Hot Carl

Small Business Group leader Carl Tepper is steamed. Here's his latest letter to City Council:

Well, it’s finally happened. Yesterday a transient took a crap in the stairwell of our brand new buildings on the MoPac frontage road. I can't tell you how embarrassed I am that we called a day porter, who works hard and who has amazing dignity, to take care of it. A doctors wife (another person of amazing class and dignity) didn't want it to linger and cleaned it before the day porter arrived. The day porter cleaned up the remnants. I can’t tell you the pain and anger of hearing this!

If my staff would have told me first I would have collected it myself and shown it to you at City Hall; cameras rolling. NEXT TIME I WILL. If it happens again they have strict orders to let me know first! I am prepared for any consequences.

When the office manager at that building described the situation to me this morning she also vented about her employees having to pass through the intersection of 2222 & MoPac, where the homeless camp grows, and how the transients there now drop their pants and crap in front of everyone waiting in traffic. As if dodging the panhandlers wasn't enough.

City Council: ACT ON THIS before we need to find a new slate of candidates. From my understanding there are several groups around town who have my same disposition right now and we're prepared to get to work together.

Toby, I haven’t even begun to complain …

Now that the laughter's subsided, I'm really hard-pressed to see how this is council's fault – unless it was Betty Dunkerley dropping trou in the stairwell. Forgive the pun, but shit happens. Get some locks.

It continues to bode badly for the city's budget. It hasn't even arrived yet, and Toby Futrell's already made up council's mind for them – as my buddy Michael King put it, "effectively the manager is telling the council that the official wish list is already submitted – your only job is to find me $16.6 million of wiggle room, elsewhere."

But thanks to the ire of li'l libertarians like Carl "Tax Dollars for Me, But Not for Thee" Tepper, we're seeing absurdities like the Hobo Patrol prioritized. The Public Safety budget's pushing the Graffiti Squad hard, even though they've made a handful (a whopping three, we hear) of property-crime arrests – all with a dedicated graffiti detective. Is that a priority to you?

If you really want to see who's shitting all over the city, don't look any further than the city staff budget priorities.