By Charles O’Neal
Special to Texas Metro News
Look, I don’t care – or trust – what the Dallas Morning News prints. If I have to decide who to believe – between Kim Tolbert, who I know and Rick Welts, who I don’t – I’m going with City Manager Tolbert every time.
She is a consummate professional – a literal Master of Public Administration – who understands the role/responsibility of the manager’s office. PLUS – and this is the part most people can’t reconcile themselves to: she is a Black female who is acutely aware (and frequently reminded, I’m sure, in this age of DEI animus) that she is the object of intense scrutiny regarding job performance.
Because she knows her job, I don’t believe she would overstep the boundaries of her role and offer city hall to the Mavericks knowing that consideration requires city council action. It is exactly her attention to the details of delivering necessary municipal services, ensuring public safety, managing and bolstering the morale of 14,000 city employees, addressing “quality of life” for Dallas residents, mitigating homelessness, all while keeping an eye on an all-too-inadequate FIVE BILLION DOLLAR BUDGET that makes her performance at this historic juncture all the more remarkable!
All of which makes the mean-spirited, uninformed personal attacks on Ms. Tolbert all the more distasteful! She is doing a job that the racist trolls in the peanut gallery aren’t qualified to critique AND she is doing it while juggling, walking backward in heels!
Leave the woman alone and LET HER WORK!
Charles O’Neal is the President of the Texas Association of African American Chambers of Commerce (TAAACC) and a well-respected former journalist.
