Dallas Mayor Tells City Council to Stop Shouting; Boston’s VIP Parking Placards
Dallas City Hall f11photo / Shutterstock.com
Also: Bats vs. Iowa wind turbines and North Carolina GOP vs. Greensboro
DALLAS, Texas: Mayor Mike Rawlings wants members of the Dallas City Council to be mindful of their voices inside City Hall when dealing with their staffs and city employees. According to The Dallas Morning News:
A few times a week, he said, he hears complaints about council members acting rude or combative toward the staff. On a half-dozen occasions, the mayor said, the conduct was a “clear crossing of the line,” bad enough that he felt compelled to discuss it with the council member.
Twice in a few months, the rancor has spilled outside City Hall. In separate occurrences, council members Scott Griggs and Tennell Atkins were publicly accused of foul behavior toward city employees. Atkins has since left his post.
In nearly every interview for its story, the Morning News found that “it was not unusual for City Council members to shout at staff members. And nearly all recalled occurrences that left them feeling uncomfortable.” [Dallas Morning News]
BOSTON, Massachusetts: Special parking privileges for public officials and employees can be a sore subject in many cities, allowing those lucky individuals to escape the clutches of parking enforcement. Those parking placards have also been abused from time to time. In Beantown, who exactly gets the VIP parking placards? According to The Boston Globe:
Eighty-one went to city inspectors. City Council staffers gobbled up 22 more. And at least one went to a municipal worker who needs convenient parking to keep tabs on Boston’s rodent population.
The program has expanded in 2015 to include 245 city employees, 40 percent more than Mayor Marty Walsh’s administration initially said. [Boston Globe]
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa: There’s a problem with Iowa’s wind turbines: They’re killing northern long-eared bats. And not just through collisions with turbine blades but by the “vortex wake that ruptures their lungs, causing them to drown in their blood,” according to the The Gazette. While far more bats are dying from disease like white-nose syndrome four to 18 bats are killed by turbines annually, which amounts to 14,000 to 62,000 bat deaths annually. [The Gazette]
RALEIGH, North Carolina: In a July 4 staff editorial, The News & Observer took North Carolina Republicans in the General Assembly to task for meddling again in the local affairs of a municipality and abusing “their power by infringing on the rights of people to elect their government officials as they see fit.” New legislation has targeted the city of Greensboro—specifically, getting rid of all at-large city council seats in favor of all district-based seats and reducing the voting power of the mayor. As the N&O points out, minority representation on the council would likely be reduced under the GOP plan. [N&O]
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico: A judge last week ruled that the New Mexico Public Education Department violated the state’s open records laws in how it responded to a National Education Association request for public records, NMPolitics.net reports. The department “says it doesn’t have documents to back up a claim it repeatedly used to discredit an old teacher evaluation system when it implemented a new system in 2013.” [NMPolitics]
(Phodalto by f11photo / Shutterstock.com)
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