Perhaps you’re sick and tired of hearing about the toll road. Maybe you just want this thing to go away. You’re upset that Angela Hunt has stood up to two former mayors, the current mayor, the rest of the council and city staff. You want your high-speed toll road ASAP and don’t see a problem with it running through Trinity Park.

This is the vibe I got from the City Council at Wednesday’s meeting when Park and Recreation Department Director Paul Dyer appeared with a briefing on the progress of the Renaissance Plan.

The discussion was filled with plenty of good ideas about utilizing resources for city parks and making the parks safer. Also included was a strange question by Councilmember Vonciel Hill who asked if the October ’08 planned opening for the Trinity River Audubon Center would be influenced by the November elections.

However, the most interesting part of the debate was about the Trinity toll road. Councilmember Mitchell Rasansky, whom I agree with nine times out of 10 and is an excellent council member, brought the toll road into the discussion when he asked to take another look at the picture of the Trinity River Corridor from the presentation.

“That’s the toll road through there, isn’t it?” Rasansky asked Dyer. “I’d like everyone to know that we have around 9,800 acres in the Trinity Park and of that, 220 acres is being used for the toll road. So I’d love everyone to really look at this.”

Rasansky’s message was clear. The entire park will be massive and this is just an itty, bitty piece of it that no one will miss. But then he said something to Dyer that absolutely shocked me.

“You should take color pictures of this,” Rasansky said. “You should take copies of this and distribute it to the council members so they can give it out at town hall meetings to show people what is going on, that our park and our good-looking vision here is not going to be destroyed.”

Wait a second, I thought to myself. Did he just instruct a city official to use taxpayers’ money to make copies of this? Then Rasansky said this to Dyer and erased any doubt in my mind.

“I think it’s very important that all of us get 25 or 50 copies of this on page 22 and distribute it in our town hall meetings that we might have just to hand them out so they’ll know really what is going on,” Rasansky said.

I realize 25 to 50 color copies for each council member hardly add up to an amount worth getting excited about, but it’s not about the money, it’s about the principle. Using city officials and taxpayers’ money in this campaign is not what should be going on.

If Rasansky wanted to make copies, no one is stopping him from doing that by himself using his own bucks and time. But to expect city staff and taxpayers’ money do to his work for him is crossing the line.

I caught up with Angela Hunt, who was on her way to a Lakewood Exchange Club luncheon, after the debate on this item to hear what she thought about what happened.

“It’s amazing to me that people apparently think it’s OK to spend Dallas taxpayers’ dollars advocating a position on a political campaign,” Hunt said. “It’s really amazing.”

When Hunt’s turn came to speak, she asked Dyer about funding tied to the Audubon Center, the Texas Horse Park and the Whitewater Park. Dyer said the funding for the Audubon Center was from city bond funds and had no federal funding tied to it at all. He also confirmed that they have broken ground for the center and the Nov. 6 vote will have no effect on the timeline or funding for the project.

Dyer said the Texas Horse Park is funded with $15 million in taxpayers’ money and $15 million in matching funds from the private sector. Again, no federal funds are involved. He said they are moving forward with the design on the project. Dyer also said the Whitewater Park funding was private funds from the Trinity Trust, not City of Dallas money or federal funds.

Hunt had just dismissed the idea that funding would be in jeopardy if the toll road was moved out of the park. This has been a scare tactic thrown out since the beginning of this issue and without it, proponents of keeping the road in the park have little left. So, of course, despite Dyer’s comments, Mayor Pro Tem Garcia and Mayor Leppert couldn’t help themselves from keeping the scare tactics alive in what were clearly acts of desperation.

“The NTTA has committed approximately $25 million for the parkway construction from where some of the dirt will come to do some of the excavation of the lakes and $5 million for the access to the lakes,” Dr. Garcia. “If we do lose this funding, we will probably finish without any of the lakes.”

“Probably” doesn’t sound very convincing and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers need to raise and extend the levees. To do so, finding appropriate soil is key and that soil could very well be the soil that will be dug up in the lakes. The Corps can dig the lakes and use the soil for the levees. The NTTA would use the soil as filler for the toll road.

“And while it probably will not affect the Audubon, we already delayed the opening for that,” Dr. Garcia said. “It does, probably could affect, and of course I don’t want to say that it will affect the Texas Horse Park because I don’t know that.”

Garcia provided absolutely no evidence that funding will be jeopardized, but she tried her best to make it sound like it. Quotes like that one that drive me bananas. And quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to hear a statement like that come from Dallas’ mayor pro tem.

Mayor Leppert was more eloquent in his comments, but he was trying to make the same point.

“To the extent those affect and they impact our ability to fundraise on the private side, in other words we don’t go forward with the project that we’re talking about, then the private side all of the sudden looks at that and feels the project has diminished,” Leppert said. “Then, all of the sudden, 24, 25 and 26 [the Audubon Center, the Texas Horse Park and the Whitewater Park] are significantly at risk. Is that correct?”

“That would be correct, yes,” Dyer said.

But wait, there’s more. Dr. Garcia’s best quote of the day actually summed up Hunt’s main argument about why voters should be against this road -- because the project has changed so much.

“The picture that is on page 22 [the Trinity River Corridor] is the Balanced Vision Plan for the Trinity River, it is not what was presented to the voters in 1998,” Dr. Garcia said. “I remember some of those pictures and this is not it, am I correct Ms. Jordan [talking to Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan]? This is the Balanced Vision Plan that the council voted on in 2003.”

Perhaps Councilmember Dave Neumann, who might be the new chair of the Trinity River Committee, could put together some rational thoughts to help explain a good reason to vote no on Nov. 6. Bear with me and read his speech from Wednesday.

“The ’98 bond program ended up becoming, evolved to a Balanced Vision Plan and I think that’s very important for us all to realize that this is about a Balanced Vision Plan. And one of the components of a Balanced Vision Plan was a parkway and it deals with the issue of moving and the mobility of our citizens through our city and within our city. So I think this is a very good graphic and I think this shows relative proportionality of the proposed parkway in proportion to our park,” Neumann said. “And so again, I want to take us back again, this is a Balanced Vision Plan and I think everything that we do as council members is about balance and I think that’s what we’re here for is balance for the Southern sector, North, East and West. It’s balanced about transportation issues, about economic issues, parks versus public safety; it’s balance. And I think that’s what leaders, that’s what the citizens ask us as leaders, to provide is balance. OK, thank you on that. I just wanted to cauterize that question.”

I had to go back and listen to my audio to grab that because I didn’t have anything in my notes about what he said. There wasn’t anything of substance in his rambling nonsense and in fact, it reminded me of the recent comments by Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton.

Finally, Councilmember Jerry Allen, perhaps jealous of Hunt’s savvy use of Dyer to prove her point, decided to try it out for himself.

“Will the public have access to 10,000 acres?” Allen said.

“Yes, they will,” Dyer said.

“They can go anywhere they want in that 10,000 acres?” Allen said.

“Well, it’s a public park, so it’s totally accessible,” Dyer said.

“So, in reality then, it’s a whole lot bigger than just this little 800-acre park we alluded to earlier, is that true?” Allen said.

“That’s true,” Dyer said.

This was piggybacking on Rasansky’s earlier comment that the downtown park is just a small piece of a much bigger pie. However, this is the most valuable part of the park. To dismiss it because it’s simply a part of a larger project is irresponsible. The location of the land in question is very important.

The downtown park represents roughly eight percent of the entire 10,000-acre park. Imagine a real estate developer buying a chunk of land. They build a golf course with 2,000 lots, 160 (eight percent) are located around the golf course. What Allen and Rasansky are trying to make you believe is that those prime spots along the golf course aren’t worth any more than the other 1,840 lots simply because they are a small fraction of the entire project. This is flawed logic.

“We’re going to build a lot of roads in our city in the future, but we’ve only got one Trinity Park and if we screw this up, we’re never going to get it back. You’re never going to be able take that road out of there,” Hunt said. “It’s disappointing that our city leaders don’t have the type of vision to say you know what, we’re not going to sacrifice our park so you can build a cheaper toll road.”

Yes, the park will be big. But residents of the City of Dallas are entitled to the prime “golf course” property instead of giving it away to the NTTA. Once you get rid of the scare tactics and nonsense provided by people who want to keep the road in the floodway, you’re left with one thing. It’s the cheapest option. Just because something is the cheapest, doesn’t make it the smartest.

“There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man's lawful prey.”

-John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

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