Sheffie Kadane's political woes

Kadane, who represents Lakewood on the city council, has only been in office since May. But he has already wracked up what seems like a full term's worth of aggravation:

• His performance during the Trinity toll road campaign was undistinguished, to say the least. And voters in his District 9 were mostly on the other side of the issue.

• Dallas' Only Daily Newspaper, which usually spares Kadane from any sort of criticism, took him to task this week for not appointing enough members to city commissions and boards. "Mayor Tom Leppert, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and District 9 council member Sheffie Kadane have made 11 appointments to their 18 allotted positions -– the lowest among council members," wrote The News. (And what's The News doing criticizing Mayor Park Cities?)

• And now, residents of the Maplewood neighborhood (just west of White Rock Lake and between Fisher and the DART tracks), appear ready to get an early start on beating Kadane in 2009, acquiring the outwithsheffie.com Internet address. The neighbors are upset that Kadane blocked council approval of a zoning overlay for their area this week, which would have limited the size and scope of new home and teardown construction. Most of the overlay had previously been approved by the city plan commission.

I talked to Maplewood's Ryan Berube, who led the push for the overlay, and he said he doesn't think Kadane understands the issue -- and if he doesn't understand the issue, he shouldn't be on the council. In this, Berube pointed to the recent overlay decision in Casa Linda, where residents got only part of what they asked for. He said that that the Casa Linda residents that he talked to were also upset with Kadane, and for many of the same reasons.

Comments

[Mike Harris]

The internet is making it harder and harder for politicians to escape their poor decisions. It used to be that a politician could vote against pockets of constituents and never have the backlash reach the critical mass necessary to oust them. Those days are over.

I'm tired of politicians professing they're for parks and then supporting a toll road instead. I'm tired of politicans claiming they're for neighborhood self-determination, then voting againt their constituents. I'm tired of politicains claiming they're for preservation, then their appointees vote against protections for historic buildings.

Hopefully Mr. Kadane -- and his council colleagues -- will learn that the rules are changing. The internet preserves their actions for posterity, and allows those who are aggrieved a place to communicate, network, and act.

Viva la Revolucion!

[Phil Franklin]

Mr. Berube has no understanding of the concept of an individual's property rights. I am a Maplewood resident since 1999, and opposed the overlay from the get-go.

Absent an extremely compelling reason, when the government is asked to circumscribe the long-held rights of a property owner, the government should never do so. The NSO ordinance has fostered the illusion in the mind of certain people that a compelling reason is reached even when 40% of their neighbors do not want their rights taken away. Few perceptions could be more dangerous. Nor more erroneous.

Mr. Berube (correction, his wife) is of the ilk who allude to suing those who criticize their overreaching paternalism. Sure, they love cloaking themselves with the title of 'community activist' or 'concerned neighbor', but refuse to recognize that this pronouncement interjects themselves into the neighborhood politics. Once the loyal opposition rises, they employ the passive-aggressive shield of 'what did I do?' and 'why are you so mean?'

Mr. Berube's pursuit of Neal Emmons at the CPC is already known, so we, as defenders of our constitutional rights, will remain vigilant in light of his apparent refusal to listen to 40% of his neighbors.

[Michael Davis-Dallas Progress]

I wrote my own post about this, but I'll just say that some of the people in these neighborhoods need to get a grip. Some of the printed e-mails and letters we receive week in and week out at City Plan are unbelievable, and many of them are behind the issue of NSOs. They accuse staff, councilpeople, and commissioners of bias and being unethical just because they don't get their way on an issue.

How could Sheffie not understand real estate and NSOs when he's been a real estate broker for years? Sounds silly to me. If he wanted to stick it to that neighborhood he could've denied it and blocked it for two years, but he didn't.

[Jeff Siegel]

I'm probably going to write something about overlays, which seemed to be the compromise to prevent just the sort of squabbling detailed here but apparently aren't.

But what I think most people are missing, including Rudy Bush at Dallas' Only Daily Newspaper, are the whispers around District 9 that Kadane is in trouble, just six months or so into his term. And some of the muttering is coming from people who support him.

The Maplewood overlay is just one tiny part of Kadane's troubles. He squeaked through in May because his opponent had problems of her own, and he hasn't seemed to have done much since to reach out to the half of the district that didn't vote for him.

[Lee]

Bush's article, which could be paraphrased "why are a few crazed neighborhood activists beating up on loveable old Sheffie," is typical of DMN coverage of most local issues. In other words, it's a crock. Bush must be trying to fit in with Levinthal and Tomasso.

[Bill Kennedy]

Mr. Franklin... If Mr/Ms Berube are supposed to listen to 40% of their NSO neighbors, why are you not supposed to listen to 50% of your NSO neighbors?

Just asking....

[Phil Franklin]

Jeff Siegel, spare me a thrombosis and tell me you aren’t truly saying that opposition to a self-appointed 'judge and jury' seeking to deprive a multitude of its neighbors of their right of self-determination lowers itself to the level of 'squabbling'? Have you gone all Dallas Citizens Committee on the live-free independents in the Wood?

[Phil Franklin]

Mr. Kennedy,

Since when do 50% of my neighbors have the authority to decide what I can do with my own property? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is our country's founding doctrine, not 'I know what's best for you, so live with it.'

I have no wish to control the Berubes' lives, and request the same in return.

[enb14]

Couldn't agree more with this article and with the Maplewood residents. East Dallas is looking more like Frisco every day.

[Norman Alston]

I think it needs to be pointed out that every piece of property in the City of Dallas, like most other cities, is already subject to rules and regulations that when in printed form make a paper pile at least as large as the Yellow Pages recently left on our doorsteps. These are called zoning regulations and building codes. Property owners in our city stopped being able to do anything they pleased with their property perhaps 100 years ago. These regulations became necessary when we chose to live 50 feet from one another. When we found out that our neighbor could hear the music on our radio and we could smell the bacon he was cooking. This became especially true when it was understood that what we did with our own property affected what he could do with his. These are rules for living together and they are almost always grass roots and reactive. In other words, they are imposed at the insistence of lots of citizens because something has happened to make them mad as hell; liquor store next to a school, lead smelter next to a neighborhood, etc. There hasn't been a creditable legal challenge to this system in decades. Only special cases.

The great thing about America is you can, indeed, live where you want and do what you want with your property, but for maximum flexibility you need to avoid close neighbors. That means living in an unincorporated section of the county, outside the ETJ of adjacent cities, not next to White Rock Lake.