Thursday, January 6, 2011

"your thoughts on the proposal"

"On behalf of your City Council and myself, I want to provide you with an update concerning two important rezoning requests regarding property located in north Richardson adjacent to the intersection of US 75 and the Bush Turnpike."
--Gary Slagel, in a Jan 4 letter.

My thoughts on the proposal are "quit snailmailing me propaganda about Apartment the Town at my own expense."

Additional thoughts are something like "I look forward to the next City Council election."

{editing to scans of the front and back of the letter, .pdf format and quite small, 40k and 50k respectively}


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this letter online? I personally like the overall concept proposed for Bush Turnpike Station and can't quite figure out why there's so much yelping about it.

Anonymous said...

Fine time to be asking for public input; after deals have been secretly made between the parties. It's a shame our public officials don't have integrity with the people they represent. There would be fewer of these wrestling matches trying to get the citizens to accept the deal after it's already done. What kind of public input could that draw? Right. Exactly what this one is getting in response to thousands of apartments on the northern border of town. Every empty lot in the territory is building or renovating apartments. Is Richardson destined to be yet another tenement slum when management can't pay the note? Get a grip. The public isn't buying this one any more than they bought the Campbell underpass. Keep the zoo on the south side of Dallas, please.

frater jason said...

@anon 10:20am

I edited the original to put up scans of the front and back of the letter. I didn't have anywhere easy to post them so I waited to see if anyone else uploaded it.

Can't speak for anyone else, but my yelping is for these reasons:

1. the city appears to love development deals that require COR sweetening the honeypot with OPM (other people's money)...

2. and continues to spin Enron-level BS like "hooray for high-end, Transit-Oriented development" when Brick Row (you guessed it, high-end TOD)sits largely empty with zero retail as far as I can tell. Hey, those beautiful old houses had to go in the name of PROGRESS! and VIM! and VIGOR! Nevermind the smoking meteor crater. The taxpayers will pitch in and take care of it.

I happen to dig the concept of mixed use stuff like this. I think it works great in places I've seen it succeed all over Europe and in cosmopolitain cities like Portland or Chicago. But we aren't those places, and I'm not sure it'll work here.

oh, and
3. the city has adopted an unseemly approach to getting what it wants; hire expensive PR flacks to try to convince people to do something they don't want to do. HINT: you don't have to convince people to do what they already want to do. Having to mount a PR campaign on your own residents indicates something's sick inside. YMMV.

Anonymous said...

Does Gary Slagel think we are all SOOO stupid to think we don't know that it is almost election time?

Quick, Gary, think of a way to get the city to fund your campaign (sort of how you got it to fund your office space for 7 years). OMG, write a letter with your name all over it, then have the city send it out. Brilliant. It is sort of like how you ended up with your own column in the Richardson Today and a separate "Mayor's" email that is sent out. Gary, you have NOOO shame.