It is rumored that Mr. Mundinger will support SDC’s reorganization and transformation.
Goldman Sachs William Mundinger
Mr. Mundinger previously worked at Goldman Sachs where he was National Director of Development, Environmental, and Construction Services. There he provided development and oversight services in Dallas, the East and West Coasts and internationally.Mr. Mundinger will report to Dr. Eric A. Johnson, Chief of Economic Development and Neighborhood Services, whose tenure has been marked by inconsistency throughout.
If the appointment occurs, Mundinger will begin his tenure with the City of Dallas in mid August.
The appointment is expected to receive some negative attention and rumors of insiders controlling Dallas given Mundinger’s past employment with Goldman Sachs.
A Dallas firefighter paid to not work for COVID19 is now being paid to not work while on adminstrative leave. William Carter, a Dallas Fire Rescue firefighter at Engine 7, was arrested by Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers for felony theft.
The warrant for Carter’s arrest alleges he lied about a positive virus diagnoses for himself, his spouse, and his child. As a result, Carter received more than $12,000 in paid sick leave from the Dallas Fire Rescue.
Firefighters in Dallas exposed to or diagnosed with COVID19 are given paid time off without having to use their own sick leave bank per Dallas policy. This benefit is also extended to a firefighter with family members who test positive for coronavirus.
Court documents show Carter received $12,548.86 in three payroll cycless over the course of his leave. The funds were coded as “COVID leave,” and were paid from the City of Dallas General Funds. This number does not account for the overtime paid to others to cover his shift requirements.
There has been no comment from IAFF Local 58, the union association, that represents Dallas Fire Rescue firefighters.
Dallas Firefighter Paid To Not Work, But Is He Exception?
Dallas firefighters started having the option to receive the COVID19 vaccination in December 2020, but there are still many who have not taken up the opportunity to be protected against COVID19.
Nationally, firefighters have avoided taking the vaccine at a rate of almost fifty percent in some jurisdictions, despite being on the front lines of the epidemic.
DPD is investigating an officer for possible use of excessive force during a recent arrest in Deep Ellum. The investigation comes after Dallas Texas TV shows an officer pushing a man into a light post. The officer then punches him repeatedly while he was on the ground before two other officers intervene and remove the attacking officer.
There is no word on the condition of the man assaulted or what prompted the actions by what appears to be a police sergeant, i.e. a front line supervisor who would be expected to set the standard for behavior in uniform.
This assault comes almost fourteen months after another video shows DPD officers beating a prone subject during the George Floyd protests. It is still unknown if those officers ever faced disciplinary action for their behavior.
It is not clear how this incident will be seen by City Council who last year was working to defund the police.
Keep Dallas Safe which is launching a podcast today has called on 2000 new officers.
DPD Assault In Deep Ellum Applauded By Chief Garcia
DPD released a statement on the incident:
“The Dallas Police Department is aware of the video on social media showing a Dallas officer using force in the Deep Ellum area of downtown Dallas. The officer has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an Internal Affairs administrative investigation. A criminal inquiry is also being reviewed by the department. Chief Garcia would like to commend those officers who recognize their duty to intervene in this incident and deescalated the situation.”
One source noted that while Chief Eddie Garcia commends the officers who intervened, it took a social media post, not self reporting of the incident by officers to bring the issue to light.
COVID19 Numbers highest since February 2021 per Dallas County Health and Human Services with almost 1000 new cases report including several deaths. One of those deaths was a fifteen year old girl.
This time last year, Dallas was considered a medical hot zone for its COVID19 case load. Last week, UTSouthwestern pandemic modeling predicted six hundred new daily cases by August 9. Yesterday’s numbers top that by 60%.
Judge Jenkins released data about the new virus infections.
Locally, it is reported that Collin County and Tarrant both had hundreds of new infections reported also and that Denton County is down to ten ICU beds – the same issue driving restrictions earlier in the pandemic.
COVID19 Numbers Highest Since February – But Back To Normal?
Earlier in the week, Governor Abbott stated local governments and schools could not require a mask or vaccine mandate and it was a personal choice.
Dallas ISD has already said school will open under normal conditions with almost no option for virtual students.
DISD Welcome Back 2021 will happen Saturday, August 7, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, located at 1201 E. Eighth Street at their We’re Ready Back to School Enrollment Fair.
Dallas Independent School District says it is ready for in-person instruction and to serve our families in a safe learning environment. Thousands of cases of COVID19 did hit staff and students across DISD last school year, including the Townview Magnet campus.
COVID19 numbers were manageable when school started in October 2020, but quickly shot up. Last year Dallas was considered a COVID19 medical hot zone and despite recent CDC guidance that all school staff and students should mask up regardless of vaccination status, Governor Abbott has denied localities the ability to mandate masks.
DISD Welcome Back 2021 Details
As DISD welcomes back staff and students, it is important to remember several standards that will be in place.
Currently, Dallas ISD will be back to in-person learning, districtwide, with the exception of hybird learners at the Dallas Hybrid Preparatory at Stephen J. Hay.
Additionally, the ISD will keep the nine-week grading periods this school year 2021-2022, the same as last. It is not clear if this will promote better learning or not.
Finally, there are three different school calendars which are campus specific. The base calendar is below.
There are three different Dallas ISD 2021-2022 school year calendars.
A large majority of school campuses will have the base calendar. Forty-one schools will have an Intersession calendar, and five schools will have a School Day Redesign Calendar.
The alternative calendars are one part of a comprehensive effort the district is taking to help ensure the pandemic doesn’t have a long-lasting negative impact on student learning.
The recent K-12 CDC Mask recommendation is being ignored by Governor Greg Abbott per statements reinforcing his May Executive Order.
The CDC has recommended everyone in the K-12 setting wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for FDA authorized vaccinations.
When asked by a KXAN reporter about whether Texas would be allowed to enforce mask wearing his press secretary responded: “the time for government mandating of masks is over…”
The spokesperson goes on, “vaccines are the most effective defense against contracting COVID and becoming seriously ill, and we continue to urge all eligible Texans to get the vaccine. The COVID vaccine will always remain voluntary and never forced in Texas.”
K-12 CDC Mask Recommendation or Donald Trump?
It is not clear if the current course of action is due to the election calendar.
Governor Abbott is in a fierce primary contest for the Republican nomination for Governor. One of his opponents, Don Huffines, has already hit out at Abbott over the rolling blackouts and freezeout earlier in the year.
Abbott has soought the support of former President Donald Trump – despite a clear move away from Trump in many suburbs, including Dallas – over the infiltration of the Republican Party by QAnon.
Per eyewitnesses and social media accounts, Dallas Love Field airport was “on lockdown” after an individual ran through a TSA checkpoint.
Dallas Love Field Airport confirmed that an individual did breach the TSA checkpoint. It led to a brief halt of passenger screening, but “there was no impact to flight operations.”
Dallas Love Field Security Breach Adds To Unruly Passenger Wave
According to FAA data, there have been more than 3500 unruly passenger incidents in 2021 as of July 20, 2021.
Passengers at Dallas Love Field posted to Twitter said that the waits were far longer than the fifteen minutes the airport claimed.
This is the second incident at Love Field in just over a week. The first was the arrival of a passenger from Nigeria with monkeypox – a rare condition similar to smallpox.
Former Richardson Mayor Laura Jordan, and her developer husband Mark Jordan, were found guilty Friday, July 23 of bribery and tax evasion.
Prosecutors said the former mayor accepted cash, vacations, and home renovations from Jordan and had sex with him in exchange for her votes to change the city’s zoning on land fronting Central Expressway. She also voted to approve hundreds of apartments that Jordan wanted to build there.
Early in the trial, prosecutors told jurors that the Jordans “corruptly convinced the city of Richardson to approve a multi-million dollar real estate deal.” Prosecutors also said that they “used their adulterous affair and subsequent marriage to cover up corruption and get away with this.”
But the Jordans’ attorneys told the jury that the former mayor voted for the project because it was in the best interest of the city, and that a majority of council members approved the project too.
The conviction comes just weeks after the conviction of Ruel Hamilton on similar charges.
Laura Jordan
Laura Jordan was the Mayor of Richardson, Texas from 2013 to 2015. She had previously become the first woman elected to the post of Mayor Pro Tem in the City’s 57-year history as a home rule city.
Laura Jordan, then Laura Maczka, was initially elected to the Richardson City Council, Place 4 in May 2011, defeating Karl Voigtsberger by 74.97% to 25.03%. She is believed to be only the 6th woman elected to the city council in the last forty years.
In 2013, Maczka was elected mayor in the first direct election of the mayor since the city became a home rule city in 1956.
Candida Auris (C. auris) is in Dallas per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today. They have evidence that the untreatable fungus is spreading at two Dallas-area hospitals and a Washington, D.C, nursing home.
Several patients have been diagnozed with the invasive fungal infections. The infection is impervious to all three major classes of medications, according to the CDC.
“This is really the first time we’ve started seeing clustering of resistance” in which patients seemed to be getting the infections from each other, said the CDC’s Dr. Meghan Lyman.
The new infections come as Dallas is still responding to the COVID19 pandemic and the recent diagnosis of monkeypox in Dallas.
The fungus, Candida auris, is a harmful form of yeast. It is dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems.
It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart, or brain.
Health officials have sounded alarms for years about superbugs like Candida auris. In particular, they have found commonly used drugs having little to no effect.
In those cases, there was no evidence the infections had spread from patient to patient – scientists concluded the resistance to the drugs formed during treatment.
The new cases did spread, the CDC concluded.
In Washington, D.C., a cluster of 101 C. auris cases at a nursing home dedicated to very sick patients included three that were resistant to all three kinds of antifungal medications. A cluster of 22 in two Dallas-area hospitals included two with that level of resistance. The facilities weren’t identified, but the cases occured between January and April.
Lyman said both are ongoing outbreaks and that additional infections have been identified since April. But those added numbers were not reported.
Investigators reviewed medical records and found no evidence of previous antifungal use among the patients in those clusters. Health officials say that means they spread from person to person.
Candida auris Background
Per the CDC, Candida auris is an emerging fungus that can cause outbreaks of severe infections in healthcare facilities.
In the United States, it has most commonly spread in long-term care facilities caring for people with severe medical conditions.
However, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of C. auris have been reported in COVID-19 units of acute care hospitals. These outbreaks may be related to changes in routine infection control practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, including limited availability of gloves and gowns, or reuse of these items, and changes in cleaning and disinfection practices.
New C. auris cases without links to known cases or healthcare abroad have been identified recently in multiple states, suggesting an increase in undetected transmission. Screening for C. auris colonization, an important part of containment efforts, has been more limited as resources of healthcare facilities and health departments have been diverted to respond to COVID-19.
A pox panic is taking place across the United States as more than two hundred contacts occurred between the Dallas monkeypox case last week and those who came within six feet of the initial patient.
In addition to its recent focus on COVID19, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring two hundred cases across twenty-seven states. The Texas individual who contracted the disease in Nigeria before traveling to Dallas by way of Atlanta on July 8 – 9, 2021.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that so far, no additional cases of the disease have been detected among those being monitored, but there is the possibility contact cases have happened unknown to CDC investigators.
State and local health officials are working with the CDC to follow up with known contacts of the Dallas infected patient, Patient Zero.
Pox Panic Started Friday
The case of monkeypox is the first confirmed case of the disease in the United States in two decades.
Monkeypox is a rare, infectious disease that can cause widespread rashes, fever, headaches, and muscle aches in people who contract it.
Other signs and symptoms include:
Fever
Headache
Muscle aches
Backache
Swollen lymph nodes
Chills
Exhaustion
According to WHO, the monkeypox virus has similar features to the more dangerous human smallpox. The primary difference between in symptoms between smallpox and monkeypox is monkeypox will cause lymph nodes to swell (lymphadenopathy). Smallpox does not have cause lymphadenopathy.
There are two types of monkeypox viruses – the more contagious and harsher version from Central Africa and the other from West Africa.
