Normally, I wouldn’t give an organization like this a second thought. But, today in the news I read that this HOA is suing one of its homeowners because he installed solar panels on his roof. The association thinks the panels are ugly and an eye sore. Nevermind that the homeowner is removing the weight of an average car from the atmosphere in CO2 emissions every year, or helping to slow the depletion of Texas’ natural gas reserves which power most of the electricy in this state. All these people care about are aesthetics, and apparently solar panels don’t agree with their idea of what a house should look like. Mind you this homeowner installed the panels on the back of his house so they aren’t visible from the street. It took some busy body neighbors complaining to get this lawsuit filed.

Of course my response is what I always love to say to people who think global warming and CO2 emissions are a farce. Go sit in your garage with the garage door down and run your car for an hour. Then we will talk CO2. These people should be sent up to the Boreal Forest to cut down all the dead trees no longer converting CO2 to O2, perhaps that will wake them up. I think the real concern is that this sort of crap continues to happen in Texas and it makes this state look so backwards and uneducated about the world around us. Uneducated people are a dime a dozen in this state and their mantra seems to be out of site out of mind when it comes to our environment. I applaud this progressive homeowner and hope he prevails against this narrow minded HOA which clearly should be run out of town.

After I drop my son off at school, I decide that if I happen upon a cop I will ask him what he thinks. Luck is with me because I spot one a few minutes later sitting in a parking lot, in front of a donut shop (go figure). I pull up and tell him my story, all the while still on hold with 311. He makes a call into Central and they tell him they will send a car to check it out. About this time 311 picks up and proceeds to tell me they don’t have the intersection of Skillman and Mockingbird in their system. Then they ask me if it is in University Park? Are the city’s GIS systems so bad that they can’t find a major 90 year old intersection to fix a problem, or can’t this operator spell her way out of a wet paper bag?  If I robbed stores this would be a great intersection to hit, the system wouldn’t know what to do with the request. Anyway, I digress, 5 minutes later and apparently requiring a MAPSCO, the operator tells me the street crew will respond in 1-24 hours. Realizing the whole neighborhood could be swiss cheese by then, I hang up and expressed my frustration to this cop. He proceeds to tell me how stupid people can be and imparts this funny story on me, which I will try to regurgitate below.

Last night while patrolling around White Rock Lake (which is his beat), he spots a car sitting in one of the open park areas. As he moves in to check it out a suspect runs off and disappears, leaving behind a t-shirt and one puma tennis shoe. The officer uses his detective skills and decides to pull back a block and watch and wait for the suspect knowing he will return for his shirt, shoe, and car. He parks in front of a house and while waiting notices someone coming up the street to his car from behind. The man asks the officer what he is doing there and if there is a problem. The officer responds that he is just observing a situation and that there is no problem.  The man starts to walk off, but the astute officer notices that the man has no shirt on and is missing a puma tennis shoe. A light bulb goes off in his head and he decides to get out of his patrol car and ask the man where his shirt and shoe are. The suspect responds that they were in his parents house, which happens to be the house the patrol car is parked out in front of. The officer knowing he is lying decides to play along.

It is also obvious to the cop at this point that the man is intoxicated and tells him that he needs to go home and sleep it off.  The drunk man tells the cop that he really doesn’t want to disturb his parents and would sleep in their backyard. The officer responds to him that it is not safe and insists on knocking on the door to speak with his parents. So the officer goes to the front door, knocks, and after several minutes an elderly woman answers the door. When the officer tells her that her son is drunk and needs to come in, she responds ” son? what son?” At that moment an elderly man comes to the door and the officer asks him about his “son” and shines his flashlight at the suspect’s face.  The old man curtly responds, ” he isn’t our son, and he isn’t from around here!”  At which point the cop goes back to the suspect and decides he is going to arrest him for public intoxication. The suspect knowing what is coming preemptively faces the cop car and puts his hands behind his back and says ” I really wish you hadn’t bothered them.”

The officer finishes this story to me with, ” people really are dumb, this guy practically arrests himself, and then is upset that I knocked on these people’s door to check out his story.”

City’s budget for 2008-2009 $ 2.7B
City’s budget proposal for 2009-2010 $ 2.72B
Budget estimated Shortfall $190M
Jobs cut as a result 900+

If you want to see a pdf by the city here it is. The first thing you notice is that the city’s budget still went up by 20M this year. Which seems odd considering the 900+ layoffs. So the city manager and city council approved a budget increase last year, in what was obvious to everyone else, a major recession. I was aware that we were heading into a recession in 2007. So how is it that city hall did not even think to be conservative in its figures in 2008 when planning for 2009? More interestingly is to look at the city’s budget over time. Looking back at the previous few years:

Year	Budget	Increase over previous year
2002-2003	1.72B	na
2003-2004	1.92B	10%
2004-2005	2.05B	6%
2005-2006	2.22B	8%
2006-2007	2.34B	5%
2007-2008	2.65B	12%
2008-2009	2.7B	2%
Total Difference	$980M	64% Total Increase in 7 years

So the city has increased its’ budget $1B in 7 years, which is a 64% increase. Does that number seem really high to anyone else? But, lets take a look at the population estimates for Dallas. In 2002 the city had a population of 1.19M. The Census Bureau estimates the city had a population of 1.279M in 2008. Now that number really jumps out at you. The city’s population has only increased by roughly a 89K people in the same time frame, which is only a 7% increase. So our city budget went up 64% over the same time period that our population increased 7%. That in my book is out of control spending. That should indicate that the city’s taxes are too high to begin with. So using the Census Bureau’s data I thought I would look at a couple of cities of similar size to Dallas. San Antonio is slightly larger than Dallas at 1.3M and has a 2010 budget of 885M, that is a whopping $1.8B less than our budget.  San Diego, which has essentially the same population as Dallas, ( but a much higher cost of living) has a 2010 budget of $3.01B.  Houston with a population of 2.2M, quite a bit larger than Dallas, only has a budget of $2.3B, $400M less than Dallas.

So our city is laying off people and screaming about a drop in tax revenue, when the reality is it has been over taxing its citizens and spending like mad. Having lived in Houston for 4 years, I can’t say Dallas has any real advantage over that city’s level of service. So why is the discrepancy so large? What is our city wasting our money on? The really profound thing to me is I have noticed no changes with an extra billion in “services” the city is spending. There are still potholes everywhere, crime is out of control and response times suck. My car had both windows smashed out by thieves the other day and the police no longer even come out to take a look at the crime. All these extra cops on the streets and no service. It is a joke and so is the city council.

I, of all people know how difficult my son is, but losing your top over bare feet is ridiculous. To make matters more disconcerting, Anthony apparently teaches the younger kids. I can only imagine what he must do when they won’t sit down or any other misbehavior. My son appears to be fine about the issue. Which is good, but I am concerned for other kids who next get this small, angry man’s rants directed at them for little more than not reacting quick enough.

Of course the cause of this whole mess is spending more than we make. Everyone seems to have decided to spend 1.25 for every $1.00 they made and the result is a lot of worthless noncollectable debt and many over priced houses that should never have been built for people spending too much. The bottom line is the housing market and a lot of other goods to have to depreciate to a point where the average American can afford them again. So 15% seems like a lot but I am going to guess the number is closer to 20-25% in the drop of home values in DFW. Of course that varies greatly by neighborhood. I wouldn’t expect anything inside the loop to drop more than 5-10%.