a chilly, sunny morning on a day when temperatures will inch no higher than the low 70s. The rain is gone for the rest of the week, although storm chances return Saturday night into Sunday.

Outgoing City Manager T.C. Broadnax could be leaving earlier than expected, a city council committee meeting agenda appears to indicate.

After seven years with the city, Broadnax in February announced he would be stepping down after a majority of the City Council requested his resignation. In a statement to the press, several council members said that the poor relationship between Broadnax and Mayor Eric Johnson made doing city business too difficult. In his resignation letter, he said his last day at City Hall would be June 3. 

That same month, Johnson tasked the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs with most of the city manager search. That committee consists of Council Members Tennell Atkins, Cara Mendelsohn, Jesse Moreno, Paul Ridley, and Kathy Stewart. The lone item on the committee’s Tuesday agenda was a discussion to “deliberate employment of City Manager T.C. Broadnax and effective date of appointment of Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert.” The committee immediately went into a closed session.

Tolbert, who currently serves as a Deputy City Manager (Jon Fortune also has that title), has worked with Broadnax since he began in 2017. Her biography on the city’s website calls her “the City Manager’s top trusted advisor.”

In February, the Council voted 12-2 to appoint Tolbert to the interim position effective June 3, the date Broadnax originally provided as his last day at Dallas City Hall. Tuesday’s meeting is only a discussion, so any action by the full council would likely happen at an upcoming city council meeting. The draft agenda for the April 10 meeting does not yet indicate any action is planned.

Josh Jung Suffers Fracture. Last night, Jung hit a three-run homer as the Rangers beat the Rays 9-3, but in the ninth inning, a pitch hit him in the right wrist, adding another to a series of injuries to the third baseman. After the game, he was too bummed out to even talk about it. Here’s the video.

Rashee Rice Retains State Sen. Royce West. Rice is the Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver (and former SMU player) who is connected—gotta be careful with the word choice—to a vehicle that was involved in a six-vehicle hit-and-run crash on Central Expressway over the weekend. West said in a statement: “Rashee is cooperating with local authorities and will take all necessary steps to address this situation responsibly.”

Keep Tabs on Eclipse Day Weather. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth hasn’t yet issued their daily update, but here’s what they said yesterday: “The forecast for Eclipse Day continues to be cloudy, however, not all hope is lost! There is still a medium chance of partial visibility across parts of North and Central Texas.” (UPDATE: Here is the what the Weather Service says today: “The forecast for Eclipse Day continues to be cloudy, however, not all hope is lost! Widespread upper cloud cover is likely, but dense low clouds look less likely!”)

Fairmont Hotel Has a New Chief Happiness Officer. It’s an 8-month-old dog named Bondi who hangs out in the lobby.

Before he toured the operation at Bonton Farms on Thursday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn met with local nonprofits to discuss what happens after an inmate leaves the prison system.

He’s repeated this with varying backdrops across the state since January, when he announced he would advance the Workforce Reentry Act. This act seeks to make permanent Labor Department grants that provide job support to federally incarcerated people, including job training and housing upon release. 

A similar act was introduced in the House last November, but is currently in the earliest stages of the legislative process. Cornyn says he plans to introduce legislation in the Senate in the next few months. Bonton Farms, which provides jobs for formerly incarcerated people and tiny homes for those who need housing, is an exemplar of the kind of programs he’d like to see receive those federal dollars. 

“The legislation we’re working on is based on a pilot program that’s evidence-based,” he said. “It’s not based on wishful thinking or a pie in the sky. It’s based on things that actually work and have been proven to work.”

Cornyn says that about 78,000 inmates in Texas are released from prison each year. Federal research shows that those who engage in job training and housing programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison.

“They can’t get a job, and they can’t find a place to live, well, that’s two strikes against the person,” he said Thursday.