Why I am Supporting David Kunkle for Mayor and Yes, It Has To Do With His House

I posted the homes of the top three mayoral candidates– apologies to Ed Okpa, because he is not in the top third, maybe next election — because I thought it would be fun to look at what their homes say about their persona.

Then I discovered the “conditions”, or CDU of each candidate’s home — condition, desirability, utility. As I mentioned in the first post, all of these candidates live in homes built about the same time — Mike Rawlings home was remodeled in 2006, Ron Natinsky’s was built in 2003, so it’s the oldest, and David Kunkle’s home was built in 2006. Ron’s being the oldest is in the “worst” condition, that is, only a “good”, not “excellent”.

When do we want our homes to be in the worst possible shape? When we protest our property taxes. I saw all three homes — not one is in bad shape. Any one of these top candidate’s homes is ready for a photo shoot at the drop of a hat. The conditions of each candidate’s home is “good” for Natinsky, “very good” for Rawlings, and “excellent” for Kunkle. Why the variation on the conditions?

Because of property taxes, my favorite subject. I do it, you do it. You go down there and tell the appraisers how bad everything is in your home, all the repairs that have to be made and are in fact dragging down your property value. The appraiser lowers the condition of your home and that brings down your home value, saves you a smidgen in taxes. Would anyone want to sell their home and blast out the condition is merely good? Hell no. These are just the games we play because of the ridiculous property tax system in this state.

My house is just FALLING APART! My condition is “good”. But it could sure be better.

So what this tells me is that of these three candidates, Ron Natinsky has fought most vigorously to reduce his property taxes. Hmmm, maybe I should be voting for him.

Mike Rawlings fought pretty hard too, to get a condition of “very good” and in fact, I’d suggest he call Tiffany Hamill Mackey and let her get the condition knocked down to “good”, save him a few dollars.

David Kunkle has obviously not been aggressively fighting his taxes because his house is in the best condition — excellent, highest you can get. Hence my rationale.

This could mean that Kunkle, who is also not keen on increasing taxes, plays the game the most fairly. It tells me what I think about the man: he’s kind of a basically decent guy who’s going to do what’s right, not what saves him money or nets him a bigger tax savings. I like that. I’m also tired of politics being a personality contest. I like that he lowered crime when he was Chief of Police — our crime rate is inching upwards again, by the way. I think he spends money where it’s needed, not on fluff. I think Dallas is poised to become a world class city if we can cut the cronyism and petty politics and we need a mayor who does not use city resources to tend or mend his marital woes.¬† I think Kunkle wants to make us healthier from within, rather than worrying about the impression our skyscape makes on visitors or postcards. Visitors don’t live here, we do. And we need to tend to our neighborhoods and quality of life. It’s a little like when Jayne Byrne won the mayor’s race in Chicago because of a series of wicked snowstorms. Byrne was fired by Daley machine mayor Michael Bilandic in 1977, then ran against him in 1979. Political observers poo-poohed she had any chance of winning. However, when Chicago was all but paralyzed by those January storms, Byrne got the edge she needed and won the general election with 72 percent of the vote–at the time, the largest margin ever recorded in a Chicago mayoral election.

Personally, I think we have three really great candidates, maybe the best we’ve ever had. It’s a hard choice, and in a perfect world I’d say let them share the job.

Or maybe we just need a few bad snowstorms to see who can shovel the best.

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