"We Are a Business." Council's Getting its Park and Recreation Budget Briefing Right Now.

By Robert Wilonsky Mon., Aug. 23 2010 at 1:42 PM

Categories: City Hall, Park and Rec

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City council's back after its lunch break, and if you've got a few minutes I'd recommend tuning in to the Park and Rec budget briefing. Mike Rawlings, the former homeless czar who's now the Park Board president, is leading the presentation, and moments ago he singled out Fair Park. As in: The city spends $7.1 million "to support" Fair Park, and "we get back $4.9 million as a city."

Said Rawlings, the council has to "jump" on Fair Park: "We're getting there to break even," he said, "but we all know Fair Park could be one of the great places in the nation, and we've got to get all over Ms. Davis's district in that regard."

Rawlings, ex Pizza Hut president, acknowledges he runs a businesslike meeting. He said the council needs to make "data-driven decisions" when figuring out which pools and rec centers to keep open, and explains that Park and Rec is "probably one of the biggest businesses in Dallas going, more than any restaurant chain."

"The key," he said, "is how do we get attendance up?" He also spoke about the need to "drive customer satisfaction up and costs down," and said he too is worried that as the city spends bond money opening up more and more parks, the operations and maintenance budget will jump up -- and bite the city right in the wallet.

And then he referred to plans to cut back mowing at parks. That, he said before asking Park and Rec director Paul Dyer to explain how that'll work, is the city's "silent killer." Said Dyer, the graffiti-abatement teams in the parks have been "let go," and lights at ballparks and security areas won't be replaced under the current budgets. Like I said, tune in. Council's about to ask questions. Tennell Atkins just said: "We are not a Pizza Hut. Kids are not a commodity."

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More prrof that our councilmembers forget to think before they speak: Tennell Atkins just said: "We are not a Pizza Hut. Kids are not a commodity." Kids are a commodity, Tennell! Stop thinking about just ways to serve your constituents in your district and your donors. The kids in the city need an outlet to grow and learn. If you wonder why Dallas has families moving out to the 'burbs, idiotic council decisions to defund Parks & Recreation programs is right behind the failures of DISD.
Leppert also doesn't like the rotating pool proposal -- and, like Hunt, doesn't recall signing off on that particular plan.
Mayor's up. And he wonders: Between $1.8 mil from solid-waste revenue jump and Oncor's $1 mil today, doesn't Dyer have enough to keep hours as is -- especially if he closes four rec centers "within 3/4 of a mile" of each other, which the mayor'd like to see happen. But nobody has a list of those rec centers. The mayor says everyone should have seen that list, but he'll make sure it goes out again. I am not clear which rec centers he's referring to.
A park has to make a profit? A park has to break even? What in the world is wrong with you people? Do you expect the police department to make a profit? Should the court system make a profit? True, some city services have user fees, but in most cases those user fees must be supplemented by some other revenue stream, oh, I don't know, maybe TAXES. Taxes is how most of our city services are paid for. The main purpose of our city council is to make decisions about what services the city is going to provide and how the city is going to pay for them. Those abominable parking fees at Fair Park resulted from someone's decision that park users who drive to the park should pay the costs of maintaining the park. That is almost like charging the kid who wants to swing on the swings at a playground a fee to do so. If you want a nice park with a variety of attractions and services, you have to find a way to pay for them. That is when you decide how much you want to tax all the people in the city to pay for them. And I guess that is how you make a park "break even"--you raise taxes or cut services.
Greg, They are building tollroads down the middle of the Trinity and signature bridges that don't connect to levees.
It's gotten to the point that Dallas is just a collection of 14 little racially divided fiefdoms held together only be a need for police and fire potection.
Why do all these discussions show council members talking about "since I don't have a pool in my district it really does not matter to me" or similiar things about libraries, etc? I thought the council was supposed to represent what is best for the city, not myopicly what is best for their district. Where are the big thinkers of this city?
errol mckay deserves a raise - $757,000 is peanuts considering that I get layed every year after tx ou weekend close all the pools and rec centers!!
And, Wylie, I've asked Chris Heinbaugh some further questions raised by the <em>D</em> piece. I will provide the Q's as soon as I get the A's. Holding breath beginning ... now.
Hunt also wonders: Why are pools closed at end of July, not when school starts. Because, says Dyer, there's no money to run 'em. She also recalls pools staying open till 9 when she was a kid. Now they close at 7. She wants Dyer to tell her what it'd cost to keep 'em open later. He recommends instead shifting hours -- opening later, closing later. But there's a safety issue as well. She says Rawlings wants a "top-rated park system," which would, of course, attract residents and businesses. "With that in mind," she says, "I looked at the spending per capita on a number of major cities." Some operating examples: Boston, $79. Plano and San Diego, $93. Chicago, $106. San Fran, $155. Dallas last year, says Dyer, was around $46. Hunt says it's $37 in this year's budget. "Let's put this in perspective. ... You don't get a world-class park system when you're spending $37 per capita. You get what you pay for." Earlier, Dyer said Dallas needs to cut its parks more than every 28 days a week. He said we need to make sure we don't violate our own weed ordinance. If that's our goal, Hunt says, "that tells me we're a little bit off on our priorities."
Angela Hunt does not recall council OK'ing a "merry-go-round" of pools -- which is to say, a shifting of pools closed and open every year. She wants to make sure pools are actually being used: "It doesn't make sense to me we would close, for example, Tietze Park, which is the most-used park and most efficient use at $45,000." She calls rotation an "artificial idea" that will close effectively operated pools. Hunt and Dyer agree: Thirteen pools is the ideal. Pools, she says, aren't about being "profitable," but about providing opportunity for children without access to pools otherwise.
Ann Margolin wonders: Does the city own too much land? "I really wonder if we shouldn't be inventorying all this 18,000-something acres and saying: Do we really need all this?" She'd rather have "a smaller, cleaner well-maintained perfect gem" than a lot of messy stuff. Paul Dyer says a lot of the land is "undeveloped" property along the Trinity. "There's marginal costs for those areas."
Here's a link to a current D Magazine story detailing the wasteful, excessive salaries, etc. currently prevalent at the State Fair. Seems to me, bringing those salaries into line would leave a bunch of extra cash for doing some of the things that Delia Jasso wants. http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2010/September/State_Fair_of_Texas_Scam.aspx
Delia Jasso doesn't understand: At a council retreat last year, there was much talk about doing a better job marketing Fair Park. But the proposed budget, as Unfair Park's covered earlier, eliminates the two marketing positions out there. That, says Jasso, sends a message that "we're not really serious about marketing our venues ... We either look for the money so we can do a good job, or we look for a partner" who can take that over. But finding someone to do it pro bono, she says, that ain't the answer.
"We need a small tax increase," says Caroline Davis. "We are juggling money to pay other resources. ... Tension is high. People are afraid to talk. it's really sad we're in an environment ..." Pause. "I don't see anyone smiling around here. ... It's just amazing we have to run a city this way."
When the head of the "non-profit" State Fair makes $757,000 per year and his cronies all receive several hundred thousand dollar salaries as well--- there's just not much left over to pay a relatively meager rent to the City of Dallas. In other words, the City heavily subsidizes the State Fair through a sweetheart lease, only to see the heads of the Fair use that as a path to gross self-enrichment.
Caraway's unclear on how many driving ranges the city runs (zero, he's told -- and he's shocked). He wants to take on Hank Haney, which is moving to Stemmons after its West Village adios. "Let's make some money."
Caraway just told Rawlings: "We need a softball czar." Meaning, a "softball expert [who] needs to come in and deal with our softball facilities that's connected with all our softball activities" to bring softball tournaments to town, rather than Irving, Plano, Frisco and Euless.
Howdy folks! We all know nobody comes to Fair Park because there ain't horse-shit to do there when the fair's not in town. Until we open the summer midway, get used to the ghost town. "Jump" on that. Peace.
Isn't "breaking even" the goal of any city program? If your making a profit, then you are cheating the taxpayers out of their money and if you are running a deficit then you are wasting the tax payers money.
Ardy, Rawlings wants to use Fair Park more -- at least, find a way to squeeze more dough of a jewel that, at present, loses money regularly.
I'm confused about the quotes. What does "jump on Fair Park" and "getting there to break even" mean?
i heart Mike Rawlins! he got me out of the bridge and into my new home - we need a new pool
It's like a train wreck...I can't look away. *getting popcorn*
Atkins is still talking. About pools. He demands to know which ones will be open next year. He wants to know if the ones in his distict will be open next year. Rawlings says he won't know till the numbers are fully and finally crunched. That isn't good enough for Atkins, who demands an answer because his constituents demand an answer: "That's putitn' a whole lot of pressure on me."
One way to kill Fair Park is to impose parking fees that drive away business and events. Oh right.....they have already done that.
I had no intention of liveblogging this. But only because it's too hard to keep up with Tennell Atkins. I could use some pizza right now.
Mike might as well get used to the type of people we get on the Dallas City Council. If he has to sit through too many meetings with every council member making inane statements and going round and round the horseshoe he may decide to go back to selling Pizza. At least at the end of the day you have something to eat.
http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/08/pools-have-cost-dallas-taxpaye.html Pools have cost Dallas taxpayers up to $136 per visitor 9:50 AM Mon, Aug 23, 2010 Steve Thompson/Reporter In this morning's paper, I have a story that begins: Over three summers, Dallas taxpayers paid $136 for each visitor who swam at Exline pool in South Dallas, one of the city's 21 public swimming pools. I picked up this and other stats from a Park Board meeting last week. But park officials didn't include it in their budget briefing today. I mean, it's there -- on Page 25 -- if you want to pull some numbers out of a scattergram and do your own math. But they don't spell it out for council members. Wonder why. Maybe they will during the briefing.