A few thoughts after the City Council officially raised the property tax rate:
• I warned Mayor Park Cities that if he wasn’t careful, the tax hike could turn into a racial issue. And he didn’t listen to me. Again.
• South Dallas councilman Dwaine Caraway is not only going to run for mayor, but he is making a good start of it. He’s quoted in Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper: “Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway asked whether all those who say Dallas must ‘live within its means’ would be willing to stop construction on the deck park, sell the classical radio station WRR or put a stop to the Trinity project. ‘When you look over Woodall Rodgers this direction it’s beautiful, when you look the other direction, it’s not.’ ” That’s exactly the kind of talk that plays south of the Trinity, as well as to the 45 percent of the city that has voted against things like the toll road.
• M Streets councilwoman Angela Hunt is not going to run for mayor. Otherwise, I think she would have found a different approach to the tax rate hike issue. For one thing, she used (relatively, of course) as much of her political capital to get the rate hike approved as Leppert used of his to try and defeat it. The other reason? If the city’s elite didn’t like her before this, imagine how much they don’t like her now. It would be almost impossible for her to raise the $1 million-plus necessary to run for mayor.
• Leppert runs for re-election. I can’t imagine he would slink away after a defeat like this. Instead, we’ll hear that he is going to run because he has unfinished business, that Dallas can still be a great city, etc., etc.
