Bobby Abtahi’s Post

Transcript

Parks. You've advocated for parks in a very big way. Obviously, right now the bond program is being discussed, debated the next bond program. And I'm wondering, because you've been such a big advocate for parks, the more parks that are created, obviously there needs to be a budget to keep those parts up. Does the city, can the city afford that? Well, I'm not. Trying to replace the expertise of John Jenkins, who's the director of the Park department or the president of the Park Board or in Agrawal or Garrett Boone, who's the greenings are any people who are really in the weeds on our park system in terms of this. I'm not suggesting that we should be expanding the system at the expense of maintenance of the existing system. The system needs to grow and expand, but it needs to grow and expand intelligently. It needs to grow and expand only in ways that. They can sustain. It needs to add into whatever we're doing from with tax dollars matches which we have on the table at all the time. From the private sector, there are people right now who are willing to give us 10s of millions of dollars to do certain things if we will commit certain parts of the bond program to parks. And I think we need to secure those contributions. But 100% right? We need to grow the system in a way that we can sustain and that we can maintain. There's nothing worse than a poorly maintained park or recreation facility becomes an attractive nuisance for you know, it becomes dangerous place for crime, violence. That type of thing so. We need to grow our park system. We need to green the city for a myriad reasons environmental or is just one of them you know sort of tamping down the heat effect, cooling the city down but also giving people more access to parks. We we are not where we'd like to be in terms of having everyone be within a 10 minute walk of a park or trail. So we need some more but we need to do that in a balanced way where we also are maintaining the system. So the reason I'm so serious about the parks things though Jack and. That's so important is I've never seen anything like it. I've been doing public policy for you know, it's getting up there and we're getting, we're closing on 14 years or so of making policy. Studying at the Masters degree level, like I I've been taking policymaking seriously. It's not often that you find a policy. Solution that gives you such a high return on investment in terms of all the things that it does and and and and how few negative things that it brings with it. A park is just a win, win, win situation. We've seen when they're done right that they make communities more vibrant. They give people a place to gather, they give children a safe place to play. They have educational aspects. They have economic development benefits. People want to build near parks. It's been seen all across the country. We see it in Dallas with Clyde. Born and others. And there's a reason for it, because at that point you literally minimized the developments risk of it, of a nuisance being put there. Once a park is in place, you've preserved the view, you've preserved the use of that land and they're not going to get some, you know, self storage facility there or something that people don't necessarily want to look at. You're going to have beautiful view preserved, you know? Forever if you put a park in in in a certain location so developers want to develop near them it. The spillover effects we've seen from Clyde Warren have been incredible. We're going to have those same types of effects over at the zoo with the with the the park there the Southern Gateway. How's that how's that coming along? It's we just we just had another ground making to celebrate the fact that we've gotten the state funds that we need to move on to the next phase of construction and so that's moving along according to schedule. Private money is being raised to match with the public. Honey, we've been putting into that and that we've gotten from the state and from local sources. So it's it. I called it the this is really is the golden era of parks for the city of Dallas right now. But there's a reason it's because you get so many benefits from that investment. And maybe the last thing I'll say about it is it's something we actually know how to do. That's a big part of my whole, you know, being conservative about how we approach the government is the goal is not to grow government as big as you possibly can, take on every possible challenge you can, whether you are effective at it or not. It's to be good at these things that you do with taxpayer money. We're good at parks. We actually know what we're doing. We we develop parks. Well, our park system is excellent. We we we have great amenities in our park system. We need to lean in on that and not start doing things that we have terrible track record of doing that we've never done before, like putting $200 million into housing. To do what? No one can really tell me what I mean. That's just not smart. So that's why I want us to put money in the parks and into infrastructure and in the public safety more than anything else.