Government Services
Upgrades in parks system tempered by frustrations over streets, city’s responsiveness to residents
Every year in August, the Dallas Homeowners League sponsors a neighborhood boot camp at City Hall. The purpose is to train and motivate residents hoping to make a difference in their communities.
And every year, when the group’s president, Eloy Trevino, calls to reserve space for the event, he gets the same response.
“They have never heard of me, they’re going to have to check into it and get back to me,” Trevino said. “It just feels like I’m talking to someone that doesn’t have any experience in customer service.”
The city has made strides over the past decade in key areas. A decade ago, there was little awareness at City Hall that many Dallas residents believed city government was failing taxpayers — or that Dallas was falling behind peer cities in the delivery of many services.
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Gaps in the Dallas park system
Here’s a look at the areas in Dallas that meet the standard need for parks.
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An entire city department was created in 2005 to focus primarily on customer service and on benchmarking performance. Today, the city is awash in long-term plans and metrics that, according to city staffers, show performance is improving and residents are largely satisfied.
Yet there are plenty of people like Trevino who remain frustrated. City government, they say, too often seems to work only for those with the time, energy and savvy to navigate an unwieldy bureaucracy.
For example, working with the city’s Code Compliance Department “is a work in progress,” said Anna Hill, the founder of the Dolphin Heights Neighborhood Association near Fair Park.
“I can see a code violation, and I’ll stop and take a picture,” she said. But a city code enforcement officer, driving by the same violation, is as likely as not to keep rolling by, Hill said.
“You have to stay on somebody, and if that person doesn’t take care of it, then I go higher,” Hill said. “If it comes down to it, Mayor [Mike] Rawlings will have the same picture that code’s got and we’ll see who does something about it first.”
Dallas Code Compliance Director Jimmy Martin insists that oversights of the kind described by Hill are becoming less common. Traditionally, the majority of code complaints came from outside his department. Today, Martin said, proactive officers generate more than half of all reports.
Still, he acknowledged, his greatest challenge is fighting off the perception that his department isn’t doing its job.
“I can write you a citation. I can’t make you paint your house,” Martin said. “The citizen sees that house not painted and the assumption is that code compliance is not doing their job.”
Progress is more apparent in the city’s parks system. Since 2004, the city has acquired nearly 570 acres for parks and trails.
The results are most visible downtown, where Klyde Warren Park, Main Street Garden and Belo Garden have all opened in the past few years. A master plan updated last year calls for increasing park space in the central city to more than 89 acres from the current 53.
Street services worker Roger Scruggs (left) fills a pothole in South Dallas. Dennis Ware, interim head of street services, says the city tries to repair hazardous potholes within 24 hours and routine ones within five days. (G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News)
In northwest Dallas, officials recently celebrated the opening of the $31 million MoneyGram Soccer Park, a 120-acre, 19-field complex.
Yet, plenty remains to be done. Dallas ranks 26th out of the 50 biggest U.S. cities in its ParkScore index, produced by The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit. The index is a comprehensive rating of parks systems based on factors including acreage, investment and “access” — for instance, the percentage of the population living within a 10-minute walk of a public park.
In Dallas, driving to those parks — or any other destination — can be a rough ride. Officials say it will cost $900 million over the next four years to maintain streets in a condition deemed ideal by the City Council.
That’s a “monumental task,” said Dennis Ware, interim director of street services. He noted that his department tries to repair hazardous potholes within 24 hours and routine ones within five days.
That alone isn’t likely to change perceptions that many city streets are crumbling.
“Our streets improved for a little while, but when the economy tanked in 2008, the city did all of its budget cutting,” said Mike Northrup, a longtime East Dallas neighborhood organizer.
Now, he said, “streets are as bad as they have ever been.”
