Park Cities People (Newspaper) - November 27, 1986, Dallas, Texas Happy Thanksgiving PARK CITIES VOL 6 NO 48 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 27 1986 EOPLE 7392244 Fall frolic A YARD FULL OF LEAVES means afternoon fun for the Wilson family from left Loren Jamie Jim Terry and Katie joins suit to stop reshuffle of school funds 9th installment bid put on hold By Ellen Dupree At a special meeting held on November 20 the Highland Park School Board requested its attorney Thompson Knights Dick Gray to intervene on its behalf in a lawsuit Edgewood v Kirby The suit concerns the redistribution of state funds to districts In taking the action the board joined the efforts of the Branch Independent School District and several others in assisting the state in opposing redistribution Hie 11 original plaintiffs filed suit three years ago in Travis County and then abandoned the cause after House 72 provided a large measure of equalization funds to districts Subsequently other school districts joined the original plaintiffs and resumed the effort The case is set for trial before Judge Harley Clark on December 1 1986 in Judicial District Court It is the view of the that adequate redistribution has already occurred Highland Park lost million in state aid because of House 72 said superintendent Winston Power That was every bit that we got on a discretionary basis High tech gas station irks Village design lovers By Susan Albrecht The crossing of Preston Road and Mockingbird Lane seems an unlikely spot for the sleek minimalist architec ture of the Mobil gas station The intersection is engulfed if youll par don the expression in Spanish a golf cart bridge is trimmed in the wrought iron so prevalent in the old Highland Park Village shopping center across the street So the question Park Cities residents keep asking is why is the Old beauty of the Village area being marred by the glaring newness of a high tech gas station The explanation it seems is simple This is our new configuration says PC People photo by Scott Wilson THE SPIRE of Park Cities Bap tist rises through the autumn foliage on the northern edge of the Park Cities UPs Chavez honored for city service By Susan Albrecht University Parks employee of the month John Chavez is nicknamed Spider because of a spider tattoo on the side of his neck I saw too many Spiderman cartoons he explains adding that he got the tattoo in Dallas at 18 There are no spiderwebs or cob webs in the citys service center where Chavez now 41 works as a janitor Chavez arrives at work at 7 am after a bus ride from his Oak Cliff home He makes coffee in the service center and then his duties in clude anything from cleaning vehicles to caring for the service centers yard to his two favorite jobs vacuuming and waxing and buffing the floors Then at he takes the bus back to his wife Frances two daughters Annette 12 and Chelo 14 and son Tommy 18 Chavez had an older son see CHAVEZ on page 5 DOWN MEMORY LANE Downtown Dallas the place to be now just as in 30s By Ben Briggs The recent efforts to draw people back to downtown with the renovated End and the Dallas Alley remind me of the time when downtown was all there was of Dallas Back in the thirties when I was growing up my family lived on Shenandoah west of Douglas There were eight houses on either side of the block and the rest was open field lived on the very outskirts of the city and there were no shopping centers or malls as we know them today The Village was there of course but all it had was a grocery store drugstore the theater and the Arthur Murray dance studio At one time there were even two grocery stores in the Village but no one thought of locating a depart ment store there for a long time All the big stores were located downtown where everything else was For us kids one of the main at tractions was the Dallas Athletic Club at St Paul and Pacific They had a great indoor gym with an indoor swimming pool where I first learned to swim I also took boxing lessons there from old Mr Griffin who was kind of short and gruff and looked just like that Burgess Meredith character in the Rocky Ben Briggs movies My buddies and I would take our swimming trunks and ride the bus down on Saturday mornings In the afternoon wed go to a movie at the Tower Theater across the street or one of the other movie theaters in town There were only four the Tower the Palace the Rialto and the Majestic The had the organ player whose organ rose from the floor while he played music before the show The Rialto was where you went for the B pictures the horse operas and horror movies And the Majestic was the fanciest theater in town It showed movies most of the time but was equipped for live stage productions even back then The first live theater I ever saw was at the Ma jestic with the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson doing a lot of slapstick and old vaudeville routines The one I remember best was where this usher they still had ushers back then kept ap in the aisle throughout the show with a potted plant in his hand and caffing out Paging Mrs Jones paging Mrs Jones except every time he appeared the plant was a little bit bigger Finally after the show we saw him in the lobby perched on top of a hugh rubber see DOWNTOWN on page 4 PC People photo by Scott Wilson THE MOBIL SERVICE STATION stands out with its modern form Mobil Oil Corp marketing represen Paul All our new loca tions are built to that specification said as far as he knows no requests were made of Mobil to blend the station into the surround architec ture like Bank is doing with its new building really dont deviate from that look said of what is called a configuration unless were absolutely forced to The design for future Mobil stations was created in house in the corporations New York office The joint venture between Southland Corporation a small is attached and Mobil was rebuilt in late 1984 The was added nearly one year later One Village merchant who asked to remain anonymous stated that Its really unbelievable that with afl the pull Miller and have something more attractive wasnt built on that corner If there is enough public out cry maybe Mobil will see their way to change it altogether or at least modify it to fit in with everything else The station which is certainly the most modern structures to be built in the area replaces the venerable old service station operated for several years by Coker Mobil reports that the location does brisk business selling approximately 25 million gallons of gas each year Power further comments that the outcome of the litigation has political as well as prac tical implications we are trying to do is to keep the state court from controlling the finance system he explained Gray says the goal of the plaintiffs in the suit is to make the ad valorem tax that each school district has part of the foundation program and not a local tax He also states that contrary to reputation Highland Park in not an especially property rich district Our problem is that our property is high but we dont have a lot of property have practically no commercial and we have a greater percentage of churches schools and parks than other areas Consequently the in dividual pieces of property used have a higher tax base Dallas is probably the richest district Branch soon will be We really are probably close to the middle Also at the special meeting School Board members heard a presentation from lawyers representing Highland Parks 9th installment in an effort to allow transfers of the areas resi dent school children into Highland Park schools Jim E Coles of the firm Coles and Thompson introduced his partner D Craig Drinker who made the presentation Brinker maintained that historically and even after the 1972 desegregation legislation a special relationship has existed between the residents of the 9th installment and the other portions of Highland Park He explained that although the Texas Education Agency at one time stopped approving re quests for transfers into tije Highland Park Schools from residents of the 9th installment the transfers were most likely permissible today Brinker said that the in the policy of the TEA was pursuant to a federal district court order which is to day inapplicable Said the lawyer It is fundamental under desegregation litigation and numerous opinions that have been handed down by the Supreme Court that in order for a Federal District Court to impose an in they must find that the actions of one district have had a significantly segregative impact on another district Brinker said that a Federal Court had ruled that if the effect of transfers from one district to another did not have a greater than 1 percent effect on the minority population of one district or the majority population of the other then there was no significant impact and no violation of law The attorney claimed that if every resi dent of the 9th installment requested to transfer into HP schools then the percentage of the student body ef in all schools would still fall below 1 percent Brinker told the board that petitions from residents would be forthcoming see on page 5 School for schools sake UTDallas scores with scholastics not athletics Special to Park Cities People Colleges and two words summon up images of Saturdays filled with foot ball games and home coming parades TGIF parties fraternity bashes and last minute cramm ing for final exams There is one university in Dallas however that does not fit the stereo type It has no sororities or fraternities no football team no dormitories but still it serves the higher educational needs of the Park Cities It is an institution where the students vote to use their activities money to keep the library open longer and where a faculty member is often younger than the students he or she instructs The nightlife at ths campus is focused on classrooms laboratories and library stacks This see UT DALLAS on page 13 PC People photo by Scott Wilson The campus is located off Campbell Road in North Dallas
