By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 Reporter
Dallas, TX – Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 Reporter: At the City Harvest Cafe in north Oak Cliff, diners are talking about a lot more than the day's specials. It's Saturday's election for a new city council person that's driving the discussion.
Carla Woods, Co-owner, City Harvest Cafe: It's a very hot topic. Politics is always a hot topic in Oak Cliff.
Sprague: Carla Wood is the co-owner of City Harvest, where a number of council candidates have dropped off their yard signs in hopes that visitors will take one home.
Woods: Oak Cliff is really a small town inside of Dallas. And everyone just likes to know what's going on and they'll discuss, you know - the Trinity River is a big topic, and code enforcement, that always comes up as part of the things that people are talking about.
Sprague: The candidates in the four-way race for city council are talking about those issues, but often with only subtle differences in how to approach them.
Joe Whitney, Candidate, District 3, Dallas City Council: I cannot believe they want to put concrete in the river and that this is what we've come up with after 100 years of studies.
Sprague: Joe Whitney lives near the City Harvest Cafe, in the politically-active neighborhood of Kessler Park. The former chairman of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce is running his first campaign for elected office. Whitney wants the Trinity River used for recreation, not transportation. And, in a theme echoed throughout the mayor's campaign, Whitney wants to improve basic city services in Oak Cliff.
Whitney: Why don't we pay all the city employees, give them a tax abatement if they live in the city of Dallas? There are multiple benefits. You have the fireman living next door. You have the cop at the corner, and the code inspector lives in your neighborhood. I promise you we will have better city services.
Sprague: Whitney also wants to change how code enforcement works, letting teams of code officers "sweep" individual neighborhoods for violations. A home builder who has lived in Oak Cliff since he was eight years old, Whitney is known by many as the unofficial mayor of Oak Cliff. Fellow candidate Mark Housewright also has an extensive community service resume, having served on the city's plan commission and municipal library board. Like Whitney, Housewright believes development in Oak Cliff is a major issue.
Mark Housewright, Candidate, District 3, Dallas City Council: In my opinion, we're going to have to offer some targeted tax incentives for retail, which has not been something we've used as a city in the past.
Sprague: Housewright says he would be a strong backer of the gateway project, a plan to develop the entrance to Oak Cliff from downtown. He acknowledges this is a tough time for city leaders, with declining sales tax revenues. But Housewright, who publishes the Oak Cliff Tribune, doesn't want to cut department budgets. So he would consider new special use taxes to help offset budget woes.
Housewright: But think - like - some other cities have looked at taxes on entertainment tickets, movies, sporting events, that type of thing. You would have people coming to the new American Airlines Center helping to defray the cost of that, perhaps.
Sprague: Like Whitney, Housewright lives in north Oak Cliff. He opposes the construction of a new middle school near his neighborhood, a topic of controversy for more than a year. Instead, Housewright would like to see open space or residential development there to keep traffic down. But council candidate Julia Cabrera disagrees.
Julia Cabrera, Candidate, District 3, Dallas City Council: You cannot say you support new schools and education and then fight them when they build in the neighborhood. They have to be built close to where the families are, and I will work with all the groups to make sure we come together.
Sprague: Cabrera works for the Anita Martinez Ballet Folklorico and has been active in the Oak Cliff community for more than a decade with such groups as Preservation Dallas and the YMCA. She is running for city council, in part, because she wants to see more representation of Hispanics at city hall, and because she wants more retail development, like a Wal-Mart or a Home Depot, in Oak Cliff.
Cabrera: It's mind-boggling that I have to drive around to find a copy place or to find - sometimes teachers require that a special project be on a floppy disk, but you can't find one in a grocery store, and if you do, it's not the right one.
Sprague: Cabrera also wants more affordable housing in Oak Cliff, which she says will help increase and stabilize the tax base in the community. But opponent Gary Burns says there's already a large stock of middle- and lower-priced homes in Oak Cliff.
Gary Burns, Candidate, District 3, Dallas City Council: Most of it is single family homes. That's fine, but there's a whole segment of society that doesn't see Oak Cliff as a choice because they don't see the type of housing they want, like a garden home or a zero lot line house, upscale apartment buildings. That's not the kind of housing we have available.
Sprague: So, as a city council member, Burns would encourage more diversity in housing developments. Burns moved to Oak Cliff seven years ago and was involved with the redevelopment of the King's Highway area and the Bishop Arts District. And he thinks the city can improve the way it works with neighborhoods.
Burns: I would like to see some kind of liaison in the city manager's office who would have roundtable discussions with the neighborhoods, so the city can find out what the problems are, what the priorities are, and come up with some kind of plan to address those.
Sprague: Burns has raised more than $5,000 for his campaign, which far surpasses then $655 contributed to the Cabrera campaign, but pales in comparison to the roughly $10,000 raised by both Mark Housewright and Joe Whitney. Oak Cliff's former council members Laura Miller and Bob Stimson have both said they'll back Housewright, although Whitney has received the endorsement of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, a key player in Oak Cliff politics. But since three of the four candidates live in north Oak Cliff, it is possible they will split some of the most active voting precincts in Saturday's election. If none wins a majority, a runoff election between the top two finishers will be held next month. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.