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Norm Hitzges has been talking sports on the radio in Dallas longer than I’ve been alive. Considering the median age in North Texas is 35.6, there’s a pretty good chance that holds true for you, too. His radio run comes to an end next Friday, when the 78-year-old institution broadcasts his last show on The Ticket.

“I shall so miss the daily rush of being on the air,” Norm said during today’s announcement on the Norm and D Invasion, his 10-to-noon show with Donovan Lewis. “But after 48 consecutive years on the air in Dallas doing sports talk, it’s time to move on to the next phase of my life, whatever that may be.”

Norm has a few ideas in mind: writing, traveling with his wife, a podcast he intends to start in September. He didn’t rule out making special or fill-in appearances on the station, either. He made sure to note that his decision wasn’t related to his health, a welcome bit of news given his announcement three years ago that he was undergoing treatment for bladder cancer.

But for the most part, this is the end—of Norm as a fixture in our daily lives, and of bigger things that came with it. Norm is the radio analogue to Dale Hansen on television: the last of his era, the foremost link to the old ways. He could still tell you war stories about this market back in the ’70s. He still loves horse racing and baseball. No one has injected more sports into his job title, in breadth and depth, in a medium trending toward specialization.

Dallas Bans Short-Term Rentals in Single-Family Neighborhoods. It took until just about midnight for the City Council to decide on what to do about Airbnbs and Vrbos. In the end, they are now illegal to operate in single-family neighborhoods, but are still allowed to operate in multi-family. Properties must register each year and pay fees and taxes and have someone on-call who can be on-site within an hour should any problems arise. City staff told the Council that eliminating them in residential neighborhoods would ban about 95 percent of those currently operating. Bethany will have more today. Want to know the people who pushed the City Council for the ban? I wrote about them in the magazine back in March.

It Will Be Hot Today and It May Be Stormy. Counties south of Dallas got hit with hail and severe weather yesterday. Today, the National Weather Service has Dallas, Collin, Denton, and Tarrant counties all at a “slight” risk for severe weather. Storms would come in along the Red River late this afternoon, so there’s a good chance the worst of it will stay north of us.

School Libraries Begin Paring Their Shelves. Republican Frisco Rep. Jared Patterson’s House Bill 900 was signed into law by the governor this week. It directs K-12 schools to remove “sexually explicit” and “sexually relevant” books that have to go through a ratings system. Beyond the obvious censorship concerns, librarians are nervous about “chaos and confusion” amid the fuzzy guidelines. A reminder: Patterson is the guy who has never read Lonesome Dove but would ban it anyway.

After a messy hours-long back and forth about leverage and legalese, the Dallas City Council clenched its collective jaw and voted to accept an agreement with Dallas Area Rapid Transit to accept about $90 million in excess sales tax revenue.

The 12-3 vote ended a debate that began about four months ago. DART in February abruptly reneged on its vow to pay Dallas $111 million that could be used to fund transit-adjacent projects such as sidewalk fixes, traffic signal upgrades, ramps compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, a trail through Oak Cliff, and about a half dozen other projects.

Instead, the agency’s top officials told Dallas that the payout would actually be closer to $30 million. DART saw a chance to recoup $36 million it says it spent on “project enhancements” for the Silver Line train project through Far North Dallas. Too, permitting and project review delays for the rail line had cost the agency close to $50 million, it argued.

The money was presented as a green olive branch to its 13 member cities. Because of all the federal coronavirus relief money DART received, it collected about $234 million extra in sales tax revenue. It decided to give it back, with the disbursements based on how much each city paid into the agency in sales tax. Dallas would get $111 million and the rest would be split among the 12 suburbs. DART doesn’t control infrastructure in its partner cities, and the money would be used for projects that could help its riders once they exit a bus or train.

DART also saw an opportunity. Because it didn’t have to give up that money, it could define the terms of the agreement. It became a rare chance to invoice Dallas for what it presented as overages for the Silver Line project. That didn’t go over well with the City Council, which, after getting the news in February, directed staff to work with its partners to reach an agreement.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments helped negotiate a deal that jumped the $28 million to $90 million.

Carrollton Fentanyl Dealer Pleads Guilty. Jason Xavier Villanueva, 22, faces up to 40 years in prison for distributing the fentanyl that led to so many overdoses of Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD students.

Ikea Coming to Southlake. The store will open later this year, but it won’t be one of those massive operations. It’ll be a 10,000-square-foot planning and pickup store. Like if they opened a Buc-ee’s but only had the beef jerky and the bathrooms.

Start Getting Pumped for Errol Spence Jr. Fight. The welterweight “legacy fight” goes down July 29 in Vegas. If you don’t follow boxing, it’s a big deal. He faced his opponent, Terrence Crawford, for the first time yesterday at a press conference in LA. Know that Spence’s nickname is Big Fish when I share this quote from Crawford: “I’m gonna gut him and I’m gonna feed him to everybody that eats fish in here.” It is so on.

Eric Johnson Screws Up Inauguration. The Dallas mayor is doing away with the longstanding tradition of allowing council members to bring a family member onstage with them for their inauguration, which is Tuesday. A DMN editorial lays out why this move is so boneheaded and why some council members are rankled. One wonders why the mayor would do this. It’s not for the logistical reasons he claims. What’s the real reason?

Wednesday, the Dallas City Council will be asked to vote on the fate of short-term rentals in Dallas—a long, arduous, contentious process that has been four years in the making. 

The Council will consider two options. One would virtually eradicate Airbnb, Vrbo, and other operators from Dallas. The other would allow them to continue operating with new regulations. But before that vote, let’s unpack how we got here, and what the landscape looks like for some of those options.

Today the Dallas Morning News published a story with the headline “Black People Make Up Most Arrests for Small Amounts of Marijuana in Dallas, Report Says.” The first sentence: “A new report by Dallas’ top police watchdog and activists shows Black people are overrepresented in low-level marijuana arrests, spurring calls for an expansion of the de-enforcement policy in the city.”

That is all very much true. You read that, and you’re like, “What the hell, Dallas? Are we still doing this?”

Yes, we are still doing this. Last year we did it to exactly 33 Black people.

And that should be the story. Police Chief Eddie Garcia directed his officers to stop making low-level marijuana arrests in 2021, with some caveats. The news is that the cops arrested a total of 49 people last year for low-level possession of weed, down from 456 people just four years earlier. The News story has a chart in it clearly showing this important trend. That’s real progress, especially for the hundreds of Black people who were getting arrested.

There’s still work to do. The cops need to get better at transparency. The report makes that recommendation and several others that deserve attention. But let’s keep things in perspective.

That Was Some Storm, Huh? Right as the Denver Nuggets were lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy, the storm sirens sounded and the hail began pelting parts of North Texas. The enormous cell stretched across as many as four counties at once on its march east. Another blast of rain came before 7 a.m. There were reports of flash flooding in portions of Dallas, but nowhere near Sunday night’s. This morning’s weather is once again east of us, but more severe weather could come overnight tonight into Wednesday. Highs will be in the 80s today, with humidity that’ll make it feel like living in Nikola Jokic’s jersey.

Rare For State to Use Eminent Domain on Parkland. The Fairfield Lake State Park is an absolute mess. The state of Texas let its lease lapse, then panicked when Dallas developer Shawn Todd scooped the property to build a luxury lakefront community. Now the state has said it will use eminent domain to acquire the land back, but it requires a “fair” payment. Todd will likely ask for hundreds of millions of dollars and a court will decide the amount if the two parties can’t agree. The state says it “will continue to reserve condemnation for the rarest and most unique circumstances.”

$7.5 Million Community Project Coming to Forest and Audelia. The plans include a neighborhood park, a library, and a police substation. The city views this part of North Dallas as a “crime hot-spot” and is hopeful that a park and new programming will help lift it up.

Missing 7-Year-Old Found Safe, Suspect at Large. Dallas police say the missing 7-year-old girl whose disappearance triggered an Amber Alert has been found safe. A man in an SUV abducted the girl Sunday afternoon near Wynnewood Village in Oak Cliff; she was on the way to a store with her 9-year-old brother. She was found safe near an apartment complex at about 1 a.m. on Monday morning. The suspect remains at large.

Let’s keep this brief. Over the weekend, Alex Stein, the closest thing our city has to a bridge troll in the Year of Our Lord 2023, harassed Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner at DFW Airport. It became a national news story, and, as is Stein’s custom, he captured it on video.  

Normally this would be the part where we link to said video and elaborate a bit on why the harasser in question sucks. We’re not going to do that this time. If you read Jonny Auping’s profile of Stein in the May 2022 issue of D Magazine, you understand why. For those unaware, I’ll refer you to this passage from Auping’s story, which frames Stein’s schtick in the context of his appearances at city council meetings but neatly sums up the whole enterprise:

Taken by themselves, the videos are mostly harmless, if at times in poor taste (as when he wore a one-piece women’s swimsuit to Plano City Council to “protest” for trans rights). Depending on your sense of humor and political leanings, you might crack a smile. But there is a strategy behind Stein’s performances. He is exploiting municipal government meeting rules in a novel way to gain access to larger right-wing platforms where he can spread misinformation, transphobia, and conspiracy theories. 

Nothing about what Stein did Saturday was amusing. There are no innocent laughs to be mined from asking a long-term detainee in a Russian prison if the prisoner swap that granted her freedom was “a fair trade.” Same goes for positing that being forced to have sex with Vladimir Putin was one of the terms for granting her release. There is no purpose to any of this beyond generating clicks, because clicks are his ticket toward larger platforms where he can espouse harmful ideologies. Clicks make him matter.

Auping’s story about Stein is titled “Do Not Share.” That’s the right approach.

Severe Storms Roll Through North Texas. The heavy weather that was supposed to hit on Saturday ended up coming a day late and leaving thousands without power. And then the sky turned yellow? It was eerie last night with a ton of rain coming down in a sepia sky flashing with lightning.

Sarah Weinberg Wins Dallas ISD Board Seat. She defeated Jimmy Tran in a runoff, taking 53.21 percent of the vote in the election for Dustin Marshall’s former spot. The area she will represent is in near east and North Dallas.

Wings Lose to Liberty. It was a close one in New York until midway through the third, and then Breanna Stewart and the Liberty reeled off 19 of the next 24 points and it wasn’t.

It’s the third anniversary of Juneteenth’s inclusion in the roster of 11 federal holidays, thanks in large part to the efforts of the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” Opal Lee. Lee famously (and repeatedly) laced up her sneakers starting in 2016 to walk all the way to Washington D.C. to ask that her country officially recognize the holiday celebrated by so many descendants of enslaved persons. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bill that made that so.

Historically Black neighborhoods and freedman’s towns in North Texas have longstanding celebrations commemorating the day that enslaved people in Galveston were told that President Abraham Lincoln had freed them. Not familiar with the holiday? We recommend reading this profile of Lee from last year, and this discussion with Remembering Black Dallas’ Dr. Deborah Hopes about what Juneteenth means to Dallas in particular.

Below, we have compiled a list of events to help you learn more and celebrate the holiday, starting this weekend.

By next Wednesday afternoon, the four-year trudge of analyses and debate over how the city should manage short-term rentals such as Airbnb and Vrbo in single-family neighborhoods is set to finally be settled. The new City Council will be sworn in June 20, which means that next week’s agenda meeting is the last chance for the present body to establish policy that will affect their operations.

On Wednesday, Council learned its options during a briefing. The city can choose to enact regulations and collect fees and taxes from operators. Or it can follow the recommendation of the City Plan Commission to make those rentals illegal in single-family neighborhoods. The city would use zoning as a cudgel: categorize STRs as businesses similar to hotels. But the folks responsible for the real work—city staff—don’t seem confident that they’ll be able to enforce a broad ban by way of zoning. Regulations would give the city a mechanism to control the bad actors while collecting revenue for the city, they argued.

“I worry that … we’re adding regulations within the zoning ordinance that are going to either create confusion or inefficiencies with the enforcement piece,” said Julia Ryan, the city’s director of planning and urban design.