10 March 9-15, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ued, adding that he’d shared all the details that he legally could and that he encourages parents to reach out to him if they want to discuss further. The news comes as cities across Texas have been rocked by a string of accidental fentanyl overdoses and as law enforcement is ramping up fentanyl-related arrests. Authorities apprehended a 22-year-old man in February who, they said, supplied the fentanyl that had been linked to the deaths of three Carrollton teenagers and to several other teen overdoses. Two additional suspects, also in their 20s, were arrested ear- lier that month. They’d operated out of a Carrollton home near R.L. Turner High School and were federally charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl. In that case, the victims ranged in age from 13 to 17. Scant details are available about the inci- dent involving an employee at R.L. Turner High School, including information regard- ing the type of prescription medication. The Observer reached out to Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time. The email we ob- tained was sent through ParentSquare, the messaging service used by Carrollton-Farm- ers Branch ISD. Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD has pre- viously come under fire from critics who al- lege that their concerns about fentanyl were taken too lightly. Last week, a district meet- ing grew tense after a community activist blasted the way that CFBISD handled the series of hospitalizations and overdoses re- lated to fentanyl-laced pills, according to The Dallas Morning News. Carmin Williams, the mother of a 12-year-old student in the district who be- came hooked on fentanyl, also claimed to have warned administrators there of her concerns, NBC-DFW reported last month. Her daughter, Khloe, eventually admitted to Williams that another student in the district had given her the pills, which were laced with fentanyl. “She told me that she would only do two a day, but the other kids were doing more,” Williams said, according to that outlet. “She would show me all types of pictures. Like, these kids had sandwich bags full of pills, and they were just passing them out.” ▼ CITY HALL TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN? PLAN WOULD ALLOW NEIGHBORHOODS TO ‘OPT-IN’ FOR SHORT-TERM RENTALS. BY KELLY DEARMORE A lthough the debate involving short- term rentals in Dallas has been a heated one for quite some time, a decision on whether to ban them from resi- dential neighborhoods has yet to be made. According to a Dallas Morning News report, that decision won’t come until spring at the earliest. Right now, the date of a council vote for short-term rental guidelines seems to be as hotly contested as what the vote is sup- posed to decide. Groups such as Texas Neighborhood Al- liance want short-term rental listings that can be found on sites like Airbnb and VRBO to be outlawed in residential neighborhoods. Those groups are fighting against “party houses” that they say attract noise, crime, trash and parking problems for a neighbor- hood’s permanent residents. In Plano, short-term rentals have been involved in a recent shooting and a brothel bust. Arlington and Fort Worth have each instituted regulations for where short-term rentals can be located, with the latter ban- ning them in residential areas. The newly announced ordinance in Fort Worth dictates that “A local responsible party must be avail- able 24/7 to respond to concerns at the property. The local responsible party may be the property owner or an operator working on behalf of the owner” and that no more than 12 people can stay inside the property. As long as a short-term rental property is legally registered with the city, it is subject to the city’s hotel occupancy tax. But recent esti- mates suggest that the number of short-term rentals registered with the city is a far cry from the number of listings available in Dallas. Whether being subject to the hotel occu- pancy tax in fact makes a short-term rental a hotel, as of now at least, depends on which side of the debate you’re on. And the ques- tion of whether it’s fair to penalize a large group of short-term rental operators for the actions of the bad actors is a fair one. During ’s Quality of Life, Culture and Arts committee meeting on Feb. 21, council member Paula Blackmon, who represents District 9, expressed her willingness to con- sider a plan that would let individual neigh- borhoods decide whether to allow short-term rentals. Such an approach could be an agreeable compromise for an issue that’s been kicked around a good bit over the years. “When we talk about neighborhood self- determination, I think there should be a process where neighborhoods can have this discussion,” Blackmon told the Observer. “It’s also a way for the city to maybe not get sued. If we say it’s all illegal in residential ar- eas, but also have a process that allows neighborhoods to opt-in, then such a law doesn’t seem so harmful.” Blackmon isn’t sure what a neighborhood opt-in plan would consist of just yet, which is why she says she wants the council to discuss it before a vote occurs. Of course, a program that allows a neighborhood to choose to al- low short-term rentals within its boundaries will involve jumping through a few hoops, something Blackmon understands isn’t likely very appealing to many residents. “There would be a process, and as you probably know, going through any process at the city level can be pretty cumbersome,” she said. “I think a lot of people would rather cut their wrists than have to go to City Hall to get something through.” The opt-in idea isn’t new. Ashley Gue- vara, public affairs officer for the city, told the Observer in an email that it was intro- duced to the Quality of Life, Arts and Cul- ture Committee last year, but it didn’t go further. Ryan said that an opt-in plan for short-term rentals could model after a pro- gram already in place. “Currently, residential neighborhoods in Dallas can follow an ‘opt-in’ process to allow the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units (think garage apartments, granny cot- tages, etc) in the area,” Ryan wrote in her email. “There is a neighborhood petition process that must be followed, along with community meetings, and if approved, cre- ates an overlay district that allows one addi- tional unit to be constructed on each lot. To date, no neighborhoods in Dallas have started this process. A short-term rental opt- in overlay could follow the same process.” The rights of homeowners to live in quiet, safe neighborhoods haven’t been a point of contention, but the rights of private property owners to do what they wish with their homes has certainly been a sticking point in the short-term rental debate. Black- mon said she has heard from her constitu- ents on both sides of the topic, and she’s trying to be pragmatic about how the coun- cil approaches this decision. “I want to know what it would look like for a neighborhood to be able to opt-in to al- lowing short-term rentals,” she said. “If it doesn’t make sense for them to allow them, then at least they had that discussion. The best thing to do is to have these discussions in an open forum.” ▼ HIGHER EDUCATION REMOVING OLD REBELS STUDENTS FIGHT TO CHANGE 2 BUILDING NAMES AT UT ARLINGTON. BY SIMONE CARTER I n 2021, the University of Texas at Arling- ton changed the name of a building honor- ing E.E. Davis, a former dean who was also a virulent eugenicist and segregationist, among other unfortunate descriptors. Stu- dents argue that it’s now time to give the same treatment to two other UTA structures. Mark Napieralski, a leading member of the Progressive Student Union, is pushing for the school to rechristen buildings named after previous college presidents Ernest H. Hereford and Jack R. Woolf. It’s the latest example of a broader na- tionwide push to ditch remnants of a preju- diced past. Confederate monuments have been dismantled in Dallas and other North Texas towns, and buildings with links to slavery and segregation have been renamed. The way Napieralski sees it, it’s time for the university to fully own up to its promise of being welcoming to all. UTA’s website touts the school’s spot as No. 5 on the na- tional undergraduate diversity index. A Progressive Student Union protest in October saw demonstrators pressuring the school to change the building names and to relocate a bust of Hereford, according to university paper The Shorthorn. That month, the group introduced two resolu- tions about the proposed changes. UTA records indicate that Hereford was president of the school — then called Arling- ton State College — when the student body chose in 1951 to adopt a “Rebel school spirit theme.” Rebel flags were flown at events and on campus, the mascot was “Johnny Reb” and mock slave auctions were held amid “Old South week,” which featured white students painted in blackface. Hereford’s administration also allowed a student organization to use the name “Kam- pus Kadet Klub,” Napieralski said. After Hereford died in late 1958, Woolf took the reins, “consolidating and central- izing the [school’s] Confederate theme,” Napieralski said. He added that Woolf was a segregationist who regarded the eventual integration of the school “with regret.” Napieralski’s group wants to see a build- ing renamed after the late community orga- nizer Fahim Minkah, who reportedly studied law at UTA and fought to eliminate the college’s Rebel theme. “Without Fahim Minkah, more than likely, we would have been the Rebels for, if not a few more years, potentially up until now,” Napieralski said. A UTA spokesperson said via email that in 2018, a task force examined Hereford’s ten- ure following student complaints. “After research of university archives, newspaper clippings and other documents, the task force did not find evidence that Dr. Hereford was directly responsible for the al- legations against him and therefore did not recommend any change to the building’s name,” he continued, adding that the same task force came to a different conclusion when it came to Davis. Davis certainly wasn’t shy about his views. In his 1940 book, The White Scourge, Bill Oxford/Getty Images Fentanyl can be disguised as Oxycodone. Unfair Park from p8
