The Richardson City Council held a five hour marathon session Monday night. The first 90 minutes of it were taken up by a topic not even on the agenda: a possible NRA move to Richardson. I've covered that in "Richardson, Guns, and the NRA". Here I want to focus on the intended agenda, presentations, and Councilmembers' questions, comments, and policy suggestions. Oh, and one important fact check at the end.
Mobile Food Trailer
The first item on the agenda was an application for a special permit to open a "fish and chips" mobile food vending trailer (don't call it a food truck!) in the Dal-Rich Towne Square shopping center. There was a lot of concern expressed by Councilmembers over safety. None of Councilmembers with this concern tried to explain why parking lots are safe for persons to walk from their cars to one of the permanent stores, but parking lots are not safe for persons to walk from their cars to a food trailer. City Manager Don Magner had it right when he said that "there would actually be less congestion" in the area of the food trailer because you'd be eliminating 16 or 18 parking spaces that otherwise cars would be pulling into or backing out. Councilmember Joe Corcoran gets the award for best analysis: "I think we have to be allowed to experiment as a city and allow ourselves to experiment. Yeah, this shopping center is over parked. In fact this whole city is overparked." In the end, the Council voted to continue the public hearing until a later date.
Network of Community Ministries
Mayor Bob Dubey and Councilmembers Curtis Dorian and Dan Barrios thanked the representatives from Network who briefed the City Council. None of them had any suggestions for how the City could strengthen the partnership. No other Councilmember had anything to say.
Community Crime Map
Representatives of the Richardson Police Department briefed the City Council about a new online service mapping locations of reported crimes (LexisNexis Community Crime Map). Mayor Dubey wanted and received confirmation that suspects are not identified, only locations and descriptions of the type of crimes. Good for him.
Street Maintenance Program
Councilmember Jennifer Justice noted that spending on maintenance of arterials is jumping significantly next year while spending on maintenance of collector streets is dropping. The explanation seemed to be that it's a sign of changing needs. Mayor Pro Tem Arefin asked, and was seconded by Councilmember Barrios, for clarification of how the City measures repair work, whether in street-miles, or lane-miles, or yards of concrete, or whatever, and how to get more competitive bidding on the City's projects. The answer was, in my words, not the City's or Barrios's, clear as mud.
Facilities Maintenance
You might think that with City Hall vacant, building maintenance costs might be low, but with the City occupying 41 facilities, there's plenty of work left. Expenses for design of a new City Hall are now adding up. After a long night of presentations, Mayor Pro Tem Arefin perhaps summed up more than just his own feelings when he said, "Thank you for the presentation of zeros after numbers."
Massage
Late in the evening the Council came to the agenda item I'd been waiting for: Ordinance 4467 granting a special permit for a massage establishment. Normally such a vote is buried in the consent agenda, which covers several noncontroversial actions that City needs formal approval of from City Council. The consent agenda normally gets no discussion and a single vote for all items. City Council already approved this application 5-2 at its June 12, 2023, meeting. There was no reason to expect tonight's approval of the ordinance would be any different, with everyone just repeating their June 12th vote. But it was in the regular agenda. What's up with that? This time, with no discussion, the motion to approve was put to a vote which passed, this time 6-1. Council member Curtis Dorian changed his vote from no to yes. That might be why this item was not in the consent agenda, although Dorian offered no explanation. My explanation? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Consent Agenda
Finally, the City Council came to the second agenda item that caught my attention. It's a purchase for $16 million dollars of a police radio system. When I saw that on the consent agenda, I thought that's a pretty hefty price tag to receive no discussion. What gives? Mayor Dubey explained, "I want to just remind everybody, especially our citizens, if they are out there looking and saying well those are big price tags, that all of these items have been approved already and looked at deeply by our previous Council and/or our current Council."
Let's try to fact check that statement. It's true that the previous Council was briefed on the radio replacement project in a March 20, 2023, work session. In the March 20 work session, there was no action item for the Council to approve. There was no vote. There was precious little discussion for a $16 million expense. So unless Mayor Dubey is referring to a different meeting, it's wrong to say this $16 million expenditure was already approved by a previous Council. Besides, if this $16 million police radio system had already been approved by a previous Council, why did it need to come before the current Council for another vote? The mayor's explanation doesn't add up. As far as I can figure out, this Council voted 7-0 to spend $16 million with no questions, no deliberation, no explanation why they voted yes. I admit that I remain, as the Mayor said, one of "the few people that are concerned with 'Wow, why would you put that large item on a consent agenda?'"
"Hidden millions flow,
Radios for police reign,
Consent's silent might."
—h/t ChatGPT
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