6 January 5-11, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2014 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | some for repaying – in the form of a classic car garage and workshop – his grandfather, who put off retirement to see him through high school. He moves forward, gladly keeping the fortune but having had his fill of the fame. “I don’t expect to go on and do something else that gets me on Good Morning Amer- ica,” he said. “This was enough for me.” ▼ LEGISLATURE HUNGER GAME TEXAS BILL WOULD OFFER TAX CREDITS FOR GROCERY STORES THAT OPEN IN FOOD DESERTS. BY JACOB VAUGHN A nga Sanders, who lives in the heart of South Oak Cliff, once shopped for groceries at an Albertsons at Lem- mon and McKinney avenues, but the store closed years ago. The area where she lives, home to some 20,000 residents, is a food des- ert, meaning there are no healthy food options within a 5-mile radius. The Albertsons where Sanders shopped was about 13 miles away. “Right inside the door of that store, maybe 10 feet inside, was a salad bar,” she said. “It was beautiful — anything you could think of to make your own salad.” She’d been shopping there for years, and she’d sometimes help herself to the salad bar. “And just one day in September [2014], I just froze when I walked in the front door be- cause it suddenly, after all those years, struck me that there was nothing like that south of Interstate 30 in the city of Dallas. Nothing.” She took photos of the salad bar and posted it on social media. Sanders said she got nearly 100 responses in an hour from people just like her who had to travel far from their communities for fresh, healthy food. “It indicated that there was a lot of frus- tration, not just mine,” Sanders said. She held a community meeting about it with people who shared stories similar to hers. As a result, Sanders started a nonprofit called Feed Oak Cliff. “Our goal was to recruit mainstream, quality grocery stores to this area,” Sanders explained. She said she na- ively thought these grocers just didn’t know people were living in food deserts. “Well, silly damn me,” she added. She learned that bringing healthy options to the city’s food deserts was nowhere near simple. A bill filed last week by state Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat, could make it a little simpler. The city of Dallas tried subsidizing its own grocery store in southern Dallas. That store, Save U More Grocery, eventually closed. The city has also considered regulations to space out dollar and convenience stores in Dallas, thinking that their abundance is keeping gro- cery stores from moving in. Grocery store chains often told Sanders’ organization that there weren’t enough cus- tomers in these areas, and the ones who were there didn’t have enough disposable income. They would also cite crime rates. Last January, members of the City Coun- cil’s Economic Development Committee dis- cussed the reasons they had so much trouble bringing the stores to Dallas’ underserved communities. At the meeting, Gary Hud- dleston, a consultant for the Texas Retailers Association, talked about some of the issues. Much of it comes down to profitability. “The bottom line is there’s got to be some thought that at some point the store is going to be profitable,” Huddleston told the com- mittee. “We want to serve the community, but it’s still got to make a profit.” Huddleston advocated for different gro- cery store models that may be cheaper to operate, as well as lowering or waiving some of the required fees so grocers could save money. From Sanders’ understanding, the waived fees would apply across the board and do nothing to incentivize stores to open in food deserts. Thierry’s House Bill 1118, however, does offer such an incentive. The bill would offer tax credits to gro- cery stores that open in Texas food deserts. Grocery stores, or what the bill calls healthy corner stores, would be eligible for the tax credits if they operate in a food des- ert for at least a year. The bill defines food deserts as low-income or high-poverty areas with limited access to healthy food retailers. Under the bill, grocery stores would need to reserve 66% of their space for selling food products. Half of that would be reserved for non-prepared foods and another 30% of that retail food space would be saved for perish- able foods. The stores would also be required to ac- cept payments from the Special Supplemen- tal Nutrition Program for Women, Children and Infants (WIC). If they do all this for at least a year, the stores could get 5% tax credit for what they spent to operate in that year. In an emailed statement, Thierry said, “Texas has the largest ‘grocery gap’ in the nation, which means that our state has the lowest number of supermarkets per capita of any state.” A number of communities in her district are affected. “These ‘grocery gaps’ pose significant hard- ships as people have to travel further simply to find a grocery store and those without trans- portation often end up having to purchase un- healthy, processed food on a daily basis from corner stores,” Thierry said. “As a result of poor nutrition, children are at a higher risk of obesity and adults are more likely to develop heart disease, obesity, and other diet-related diseases. Access to nutritious food should not be determined by a person’s ZIP code.” She said these gaps exist because retail- ers have stuck to building in more affluent neighborhoods and communities. “This dis- parity needs to be corrected because a lack of access to fresh produce and healthy foods leads to health risks, which increases medi- cal costs and places additional strains on the healthcare system in our state,” Thierry said. “Therefore, everyone is impacted.” Thierry said a 5% tax credit was chosen because this would be enough to encourage investment without costing the state too much tax revenue. Thierry said she’s in dis- cussions to consider raising the tax credit in her bill to 10%. Sanders is happy about the proposed in- centive, but worries what kind of stores it will attract. “I think it would be a good thing to incen- tivize new stores to come to food deserts if they can be stores of a certain quality,” Sand- ers said. “That’s the catch.” She said some stores operating near food deserts run on a non-traditional business model. “So, you see a price on the shelf that says $3.99 … but when you get to the register it’s $4.25,” she explained. “I don’t think those should be incentivized. What I don’t know is how you differentiate that in the regulations, you know, to basically not promote more of the same substandard, poor quality stores.” ▼ JFK BURIED SECRETS THOUSANDS OF JFK ASSASSINATION DOCUMENTS STILL WITHHELD AFTER LATEST RELEASE. BY JACOB VAUGHN E arlier this month, the National Ar- chives released thousands of formerly classified documents gathered during the government’s review of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The latest release of more than 13,000 documents was ordered by President Joe Biden after it was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another batch of doc- uments was released last year as part of that order. But about 3% of the documents are still redacted fully or in part. Some say un- less all the documents are released, specula- tion and conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination will continue to live. The President John F. Kennedy Assassi- nation Records Collection Act of 1992 set a 2017 deadline for the release of all classified documents related to the assassination. That year, however, then-President Donald Trump waived the deadline, leaving re- searchers and archivists to wait even longer. The Biden Administration said that the release of all of these documents was impor- tant to transparency about the assassination of JFK. “[T]he profound national tragedy of Pres- ident Kennedy’s assassination continues to resonate in American history and in the memories of so many Americans who were alive on that terrible day; meanwhile, the need to protect records concerning the as- sassination has weakened with the passage of time,” the White House said in a memo. “It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes trans- parency by disclosing all information in re- cords concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.” In the memo, the White House said the National Archives and other agencies have until May 2023 to review the rest of the un- released documents. Unless agencies rec- ommend further delays, the memo said the remaining documents would be released be- fore June 30, 2023. The largest online source for these re- cords in the U.S., the Mary Ferrell Founda- tion, sued President Biden and the National Archives in October for the release of the re- maining JFK assassination documents. Mary Ferrell was working as a legal secre- tary in downtown Dallas at the time of the assassination, and she and her sons began compiling a massive, highly regarded library of information related to the assassination until her death in 2004 at the age of 81. According to NBC News, the lawsuit sought to void Biden’s order and have all of the records released. The suit also claims spe- cific documents have been unlawfully re- dacted. According to the lawsuit, these include a 1961 memo about reorganizing the CIA after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, files on three CIA officers tied to assas- sin Lee Harvey Oswald and a 1962 Defense Department false flag plan called Operation Northwoods that called for staging a violent incident in the U.S. to be blamed on Cuba. The suit claims records regarding plots to as- sassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and a JFK-related document from Watergate bur- glar E. Howard Hunt’s security file were un- lawfully redacted as well. Also at issue in the suit is the release of 44 other documents related to a CIA agent named George Joannides. He ran a covert Cuba-related program that allegedly came into contact with Oswald some four months before the assassination of JFK in Dallas. In a statement about the latest batch of documents on its website, the Mary Ferrell Foundation said about 15,000 documents still haven’t been disclosed. “Unfortunately, in many thousands of cases the new document simply features fewer redactions than previously (and The National Archives released thousands of JFK assassination documents. National Archive/Getty Images Unfair Park from p4 >> p8
