12/08/03  Earth to Council?

December 7, 2003

Hon. Laura Miller
Mayor City of Dallas
And Members of the Dallas City Council

The Dallas City Council is set to approve switching $32 million from Trinity River floodway lake and park improvements to Trinity Toll Roads and Flood Control components of the City's Trinity Corridor Plan.

The cost of the new "Balanced Vision Trinity Plan" is over $1.75 Billion. That is an increase of over $650 million from the estimates for the Trinity Project which City officials and Bond Program promoters told Dallas voters the overall project would cost during the 98 City Bond Campaign.

City voters who approved Trinity Bond Proposal by the thin margin of 51% of the vote were promised a "World Class Park".

Taxpayer and Environmental citizen groups warned that the Trinity Project is a Highway project, not the Park that citizens were promised.

$950 Million of the first phase $1.1 Billion cost of the "Balanced Vision" being adopted by the Council is for Toll Roads and flood control necessary to allow these ill-advised Toll Roads to be constructed in the Trinity Floodway.

The facts are that very little of the existing $246 million of city bond funding approved by voters in the 98 Bond Program or the hundreds of millions in state and federal transportation and flood control funding will be expended to create a "World Class Park."

The park potential of the Trinity Corridor will be destroyed by the Toll Roads and Flood Control.  Local, state and federal taxpayers will be footing the huge bill for Toll Roads that subsidize developers, suburban sprawl and environmental destruction.

The Mayor and members of the City Council who got elected promising "Back to Basics" and no more "big ticket projects" benefiting developers at taxpayer's expense have forgotten those promises.

Dallas taxpayers have not.

Joe Wells