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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-03-14 Euless ArticlesU.S. Concrete reports 4Q loss EULESS, Texas (AP) _ U.S. Concrete Inc. (USCR) on Tuesday reported a loss of $15.6 million in its fourth quarter. The Euless, Texas-based company said it had a loss of $1.01 per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 82 cents per share. The results topped Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 70 cents per share. The concrete and aggregates producer posted revenue of $318.8 million in the period, also topping Street forecasts. Three analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $317 million. For the year, the company reported net income of $8.9 million, or 55 cents per share, swinging to a profit in the period. Revenue was reported as $1.17 billion. U.S. Concrete shares have decreased nearly 7 percent since the beginning of the year. The stock has climbed 10 percent in the last 12 months. _____ This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on USCR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/USCR Lazy Dog Restaurant offers options, portions fit for the whole pack By Anna Caplan There are lap dogs. And then there are my dogs, who likely don’t qualify with their 90-pounds- plus Great Pyrenees puppy girth. Imagine seeing these two small farm animals at Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar. I thought about bringing them to the patio, which is pet-friendly and even offers a dog menu. And then I thought, eating out is my one chance to enjoy food without them shoulder to shoulder with me at the table, eying my fries and waiting, just waiting, to pounce on my kid’s cheeseburger. Luna and Frank, we hardly missed ye. But it looked like no one let the dogs out when we checked into Lazy Dog one recent lazy Sunday afternoon. The vast dining room, an homage to the outdoors and Jackson Hole, Wyo. (where chain founder Chris Simms frequently vacations), was filled with planks of wood, stone and other vaguely rustic materials, plus a boisterous post-church dining crew. No four-legged creatures roamed the insulated patio, attractively enhanced with a fire pit, in search of a renegade chip or runneth-over dip. Their loss. Because the food at Lazy Dog, a chain with locations all over Southern California plus a couple in Nevada (and two others in DFW: Plano and Addison), is actually pretty good. One look at the menu might give you pause, and a flash of possible heartburn to come, with its run-the-gamut take on American comfort food. Baby-back ribs, pizza, burgers and sandwiches are all available. But many of the dishes sport surprising ingredients. House-made salsa and pickled veggies on nachos? Bison meatloaf? A lamb ragu pasta? “Umami”-sauced fries? The management team — Octavio Cedillo, Kevin Plaster, Mario Camacho and Sergio Escandon-Pineda — display some of Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar’s dishes for humans. Lazy Dog clearly sourced one heckuva consulting chef to develop its menu, as the dishes are also palatable to the masses — there was a dogged crowd waiting at the hostess stand — likely because everything is in abundance, with absurdly generous portions and cheese. Tremendous amounts of melted cheese. The chicken-chile verde nachos ($10.50) were ridiculous: a skillet piled eyeballs-high with shredded tomatillo chicken, melted jack and cheddar cheeses, guacamole, salsa, pickled jalapeños, black beans, and Tapatio crema. I was sold at “Tapatio,” one of my favorite hot sauces, which has a healthy amount of spice; here, it was well-tempered by the runny cream. But the real story was how the skillet proved the ultimate conduit for keeping each ingredient together. No chip was lost in the creation of this dish — each one crispy and an interesting bite, whether it was doused in perfectly hot melted queso or sported more of the “healthful” components (i.e., the guac or salsa). It was no small feat that these nachos tasted so great. I only wished we had more friends at the table with whom to enjoy them. But we had to press on. The sticky ribs ($17.25) were painted with a honey-plum barbecue sauce that had us yearning more for a douse of hand sanitizer than another rib. Their sweetness was lost on the relatively delicate pork, so I turned my attention to their accompaniment, the umami fries. Funny — they looked like regular fries, except the thick-cut potatoes were drizzled with another sticky sauce, this one a bit more well-balanced with a nice mix of earthy and sweet. Another good touch was the small mound of coleslaw, topped with black sesame seeds and appealing in a premade-bag-of-Asian-salad kind of way. And of course there are pizzas. I liked the Black and Bleu ($13.75), inordinately satisfying — perhaps because it was at least 15 inches across. Cajun shredded chicken commingled with shards of bacon, caramelized purple onion, mozzarella, diced tomatoes, green onions and blue cheese. I could hardly discern the latter ingredient, which would have offered more pungency to the, again, sweet entree. Aside from the no-big-deal gluttony that comes with the territory, you could do far worse than eating at Lazy Dog, with its friendly service and bright, cheery dining room. Kind of like an eager golden retriever puppy looking for approval — or a semi-annoying Great Pyrenees named Frank — it’s hard to keep this good dog of a restaurant down. Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/living/food-drink/article135489793.html#storylink=cpy Euless police chief on first anniversary of officer’s death: ‘You never get over it’ By Elizabeth Campbell liz@star-telegram.com EULESS It’s been a year since officer David Hofer was ambushed and killed in a Euless park, but it was not his death that family, friends and colleagues came together to remember Wednesday. They came to cherish their time with Hofer, and to honor his service. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” said Euless police chaplain Mark Masey, praying as Hofer’s family placed a wreath at the city’s Police and Fire Memorial. “Let us never ever have to add another name to this wall.” Hofer, 29, was shot and killed at J.A. Carr Park on March 1, 2016, after answering a call of shots fired in the area. Upon arriving at the park he encountered Jorge “Brian” Gonzalez, a 22-year-old mentally ill drug addict, who shot the officer at close range. Other officers returned fire, fatally wounding Gonzalez. Hofer and Gonzalez died later that day in the hospital. Hofer had moved to North Texas in 2014 from New York City, where he had worked as a police officer in the Ninth Precinct in the East Village for five years. News of his death triggered a steady stream of support, including at his memorial service at Pennington Field in Bedford, where thousands filled the stands to honor the slain officer. Speaking after Wednesday’s brief service, Hofer’s sister said she and her family were overwhelmed and grateful for all of the support from their “blue family” and the Euless community. “Tragically, we lost someone we loved more than anything,” Meret Hofer said. “Most don’t have hundreds rallying around them. We couldn’t have done this without their help.” Meret Hofer said police officers from across the country regularly check in on how her family is handling their loss. “We forget that under that uniform, they [police officers] are amazing, wonderful and caring people. They want to help others have a better life,” she said. Police Chief Mike Brown said Hofer’s death was a traumatic loss for the police officers and the city they serve. “We dealt with this [the a death of an officer] in the early 1980s when officer Michael Williamson was killed by a drunk driver,” Brown said. “You never get over it.” The cases of officers Michael Sarro and Ed Pietrowski, who fired on Gonzalez after Hofer was shot, will be presented to a Tarrant County grand jury on March 9, officials said. “We forget that under that uniform, they are amazing, wonderful and caring people. They want to help others have a better life.” Meret Hofer, David Hofer’s sister Safety and training After Hofer’s death, Brown said helping the officers get counseling and training are top priorities in the department. The deaths of Hofer and five Dallas police officers who were ambushed during a peaceful protest in July highlighted the need for body armor designed to protect against high-powered-rifle bullets. Euless purchased the body armor and ballistic helmets for its officers and firefighters along with first aid kits to treat injured officers and civilians. Brown described how City Manager Loretta Getchell asked him what he needed for his officers to be safe. In 2016, there was a sharp increase in police officers killed in the line of duty. From Jan. 1 through Dec. 28 there were 135 deaths, including those caused by traffic accidents, but almost half of the officers were shot to death — a 56 percent increase from 2015. Training in de-escallating a situation is also vital, Brown said. Euless gets its share of shots fired calls, he said, and most don’t amount to anything. Yet, Brown wrestles with the questions of what could have been done differently then and would he handle the situation differently today. “We were as good as we could be at that point in time,” he said. Officers approached the park from different directions, and wondering “if only” doesn’t get one very far, he said. “If only officer Hofer would have taken a different route to the creek. As it happened he walked right to the spot that his killer was hiding and waiting for him,” Brown said. “If only one of the other officers were first in the park coming from a different direction, would that have given all of our officers a better chance of survival? “I think in the end, this was a tragic and senseless premeditated ambush set out by a person who did not care if he survived the encounter. It’s hard to stop that kind of mentality. I am just thankful that only one officer was injured that day. It could have been so much worse.” Elizabeth Campbell: 817-390-7696, @fwstliz Euless Emergency Operations Center Upgrades Lifesaving Technology As North Texas enters storm season, emergency managers in Euless are upgrading potentially life-saving technology in the city’s Emergency Operations Center. “We’ve been in this building since 2001 and this technology has been piecemealed together over the years,” Assistant Police Chief Gary Landers said. “The current equipment in the room is individual pieces. It does not communicate with each other.” City Council approved the purchase of the equipment and a vendor has been selected. “We are now in the purchase order process. As soon as we get our purchase order, we will start ordering equipment,” Landers said. “We are replacing TVs. We are using more touchscreen technology and some more up-to-date weather apps so that we can make sure that we are getting the best and most accurate data that we can at the time." The Emergency Operations Center is the brain of emergency services during a disaster. “Any time an event happens that would overwhelm the city resources or take numerous amounts of city resources,” Landers said. “The Emergency Operations Center is where you would bring all of the decision-makers from the different disciplines from within the city. You can put them in one room and collectively deal with situations.” The council budgeted $95,000 for the equipment. “Part of the upgrade to the EOC is also to record and disseminate public education. It will have camera capabilities,” Landers said. “We will be able to broadcast that information across the city’s cable channel so that we can make sure to get out the information about what to do.” When the purchase order is complete, the upgraded EOC should be installed, upgraded and ready for use within 30 days.