Published August 23, 2023

DALLAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) — It is budget season in Dallas, and before city leaders decide where to spend taxpayer dollars, they'll have to decide on how much they'll pay.

And the push to lower the property tax rate is taking a dramatic turn.

"It's the game that we say, 'We're lowering your tax rate,' and then we take a bow," shared District 12 Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn. "But the residents get a higher tax bill, because their property value has increased significantly."

Mendelsohn compares the promise of lowered property tax rates to a shell game, while Mayor Eric Johnson pulled out a toy ship—comparing Dallas' tax situation to the Titanic.

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Published August 23, 2023

Some Dallas residents, with the support of a few City Council members, called for the city manager to stop raising taxes and increasing city budgets.

At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Eric Johnson, with a toy boat prop in hand, likened the city’s fiscal situation to the Titanic approaching an iceberg. In lockstep with the mayor, City Council member Cara Mendelsohn indicated the city was coming toward “the edge of the cliff.”

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Published August 23, 2023

D.R. Horton, a prominent name in real estate, has set its sights on a significant expansion in north Fort Worth, planning the construction of over 1,200 new homes.

The Arlington-based builder submitted plans to the Fort Worth City Plan Commission, which will review and vote on the case on August 23.

Although the commissioners had previously approved plat development plans in 2016 and 2021, the new plans include the addition of 67 more lots.

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Published August 15, 2023

My parents recently traveled to Australia. One of the minor things that they noticed was, that, when walking along sidewalks in Sydney, the locals drifted to my parents’ right side and each row of pedestrians passed each other walking in the opposite direction, on their right. The subconscious reason for this, of course, is that being a former British colony for many years, they drive on the left side of the road. They pass oncoming cars on their right side. So, just like most people here in the USA, we tend to walk on the right side when approaching someone coming in the opposite direction since we pass oncoming cars on our left side.

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Published August 7, 2023

A local homebuilder is eyeing projects in Austin rather than Dallas-Fort Worth.

Landsea Homes Corporation relocated its headquarters to North Texas in March, but instead of building residential communities in Dallas, the national homebuilder has directed its development efforts toward projects near Austin and around Central Texas.

Dallas-based Landsea Homes Corp. announced Friday that it had purchased more than 80 single-family home lots in the Lariat master-planned community in Liberty Hill, about 35 miles northwest of downtown Austin.

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Published August 7, 2023

Dallas’ building permit department has concluded a 2022 initiative that was designed to alleviate long wait times while the City worked to clear its permit backlog.

The Development Services Department (DSD) announced in a newsletter last Wednesday that it had canceled all future “Pop Up Permit Saturday” events due to declining participation in recent months.

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Published August 5, 2023

A triple shooting in Downtown Dallas last Sunday left one dead and two others injured as the neighborhood continues to suffer from rampant crime.

The shooting occurred around 2:35 a.m. at the corner of Commerce Street and South Pearl Expressway. One of the victims, 22-year-old Mario Marchbanks, died from his wounds. Another victim was in critical condition, and a third was in stable condition, according to the Dallas Police Department’s (DPD) crime blog.

Police have not released the names of the two injured individuals.

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Published June 14, 2023

Council Member Jesse Moreno of District 2 claims that crime in Deep Ellum has decreased since the Dallas Police Department and the Deep Ellum Foundation teamed up with City officials to implement a specialized public safety plan for the area.

The prevalence of crime in the entertainment district has drawn media attention in recent years, in large part due to relatively frequent shootings and other violent incidents that have left neighborhood residents and visitors on edge.

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Published May 25, 2023

Motor vehicle thefts increased year over year last month, and four city council districts, in particular, stand out for their significant double-digit spikes in that offense category.

Citywide there were 1,352 auto thefts logged by the Dallas Police Department (DPD) in April, a 28.6% increase over the 1,051 incidents recorded the same month last year, according to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard.

In terms of documented incidents, Council Member Narvaez’s northwestern District 6 had the most reported offenses committed that month, clocking 166 — an increase of 22.1% over last year.

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Published May 10, 2023

Amid an overall disparity in crime between the two cities, car thefts occurred approximately 46 times more often in downtown Dallas than in downtown Fort Worth during the month of April, according to data compiled by a local business group.

The Metroplex Civic and Business Association (MCBA) reviewed crime analytics for April from the two bookends of the DFW metroplex, which showed a much more severe car theft problem in Dallas than in Fort Worth.

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Published May 1, 2023

The Metroplex Civic & Business Association is launching its new crime statistics comparison between downtown Dallas and Downtown Ft. Worth, and one of the reasons became clear why the ‘City of Dallas’ lost people last year when all the surrounding cities grew.

Crime is significantly higher in Dallas than in Ft. Worth (about 9 times higher). The MCBA Business leaders know and realize this fact, which is why some of them have already moved their operations to the suburbs. While most people don’t realize this phenomenon is happening within DFW, it is replicating what so many other companies have done, when they moved to Texas from other large cities around the country. However, they are not moving to Dallas “Proper”, they are also moving to the suburbs in DFW.

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Published April 28, 2023

Dallas County residents have named excessive business taxes, troublesome crime, and the proliferation of homeless and vagrancy as top reasons why people might be moving out of the city despite record growth regionally.

When asked, “Why do you think the Dallas metro area is facing such strong growth, but the City of Dallas itself is actually shrinking?” residents of Dallas County ranked “oppressive business taxes and regulations pushing businesses out” as the highest overall contributing factor, according to a poll conducted by The Dallas Express.

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Published April 25, 2023

Recently, relatives of mine went on a cruise in the South Pacific. One of the places where their ship made a port of call was the independent Polynesian country of Samoa. To be clear, this was not American Samoa, just Samoa (up until 1997 it was called Western Samoa, as it lies west of American Samoa).

While Samoa had been established by the Lapita people around 1500 B.C., more recently it had been under German, British and New Zealand rule or administration until it gained independence in 1962.

Its two main islands lay twelve degrees south of the Equator and enjoy the eternal warmth that most countries located close to the equator do. With over one hundred inches of rain every year, the island is perpetually green and lush with all sorts of vegetation.

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Published April 23, 2023

Single-family home building permit applications spiked in March, raising questions over whether the supposed reforms at the City of Dallas’ Development Services Department (DSD) under City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s office will be able to manage the influx effectively.

As previously reported in The Dallas Express, median permit processing times dropped significantly last month, even as the number of applications for single-family home building permits shot up by 65.8% month to month.

However, a glance at the City of Dallas New Single-Family Dwelling permit dashboard indicates that as of April 1 (when the dashboard was last updated), out of the 268 permits being processed, 173 appear to be stuck in the department review phase.

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Published April 18, 2023

Downtown Dallas experiences far more crime than downtown Fort Worth, according to an analysis conducted by a local civic organization.

The Metroplex Civic and Business Association (MCBA) examined crime data from the two sister cities in the metroplex for the month of March, finding that downtown Dallas saw far more criminal activity.

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Published April 7, 2023

Local real estate developer Scott Beck underscored the importance of local elections during a recent Metroplex Civic & Business Association (MCBA) luncheon in Dallas.

The MCBA identifies itself as a non-partisan, non-profit business organization dedicated to the success and prosperity of the DFW metroplex. The Dallas-based association champions charitable and civic engagement among member companies throughout the region.

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Published April 7, 2023

A Dallas-based non-profit business organization has reached a new member milestone in its mission to advance charitable and civic engagement throughout Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Metroplex Civic & Business Association (MCBA) recently accepted its 100th Member Company into the organization, a key milestone for the nonpartisan group and its ongoing commitment to the success and prosperity of the DFW region.

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Published February 28, 2023

In the 2004 movie, “Open Range” starring Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner, the heroes are two cattlemen who seek justice for their friend’s killing at the hands of a local land owner, bully, and tyrant. Their alleged crime is crossing through his ‘open range’ with their cattle.

The two men seeking justice end up in what some believe is the best movie gunfight scene of all time. The cinematography and sound effects are excellent. Instead of the old cowboy western ricochet sounds, we get the sound of splintering wood as a shot from the distance crashes into the simple wooden walls of the young prairie town before the gunshot itself is heard, right next to our heroes’ heads.

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Published February 9, 2023

It’s February 1st as this is being written. The Metroplex is under a Winter Storm Warning with temperatures below freezing. Almost everything is covered in ice. The streets are almost empty. There are reports of some power outages which is, of course, unfortunate for those families and businesses that are directly affected by their loss of power. The power losses, though, are not due to a failure to produce electricity, but primarily due to downed transmission lines or equipment failure due to ice build-up.

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Published February 9, 2023

As the population of Southern states boomed last year, Americans chose to move to Texas more than any other state.

A year-end review from the U.S. Census Bureau noted that the South “was the fastest-growing and largest-gaining region last year, increasing by 1.1%, or 1,379,163.”

Domestic migration largely came from the Northwest and Midwest, which saw respective decreases of 218,851 and 48,910 people.

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Published February 2, 2023

February 2 marked the 167th anniversary of the City of Dallas getting its original charter from the Texas Legislature.

Chartered in 1856, the original local government consisted of a mayor, six aldermen, a treasurer-recorder, and a constable.

The new city elected Samuel Pryor to be its first mayor. Pryor earned a medical degree in Virginia before traveling to Arkansas, where in 1845, he became the postmaster of a small town called Paraclifta.

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Published January 10, 2023

A great change took place during the late 1700s and mid 1800s in Great Britain, the United States, and in Europe. Prior to this time, many things were made ‘by hand’. The industrial revolution changed the way the world made things. “Manufacturing” is the combination of the two Latin words manu, meaning “hand”, and factura, meaning “making”. While England may have started the industrial revolution, the United States started its own Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s and it continued, arguably, until the mid-1970s, when, unfortunately, significant amounts of manufacturing moved overseas.

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Published January 2, 2023

Kaufman County is the fastest-growing county in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The county includes cities such as Terrell, Crandall, and Forney.

“We’re seeing tremendous growth in all of the counties surrounding Dallas,” Lloyd Potter, director of the Texas Demographic Center, told The Dallas Morning News. “These counties are largely growing because there’s economic opportunity, meaning that we’re growing jobs in Texas.”

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Published September 24, 2022

Dallas’ business community is questioning whether a so-called “Fair Chance” ordinance that prohibits questions about an applicant’s criminal history, currently being considered by City Council, could lead to unforeseen problems.

If approved, the ordinance would apply to all private businesses with 15 or more employees and prevent questions about criminal history. Businesses that ignore the rule would be fined for each instance of non-compliance; the proposed fine is $500.

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Published September 9, 2022

My father once told me about how life was back in the ‘60’s when he was a teenager. The early sixties were not exceptional unless of course you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you were asleep in history class, I’ll explain briefly.

The United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) had sent what appeared to be nuclear tipped missiles to the island of Cuba (controlled by communist dictator Fidel Castro) and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. US reconnaissance planes found them and the Missile Crisis was born. My father and his classmates were taught to get down on their knees and climb under their desks if an attack was imminent.

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Published August 11, 2022

Are you able to discuss current issues with friends or relatives who you know disagree with your view of things in today’s world? Unfortunately, most people would either not answer this question or they would simply say, “No.” This has not always been the case. Older generations in this country would debate topics late into the night and likely still remain friends the next morning.

Today, we seem to have lost the art of allowing people to hold different opinions and still remain friends. But why is this?

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Published August 11, 2022

For more than two years, the lengthy process of obtaining a building permit in Dallas has elicited frustration from Dallas builders and contractors.

Building permits are required for most construction projects and range from small-scale plans like adding a roof over the patio to larger-scale undertakings like renovations on a commercial property. But the city’s current software has had connectivity issues and service outages, leading to backlogs and bottlenecks for hundreds of different-sized projects.

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Published July 19 2022

A majority of people know who their parents are. Most also know who their grandparents are, or at least who they were. So, the six (6) people, whose DNA had a significant impact on who we are, (i.e., your mother, your father, your maternal grandparents and your paternal grandparents), are likely known to most people. Some people, like my father, was able to know his maternal great-grand mother who died in 1969 at the age of 99.

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Published June 28, 2022

June 4th, 2022 marked the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Midway in World War II. More well known are D-Day, June 6, 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. With the latter two being land-battles they were able to be accessed easily, monitored, and thus receive more coverage. The Battle of Midway pitted the US Navy (USN) against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the most significant naval battle in US history, but most Americans know little, if anything, about it

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Published June 21, 2022

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson recently revealed that he would like to add another NFL franchise to the city as it expands. However, the city may not be doing as well as Mayor Johnson made it seem.

After the NFL on CBS took to Twitter asking which city deserved a new expansion team, Mayor Johnson replied, expressing his want to add another team to Dallas.

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Published June 7 2022

Are there places you do not hesitate to visit? Are there places you would tell someone, “You couldn’t get me to go there for all the money in the world?”

We, as people, have a built-in mechanism called ‘self-preservation’. How sensitive it is, is a matter of our genetics, education, upbringing, experiences, and our decision-making process.

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Published May 11, 2022

As stated in Wikipedia, a Metropolitan Statistical Area (or MSA) …”is a geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area.” The Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex is the fourth (4th) largest MSA in the USA, behind New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago (i.e. the Top 3). (Don’t worry Houstonites (aka Houstonians), Houston’s MSA is ranked #5). As of 2021, the Metroplex has approximately 7.76 million people currently. There are other types of designations, and those, sometime place the DFW area as tenth (10th), instead of fourth (4th), so as usual, definitions matter.

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Published April 4, 2022

According to the stories handed down to me by my father and grandfather, five generations ago my great-great grandfather made a very important decision. He had been born into a farming family in southern France in the mid 1800’s. He was one of five sons in the family. One of the brothers was chosen to inherit the farm after their father had passed. The options for my great-great grandfather and his three other brothers were as follow: 1) stay and work the farm; 2) leave. This was the custom offered by the culture of that time and place.

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Published March 9, 2022

One of the most critical pieces of our collective ‘experiment’ of having the citizens of the country, rule the country, and to ensure its continuation, is to make sure the citizens are knowledgeable enough to make reasonably good decisions. This of course requires an educated populous, or so our founders believed. Various culture and countries certainly believe in education, but it was usually limited to the wealthy, religious, but not the general population. There was a minimal need to know many things, especially if you had no power about how the country was being run. That was left to the King, of course.

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Published February 24, 2022

Two millennia ago, the most powerful civilization in the Western World was the Roman Empire. Many customs, laws, engineering and arts of this dominating civilization have found their way to our present-day society. The similarities are numerous and well known. Concrete, railroad gauges, swimming pools and majestic football stadiums, to name just a few, can all trace their beginnings to the great achievements of the Empire that was Rome.

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Published February 11, 2022

It is no secret that Dallas-Fort Worth is growing by leaps and bounds, a rapid expansion that provides increasing opportunities to build and grow businesses. But Metroplex Civic and Business Association (MCBA)‘s CEO Louis Darrouzet says there is a gap in DFW between businesses and community that hurts both sides. MCBA seeks to bridge that gap.

MCBA is a nonpartisan, non-profit business organization with a mission to increase charitable and civic engagement among companies and their employees throughout the DFW Metroplex.

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Published February 7, 2022

When I was a young child, I played the various video games available at that time. I played Donkey Kong®, Mario Brothers®, Dragon Warrior®, etc. I’ll be honest and admit that the 6- or 7-year-old me would get nervous when I had to confront the scary final foe in each game. Over time, I learned to conquer my fear, those creatures, and win the games.

My father would play Nintendo with me on occasion. But he had grown up playing board games, as there were no electronic games when he was young. Since I would always win the video games when he played with me, he decided that I needed to play against him in games he was familiar with, and in particular a game, that is over 60 years old, called RISK!®

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Published December 21, 2021

If you have noticed subtle, almost subconscious, narratives being slowly and methodically spread through most things you watch, read, and hear, you are not alone.

While there are many messages being communicated, the one we are decoding today is how businesses and their owners and executive teams are portrayed as greedy, selfish, and anti-employee. For me, this ideology doesn’t make sense and is, on average, incorrect & quite flawed pseudo logic.

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Published August 11, 2022

Today we’d like to introduce you to Louis Darrouzet.

Hi Louis, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.

Growing up in Dallas, I attended and graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory School where I was honored to receive Jesuit’s “Man for Others” Award which recognizes a student who exemplifies servant leadership. Upon graduation, I went on to earn my bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering while on a cheerleading scholarship. Over the next eight years, I had a successful engineering and operations leadership career until 2013, when I graduated from Southern Methodist University with my Master of Business Administration.

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