The Irving Herald

What happened in the March primary?

The Irving Herald — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:32:32 GMT

What was the confusion with the March 3, 2026 primary election in Dallas County? This episode explains the decision of the Dallas County Republican Party to end countywide voting for election day as a vital election integrity measure, through an interview with two activists with long experience and expertise in elections in Texas.

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Interview with Fahad Ahmed

The Irving Herald — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:14:42 GMT

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Interview with Dana Collins

The Irving Herald — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:39:34 GMT

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Interview with Tammam Alwan

The Irving Herald — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:58:47 GMT

Reining In Short-Term Rentals

The Irving Herald — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:19:31 GMT

Resident Survey Ends April 1

The Irving Herald — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:34:49 GMT

Every two years, Irving does a survey of residents. You have until the end of the month to take this year’s survey.

It is a long survey. Make sure to finish it! Otherwise your answers will be thrown out. Also, don’t click without looking at the questions: respondents who were identified as taking the survey too fast were removed as well.

The survey is a good opportunity to signify what the priorities of city leadership should be in the next couple years.

In 2024 those priorities were street maintenance (which always comes in #1) at 47%, and homelessness, which came in at a whopping 37%.

There is a dashboard that breaks down survey results from 2024 in different ways. A couple from 2024 caught our eye. (Note that percentages that are reported are the total of “excellent” and “good” ratings added together. )

First is the question, “Being open and transparent to residents.”

Overall, we are right at the regional benchmark. However it’s interesting to view this by age and length of time in Irving:

At the top is not a huge difference by age, so it is not a matter of old people being cynical.

The bottom shows a clear pattern. The longer people have been around — and presumably the more they know — the less they rate Irving as open and transparent.

The same thing happens with the question, “Providing residents the opportunity to offer feedback.”

The longer people have been around — and presumably the more they know — the less favorable they are on these two questions.

Any poll or survey is a snapshot in time. Any single given poll is not really meaningful. What is meaningful is the difference between results, as this can tell a story.

Past results are here: https://irvingtx.gov/resident-survey-results.

We put the survey results together since 2010. We included 2024, although actually it should not be included in this table (more on that below).

Here’s the survey results since 2010:

There are a couple stories here.

First, the numbers went up in 2012 (except for streets) and more or less stayed higher than they were.

That probably has something to do with property crime dropping sharply from 2010 to 2012. Irving police focused on the parts of the city with noticeable crime trends, e.g. apartments.

Second, when it comes to streets, the increase comes in 2020. That’s due to the Road to the Future program, which was launched in 2017. It is a long‑term initiative to rehabilitate, reconstruct, and proactively maintain city streets.

The numbers staying higher until 2022 is an achievement. Irving’s population increased from 216,290 in 2010 to 256,684 in 2020, over 18%. To grow so much and to maintain the positive ratings is pretty good.

The numbers drop in 2024. Why is that?

Well, it is an apples-to-oranges comparison, because the methodology changed.

Previously, the survey was not just an open link on the website, but a real random sample. The city drew a ZIP-code-based random sample of households, contacted them mostly by mail and email, and got around 1,000–1,200 completed surveys to represent the whole city.

But in 2024 the city used an outside vendor, Elite Research. On the survey itself, the wording was simplified and open-ended questions were increased. The vendor also used a different, and pretty sophisticated, methodology. They still used a random sample, but in order to get more responses included, they added an open-call component on top, which was promoted throughout the city generally. Then, they weighted the results to match population demographics (ZIP code, age, gender, ethnicity, race, and home ownership) — prior years did not do that.

It worked, and they got 5,011 valid respondents. That is a lot of respondents.

The weighting helps represent underrepresented groups — in the 2022 results Hispanics were underrepresented, for example. Still, since it is not completely a random sample, the 2024 survey does sacrifice statistical purity. The report says the results have a 95% confidence level and a citywide margin of error under 1.4%, however that actually cannot be determined without random sampling.

In sum, there is an argument that the 2024 survey is more representative. But it cannot be compared with previous years to find trends.

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Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

First Mayoral Candidate Forum

The Irving Herald — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:45:28 GMT

The Nichols Park Neighborhood Association held a candidate forum for the Irving Mayor’s Race this week.

As one attendee summed it up: “The two ladies are not serious candidates. Al is Al.”

However, Zha’nae Jackson gave quite a speech:

Her slogan is Irving First and her speech was eloquent:

We need housing opportunities and homeowner stability.
We need to expand opportunities for home ownership and encourage more responsible single-family housing development.
Many people in my generation want to build their lives here too.
But too often we are left choosing between aging apartment complexes or housing options that are simply out of reach financially.
At the same time, raising property appraisals and tax pressures are making it harder for families to stay in the homes that they already have. Homestead exemptions help, but they are not always enough when property values and costs continue to rise.

Then we have Dr. Olivia:

Hard to believe, but in 2020 she spent $320 and got 46% of the vote against Mayor Stopfer. She was on the ballot at the time with her “hero” Joe Biden.

Finally, Al being Al:

Nobody switches topics with reckless abandon like the General.

The election is May 2.

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Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

The DART Deal

The Irving Herald — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:52:47 GMT

Irving has signed onto the DART deal -- but what is in it? Bryan and Philip break it down, and talk a bit about the Dallas Country primary election results.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Primary Election Time

The Irving Herald — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:39:00 GMT

Primary Election Day is Tuesday, March 3. A few ballot recommendations for you can be found here.

In addition to the races, there are propositions on each party’s ballot which serve as an opinion polls. While the results have no legal force, they sure are interesting. South Carolina and Georgia are the only other two states that do this fun thing.

A couple of Irving connections on the ballot:

Perennial candidate Tony Grimes is running for Dallas County Clerk in the Democratic Primary. The County Clerk is the primary custodian of county records. Grimes is not the nicest fellow though.
In the Congressional primary for CD-6 (see our overview of Irving congressional districts here), Irving native Brian Stahl (see our interview here) is running against the incumbent Jake Ellzey.

“Why’d our Rep vote for the National Endowment for Democracy? Or for kill switches?”

There are probably on 4 or 5 people in the entire state of Texas who really understand how primary elections work. They are complicated.

Check your location before you go vote: the locations are on this PDF (you need to know your precinct number, which can be found here based on party: Democratic Primary election locations start on page 5, Republican Primary election locations on page 29).

Why two locations? Because the Democrats and Republicans are holding two separate primaries.

This has not happened for a few cycles.

In the last few primaries the parties held joint primaries, which simplified things. But after Allen West was elected Dallas County GOP Chair two years ago — defeating incumbent Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu with 70% of the vote — the County Executive Committee (consisting of all the GOP precinct chairs) voted to hold a separate Republican primary for this election. They wanted to restore party control and avoid all the conflicts with Democratic election workers.

They also wanted to push for election integrity. In addition to ending countywide voting, using paper ballots that are hand counted is the gold standard. For anyone who is aware of the problems with voting machines, a shift to paper ballots is a necessity:

When a party runs its own primary, it enters into a contract for election services with the county elections administrator. Up until August, the Elections Administrator in Dallas County was Heider Garcia.

Garcia’s background is interesting.

Born to Venezuelan parents, he spent much of his early life in Venezuela. He graduated from university there with a degree in computer engineering in 2003, and began his career there as a software developer for the voting machine company Smartmatic, working for them for 12 years.

Garcia came to the US to serve as Elections Administrator first in California for a couple years, and then in Tarrant County from February 2018 to June 2023. What happened in our neighboring county — the largest red county in the country, where Trump had won in 2016 by 9 points — under Garcia? Tarrant flipped blue in the 2018 US Senate race and went blue again in the 2020 election, with Biden edging out Trump. A 9-point leftward shift in 4 years.

On the November 21, 2025 episode of Going Rogue, journalist Lara Logan interviewed Ralph Pezzullo, the author of the book Stolen Elections.

Lara Logan: And that’s what you document in this book is how it started in Venezuela and yes, it’s spread to the United States, but they have stolen elections all over the world.
Ralph Pezzullo: Yes, that’s correct.
Lara Logan: In fact, there’s that famous video on YouTube of the Philippines Parliament, when they excoriate a man called Heider Garcia, who’s an employee of Smartmatic.
Ralph Pezzullo: Yes, that’s correct.
Lara Logan: And they know that their election has been stolen. They know Smartmatic is responsible. And I mean, that guy sits there and he gets beaten-up by the parliament in the Philippines and then they banish him, right? They kick him out of the country. And where does he go? He ends up in Tarrant County, Texas, right?
Gary Berntsen: Forward, Texas. He’s the Election Commissioner!
Lara Logan: Yes, he’s the Election Commissioner.
Gary Berntsen: Then, he moved to Dallas and now, he’s the President of Hart InterCivic, I believe.

Here’s the clip out of the Philippines:

Garcia resigned from his position in Dallas in August.

Paul Adams took over for him in October 2025, coming from running elections in Lorain County, Ohio (population 325,000). The Dallas GOP made a valiant effort to show that a secure primary election could be run with paper ballots, hand counted. They were unable to get an acceptable contract from the county this time around to make it happen.

Separate primaries is movement in the right direction, however. The paper ballots, hand counted initiative has momentum. Many volunteers signed up to help couth with a tested “ECHO method.” It was an inspiring project led by heroes like Dr. Preeti Malladi, and one that must continue. Citizen volunteers need to take over and run our elections. There’s few things more important than this.

Happy voting!

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Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

No Comments For You!

The Irving Herald — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:20:03 GMT

If you can’t attend a City Council meeting on a Thursday night, no bother, you can just watch it online.

The most interesting part is always the public comments.

Citizens can show up in person at Irving City Hall before 7:00pm and get to speak for three minutes on any topic. Citizen comments is a way for citizens to put their concerns directly in front of our city’s leadership, at the start of the meeting.

Well, at least they used to be.

From the first meeting of this year:

Hmm. That motion and vote sure happened quickly.

Then another weird thing happened. Comments were not merely moved to the end, when most everyone had left, they were not televised. However, as this was not in the motion that was passed, ICTN seems to have gotten the message in advance.

At the next meeting, they tried to clean things up:

Even weirder! Choreographed. No deliberation. Just a quick unanimous vote.

Certainly appears like this may have been decided in advance. Council is supposed to deliberate in the open, according to the Texas Open Meetings Act. Apart from TOMA, it seems strange.

Not that it’s a bad thing that they did this, though.

We then discovered just this the next meeting. Comedian Alex Stein got up to do his act … and bombed. His stich has gotten painful and this video is not worth watching:

Freedoms are a great thing. They depend on not being abused. When abused like this, it’s not surprising we get things like unanimous votes to bump citizen comments from being front-and-center on the agenda and on the broadcast.

There are other ways to deal with things, however. Why not just enforce the rules of procedure on decorum? Or if they need to be changed, update them?

In making this change we are at the forefront. The standard practice in other cities is broadcasting full meetings with citizen comments included. So we are a trend setter. But do we want to be?

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For a change of this magnitude, the perfunctory and precipitous way it was done feels off.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Data Centers

The Irving Herald — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 23:27:10 GMT

City Council approves a new data center. What will this mean for residents? Other communities are grappling with this question. In this interview, St. Joseph County Indiana Councilwoman Amy Drake speaks about what her constituents have been thinking about it.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

DART Deal Coming?

The Irving Herald — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 04:44:30 GMT

The DART Board met yesterday.

They took the proposals from the 13 member cities and consolidated it into one proposal:

Dallas only gets 45% representation, not a majority
Cities get 5% of their sales tax that is going to DART back next year, followed by 6% the following year, 7% the next year, and so on up to 10%

The only one who did not seem happy about it was Nadine Lee, the CEO of DART.

Today, Dallas City Council voted for it overwhelmingly. Next it goes to the North Central Texas Council of Governments. Ultimately, it requires changes by the Texas Legislature.

This evening, the first of many Town Hall events was held by DART:

What a Fine Day, Let Us All Walk to the DART Meeting

It was in Irving.

It was not highly attended; there were dozens of people in a half-empty room.

It did not go well.

First of all, the meeting was weird. There were two sign language performers (taking turns signing to each other, as there did not appear to by any deaf citizens), a Spanish interpreter (also not used), three security officers, an oddly specific safety announcement at the beginning by a man in a three-piece suit, and a number of DART staff just milling around in the front of the room.

One citizen commented on how chaotic it was to have all the staff roaming around in the front. “It’s making me anxious!”

DART senior manager Hans-Michael Ruthe gave a presentation. The presentation said one thing. If cities vote to get out of DART, service will end.

That was it. He went on and on, just saying that one thing.

It was so simplistic, it was insulting.

The point of DART doing these town halls is to rile up residents and scare them not to vote against DART. But with the DART Board Meeting and the Dallas City Council vote, tonight was anticlimactic.

Also the citizens were not into it. They wanted to talk about one thing: the discontinuation of the 255 and 225 buses. They kept coming back to it. “What am I supposed to do?” asked a mom who needed to get her son to Children’s Hospital. “Well, if we’re talking about the vote to pull out of DART…” said Nadine Lee, the CEO of DART, unsuccessfully trying to shift the conversation back to the topic at hand, before being hooted down by the audience.

Kudos to her for coming in person and taking questions. There was only one problem.

She didn’t know what she was talking about.

General Splainin’

When asked what citizens would get out of voting to keep DART, she didn’t have an answer.

When asked what the debt Irving would be responsible for, she said “I’ll get back to you.”

When asked what the deadline was for dropping the DART pullout vote from the ballots, she cited three dates, said she’s “heard so many dates” that she doesn’t know which one it is, and “let’s just call it the end of February.” Councilmember Al Zapanta had to take the mic and explain it was 45 days before the May 2 election. This date is nothing but the basis of her entire negotiation strategy … and she doesn’t know when it is??

When asked why the two-year period before cancelling a route did not occur in the case of the bus cancellations, she could offer nothing.

When asked why other cities don’t get in DART, she admitted it was because it is a raw deal for them.

When asked what the future vision is for public transportation in the region, she said "We want to make it better too. Trust me.”

It was shockingly pathetic. She makes $400,000 a year. She comes to the first town hall and doesn’t know the basics of how Irving is affected. She can’t be bothered to prepare to answer the most obvious questions.

Heck, with a low voice, she was even forced to endorse the 5% rebate plan in order to have an answer for the irate citizens asking about the cancelled bus routes. She referred to Mayor Stopfer saying he’d like to bring the buses back with that money.

Now, that would be a stupid thing to do. DART ended those buses for a reason — too few people ride them. They are not public transportation, they are giant, expensive Uber rides but without door-to-door service. I live by those routes and those buses are always empty. We could buy everyone who actually needs to use the buses a used car with the millions spent on the buses. Let’s find a solution for those people that does not waste the money we get back.

But you have to hand it to Stopfer. He got the CEO of DART, the last person in the world who wants to endorse the rebate plan, to endorse the rebate plan.

He has been pushing this issue for a while. We’re lucky to have such an effective leader as mayor.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Get Ready for the World Cup Rowdies

The Irving Herald — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:05:33 GMT

The DFW World Cup matches have dropped:

Sunday, June 14, 2026: Netherlands vs. Japan (3:00 p.m. ET)
Wednesday, June 17, 2026: England vs. Croatia (3:00 p.m. ET)
Monday, June 22, 2026: Argentina vs. Austria (12:00 p.m. ET)
Thursday, June 25, 2026: Japan vs. UEFA Playoff Winner B (6:00 p.m. ET)
Saturday, June 27, 2026: Jordan vs. Argentina (9:00 p.m. ET)
Tuesday, June 30, 2026: Round of 32 (Match 78)
Friday, July 3, 2026: Round of 32 (Match 88)
Monday, July 6, 2026: Round of 16 (Match 93)
Tuesday, July 14, 2026: Semifinal (Match 101)

We more or less lucked out with most of these teams:

Jordan: small fan base of spirited young males
Austria: polite, moderate, small fan base
Croatia: polite fans known for their chanting, small fan base
Japan: very polite and respectful fans, larger fan base
Netherlands: the “orange craze,” a larger fan base but also with good behavior

And then we have England and Argentina!

What festive rowdiness is in store with these two. England has tens of millions of fans, and are currently overcoming their historic reputation for hooliganism. Argentina also has millions of intensely passionate fans. Both of them have elements in their soccer culture that go well beyond fan clubs.

English soccer culture includes the idea of “firms” or gangs associated with soccer clubs that seek out violent conflict with rivals. In Argentina it’s barra brava, which means “fierce gang”: hierarchical organizations led by a jefe and his lieutenants who enforce discipline and exercise territorial control over a section of a stadium.

Wowzers!

It’ll be fun. Also vibrant. Expect lots of chanting fans and increased police presence, traffic, noise, and minor incidents perhaps, to go with the increased economic activity.

Don’t forget about that last one. DART is already counting the sales tax it will get from Irving next year.

But at least all the fans can use DART to get to the games!

Oh wait, they can’t. Arlington isn’t in DART.

That is because they’re smart. They used the $100s of millions to do cool things like build AT&T stadium. Irving gives our $100s of millions to DART to fund a mobile homeless shelter.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

The Strangest Poll Ever

The Irving Herald — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:14:55 GMT

DART has ended the 225 and 255 bus routes in Irving, as we have covered here. They ended them because no one used them, except perhaps for homeless people riding around all day.

At irvinghomeless.com, a person can sign up for text alerts:

These are not put out by the city, but by LifeChange Housing Associates (LCHA), a nonprofit that operates IrvingHomeless.com and the Irving Inclement Weather Shelter, which just got a grant for $100,000 from the City of Irving.

Here’s an alert that went out this weekend:

The link takes you to the weirdest poll ever:

Wow — did they create a poll for homeless people on the elimination of DART bus routes?

It sure seems like they did.

The idea behind this survey seems to be that we should be super mad that DART ended these routes, and that apparently they should keep paying $2.16 million per bus route to take homeless from one place back to that same place.

The poll is illogical. If you are seriously going to make the case that DART should not have ended the bus routes, you should at least pretend that they were more than an wildly expensive mobile inclement weather shelter for the unhoused.

The problem with DART, as we covered here, is that the advent of rideshares led to a severe decline in ridership. And the riders they are losing are the middle class commuters, who can pay a few bucks more for way more convenient door-to-door service (no walking, waiting, and transferring!).

Ridership of a certain clientele is down, and then what happens? From a recent post of ours:

Our citizens using DART includes very few commuters — only 2,000 folks in Irving depend on DART; we could purchase each of them a new 2025 BMW 2‑Series every year with the money! — and with regular ridership in decline, there’s been an uptick in crime throughout the DART system. There have been five homicides in the last twelve months, and six weeks ago a 28-year old was shot by a rando at a DART station. Young people who use DART once report never wanting to repeat the experience ever again. Here’s a grown man who reported on his misadventures.

Given this reality of declining ridership, what does DART do? They build a whole new Silver line that opened late October, going East-West connecting northern suburbs to the DFW airport. The Silver Line was originally pitched as roughly a $1.2–$1.3 billion project, but ended up over $2 billion, plus higher-than-expected operating costs (of course).

What a terrible idea. Take the Silver Line — the new cars are gleaming — but there will be maybe six people on it.

We cannot get out of DART soon enough.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Viability Poll for Irving Mayor

The Irving Herald — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:51:30 GMT

Well well well, what do we have here:

The link takes one to a QuestionPro survey from “Data to Victory Strategies”:

This outfit is run by Mike Stevens, a conservative political consultant out of Lubbock, who apparently has done work for John Bloch’s campaign

A poll like this costs around $8,000 or so.

Click the last option if you want your opinion to be ignored!

The deadline to file for the race is Friday, February 13, by 5:00 p.m.

There are other candidates, but these four are serious enough to be included in the poll.

One is gung-ho:

Back to the survey:

The next questions give options for all four candidates, in reverse alphabetically order. Wouldn’t want any respondents to skip giving an opinion about the candidate that’s actually paying for the poll!

The next questions are:

“Has the right experience to be mayor”
“Can manage city finances responsibly”
“Is honest and trustworthy” (drawing a contrast with Herb Gears are we)
“Represents my values” (the closest it gets to touching the Library issue)
“Is out of touch with everyday people” (uh oh)

A pretty good list.

Do we need a strong manager as mayor? Don’t we have a city manager to manage the city?

The poll asks for a preference again at the end, “after thinking about the qualities and issues that matter most to you.”

It asks for a second-choice candidate.

It asks if there is a candidate “you just cant [sic] support.”

It asks if the respondent is liberal, moderate, or conservative. Thus allowing for fun crosstabs.

Interestingly, it also asks for “your current opinion” on the Mayor of Irving and also City Council: Excellent, Above Average, Average, Needs Improvement.

Last but not least:

Unfortunately, the way our political system works is the most interesting and telling polls are those polls that the public never gets to see the results of — the campaign polls paid for by people who actually want the truth (unlike public-facing media polls).

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Disclosure: staff of the Irving Herald are active in Irving politics and some are affiliated with the Families for Irving Political Action Committee, which supports local candidates. Commentary may reflect those affiliations.

About All Those School Buses

The Irving Herald — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:09:43 GMT

We pay a ton of money for public schools in America. Taxpayers pay nearly $1 trillion for K-12 schools. That’s over $20,000 per student, nationally.

Texas is a bit more sane, with an average in 2023 of only $15,000 per student.

Does it really cost fifteen grand to educate a kiddo? Something tells me Kiah Lucas didn’t demand the equivalent of $300,000 for the 20 students from the early settlement of Kit that he taught in the Union Bower schoolhouse:

Our kids deserve better than this — adequately fund our schools!

The Irving ISD spends gobs of taxpayer dollars collected in property taxes.

How much?

A higher percentage than the entire City of Irving, it turns out:

Property Tax Percentage Pie Chart

What do the schools spend the money on?

Buses, for one thing.

Irving ISD pays $11 million a year for school buses. It also just opened a new Transportation and Logistics Center on Pioneer Drive next to the historic Sowers Cemetery.

A home for a bus, a bus finds its home

What can you get for $11 million a year?

With the 225 and 255 buses just ending their routes, we know that bus routes cost $2.16 million each. So, for $11 million, we could have five public buses circling Irving all day. They could offer "tripper” service — an extra route to get the kiddos to class and back home again, but not just limited to the tots, and giving the rest of us lifts around town.

Forget school buses and just give kids transit passes. That doesn’t work in rural areas, but it’s what NYC and Chicago do. It’s also the direction the US is moving towards: starting this school year, Houston ISD is doing it for high school students.

Doesn’t it seem smart? Maintaining yellow bus fleets is a costly headache. When Europeans come to the US and see how we do it, they laugh at us.

Of course there would be major logistical challenges. Irving ISD has 38 schools and transports 7,500 students on 102 school bus routes daily, so five city buses wouldn’t cut it. Plus there are other issues, like safety. With rideshare apps leading to a precipitous decline in DART riders, those who can pay more will gladly use the convenience of door-to-door service, without walking, waiting, and transferring. Our citizens using DART includes very few commuters — only 2,000 folks in Irving depend on DART; we could purchase each of them a new 2025 BMW 2‑Series every year with the money! — and with regular ridership in decline, there’s been an uptick in crime throughout the DART system. There have been five homicides in the last twelve months, and six weeks ago a 28-year old was shot by a rando at a DART station. Young people who use DART once report never wanting to repeat the experience ever again. Here’s a grown man who reported on his misadventures. Not something we want to subject our tots to.

However, think about this idea in reverse. If we already have the facility and all those buses, what would be the marginal cost of using some of those buses as city buses? $15 million? That is the total amount for all DART bus routes in Irving before the recent cut. It is also an order of magnitude lower from what we will soon be paying DART.

Putting aside the thought experiment, the point is we don’t even think about doing this. We just tax for the ISD, and tax for City, and tax for DART, and all of it is uncoordinated and just taxation on autopilot. DART doesn’t work with our council. Irving ISD school board and the city council don’t talk to each other or coordinate anything. The taxes flow in and get spent and everyone gets paid. Meanwhile people who need to get around use rideshares, which may turn into robotaxis at some point.

The lack of coordination is remarkable when you think about it. Alexis de Tocqueville nailed it two centuries ago when he said this about American democracy:

The poor are maintained, immense sums are annually devoted to public instruction, all services whatsoever are remunerated, and the most subordinate agents are liberally paid. If this kind of government appears to me to be useful and rational, I am nevertheless constrained to admit that it is expensive.

Once more for emphasis

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Rideshares Eating DART's Lunch

The Irving Herald — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 03:45:22 GMT

Gears in Arrears but Wants to be Mayor

The Irving Herald — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:03:22 GMT

Herb Gears, our mayor from 2005 to 2011, has filed for the May 2026 mayoral election.

He released the video below. Spoiler alert: he makes it through and is still alive by the end.

The history on Gears is wild.

He won election for Mayor in 2005 and then in 2008, but lost in his bid for a third term in 2011 to council member Beth Van Duyne, 57% to 43%. In 2014 he attempted a comeback but was pounded even worse, 69% to 30%.

Why did he lose that third term in 2011? Partly because his cronies were burning through taxpayer dollars.

“Beth Van Duyne” wrote Texas Scorecard, always
“criticized Gears and his merry-band of rubber-stamping council members
for incurring excessive debt and wasting taxpayer money.”

The biggest offender was the plan for an entertainment center in Las Colinas. His crony Billy Bob Barnett (founder of Billy Bob’s Texas in the Fort Worth Stockyards) was supposed to develop a proposed Las Colinas entertainment center with heavy city subsidies, and with his group putting in $50 million. The only problem was he didn’t have $50 million. Dallas saw this immediately when Billy Bob pitched them, and gave him a hard pass.

Gears thought it was great though, and we went for it. When costs mounted, questions were raised about consultant spending, travel, and oversight. By mid-2011 Irving had spent approximately $22 million without any construction, just some planning and design documents and blueprints.

Where’d all the money go? Billy Bob spent it on things like liquor, steaks, and limo drivers. Unrelated junkets and even Billy Bob’s chauffeur were paid for with city money. Astonishingly, top consultants commuted from Las Vegas, costing thousands of dollars, and Gears did not even know who they were, as WFAA showed in this damning report.

“We have a $560 million debt on the city,”
Van Duyne said during the mayoral campaign,
“quadrupled from $150 million [with] very little development to show for it.”

With his reelection in the balance, Billy Bob turned around and gave Gears $500,000 (not a typo) for his reelection campaign. That record setting amount was an order of magnitude higher than what citywide races normally cost for a candidate all together. Gears lost the election nevertheless.

The coda to the story. In 2012, the development agreement expired without construction beginning, and Billy Bob’s group filed a $139 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the city. Billy Bob got $4 million in the settlement of that suit, after Irving had spent $37 million on the project before it collapsed.

What a boondoggle. What about since then?

Gears popped up during the 2017 Irving mayoral race, as the creator of what the Dallas Morning News called “one of the most dishonest political hit pieces ever circulated,” which smeared a woman running for mayor as a drug addict and thief, which was all untrue. She took him to court to clear her name, spent $15,000 on legal fees, but gave up due to the expense.

Not to worry, though, Gears promises not to do that this time around:

Gears acknowledged responsibility for the mailer and was fined $5,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission in 2019.

By 2020 he still hadn’t paid it, because he had declared bankruptcy. He hadn’t paid his rent, either. As his landlord put it, “I don’t care if you’re the mayor or the man in the moon. You owe me rent.”

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Town Hall Updates

The Irving Herald — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:29:44 GMT

Irving residents got a wide-ranging update on public safety, parks, solid waste, and transportation at last week’s town hall hosted by new best buds Mark Cronenwett and David Pfaff.

The meeting hosted by these two impressive Irving City Council members covered everything from Irving’s role in the 2026 FIFA World Cup to the future of trash collection and microtransit. Presentation by City staff were followed by public comments and questions.

The slides are here.

The recap, as only ICTN can. “There are dozens of us!”

Irving Prepares for the World Cup

Like it or not, Irving will be at the center of the global spotlight next summer:

Deputy Police Chief John Mitchell told residents that Irving is slated to host nine FIFA World Cup matches, tying Atlanta for the most of any U.S. city
Each match is expected to have the impact of a Super Bowl (!)
This means major demands on public safety, transportation, and regional coordination.
Matches run June 14 through July 14, 2026
Mutual aid agreements are already in place with neighboring police and fire departments
The U.S. national team may be assigned games around July 3–4
Fan festivities are expected across North Texas, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Frisco, and possibly Denton

Residents raised concerns about transportation and detention capacity:

DART service: Officials said trains could continue running but might not stop in Irving during part of the tournament (they will, actually, since we won’t pull out of DART)
Jail capacity: Dallas County capacity remains under discussion; Irving officials are still seeking clarity (After all, the Dallas County Jail reached 100% of its operational capacity in early September 2025)

You had me at “Indoor-Outdoor Waterslide”

Wet Center at Senter

Parks & Rec: Season 7

Joe Moses from Parks & Rec walked through major capital projects guided by the city’s 2019 Parks Master Plan, which flagged aging infrastructure and a lack of multi-generational amenities.

Of Note:

Lee Park: $5.7 million renovation (no mention of the unusable death trap waterslide for tots that had to be immediately removed after the waterpark’s reopening)
Senter Park: Expanded by nearly 28,000 square feet, with new amenities; opening fall 2026
Mustang Park: A 127,000-square-foot multi-generational facility on a nine-acre site; opening summer 2027 (this is going to be pretty sweet)
About a dozen additional park replacements or upgrades are completed or planned
Staffing increases: 10 full-time and 1 part-time positions

Q&A Session:

Increased homeless activity noted, lacking codes and regulations so the police cannot do much to remedy, homeless migrate to other parks when cleared form a site — apparently enforcement has been stepped up
A re-evaluation of non-resident rental pricing is underway
Several of the programs that were lost when the YMCA left have now been restored at new city facilities

“Tell Me More”

Solid Waste and Rising Rates

Travis Switzer presented findings from the city’s solid waste study, which won the prize for nerdiest slides, explaining why Irving’s trash system looks the way it does.

Background:

A severe shortage of CDL-licensed heavy equipment operators worsened during COVID (thank you, Amazon)
In 2022, Irving shifted to once-a-week collection temporarily, drawing negative feedback (and a vote of council to revert to 2x a week — thank you Councilman John Bloch)
In 2023, Council approved 21 new waste collection worker positions, returning to three-person crews
A consultant study began in May 2025

We will be moving to automated cart collection sometime in the future in all likelihood — so here’s some details on that more or less inevitable shift:

Take a gander at that drop in FTEs…

What we learned:

Automated cart collection does not lower costs unless service drops to once-a-week
Trashy! Irving has the second-highest residential trash rate in the region, behind Dallas
Other cities reduce costs by offering lower service levels, or by subsidizing operations from their general funds
Under the current model, monthly rates could rise from $35.25 today to $40 by 2030 and $50 by 2040
The city plans to keep the bag system for now

Other notable points:

Allowing outside waste at the landfill brings in $3 million a year — losing it would mean about $9 more per month for residents
Automated systems significantly boost recycling participation (no mention of the fact that plastic recycling is a complete fraud)
Irving received 100+ applications for a single solid-waste job, reflecting competitive pay ($43-$61k, 80th percentile)
A public landfill and recycling tour is scheduled for Feb. 22, 2026

Your Tax Dollars at Work

During open discussion, officials noted:

DART’s annual budget is roughly $1 billion, but fare revenue is only about $30 million
Irving has received eight responses to its request for information on microtransit and paratransit options

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)

Getting Waymo for our DART $

The Irving Herald — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 23:15:07 GMT

A friend on my street bought five Teslas this year. Five! He loves them. The reason? They drive themselves. He can relax on his commute. He’s purchased one for every generation in his family.

Tesla’s self-driving relies on cameras. Even better than that is Google’s self-driving cars, Waymo, as they have a laser and radar on top of the car.

Get out of my Waymo

You can’t buy a Waymo though — they are not for sale. Google is turning their tech into a cash cow through the Waymo robotaxi service. They are already doing this in Austin, Atlanta, LA, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

This past summer, Waymo announced that it announced that its robotaxis will soon be introduced in five new cities: Dallas, Miami, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. It just launched to select riders in 60 square miles in Miami.

At some point, Waymo will appear in Irving. There’s already a self-driving car from a Waymo competitor that makes regular appearances at Sunrise Park in Irving Heights, where I live. Robotaxis are coming! (They are actually already all over China. When you land in China, you take a driverless taxi to get to where you’re going.)

Even more interesting is the question, could robotaxis help us with our public transportation pickle?

Consider the following:

There are six Orange Line light rail stations in Irving (Belt Line, Northlake, Hidden Ridge, Convention Center, Urban Center, and University of Dallas), and two TRE stations (West Irving and Downtown Irving).
Nationwide, the average trip for an Uber ride is 5-6 miles.
Just about everyone in Irving is within 6 miles of a DART station, with the worst case being the southwest edge of Irving, e.g. from Stipes Elementary to the Northlake Station is 6.5 miles.
Going from Nimitz to Valley Ranch is 14 miles (why would you ever need to?) and going from west Irving to East Irving is 8 miles.
Assume the cost of a Waymo robotaxi at a base of $10 a ride plus $0.60 per mile (based on what the rate is in Phoenix), then that would be $13 for a 5-mile trip.
A 3-Hour Pass on DART is $3.00. A commute to work and back therefore costs $6. Of course, this involves a lot of walking, waiting, and facing delays, which is so impracticable it explains why…
only 2,566 people regularly use DART at the moment.

Now what about this proposal: discounted 5-mile Waymo rides within Irving, with a pooled discount for shared rides and costs beyond that radius paid for by the rider.

Say I find a neighbor with a similar commute, who wants to go regularly to a certain part of Irving — say a DART station. We each kick in $4 or so a ride, and the City of Irving subsidizes the rest. If Irving got $25 million — less than a quarter of what we spend on DART — to use to subsidized microtransit, we could support nearly three times the people who regularly use DART now, giving over seven thousand people subsidized rides up to 5-mile rides for a weekly commute.

The essential point: a Waymo coming to your door beats the waiting and walking which makes DART so unusable. It would be at a fraction of the cost and would ease the burden of traffic if rides are shared. Subsidizing pooled rides could be the equivalent of carpool lanes.

Such a plan could be rolled out gradually so as not to overwhelm the system, with preferences given to those going to DART stations, living and working in Irving, or under a certain income threshold.

When the robotaxis arrive, getting just a portion of our DART money back could go a long way.

Contact: TheIrvingHerald@gmail.com (corrections/comments/news tips welcome)