Fair Park Care? At Last Week’s Fiery Fair Park Panel, Rawlings Evokes Obamacare
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While the Dallas City Council — well, at least the three appointed Council members Mayor Rawlings asked to work on it — are busy re-shaping the Fair Park proposal that was presented to the entire Council by Walt Humann on August 29, others are still trying to slow the train. The City Council meets on September 21 to finalize the changes, accept or reject the plan. Word is the vote will be 10 for, 5 against.
Mayor Rawlings is now comparing Fair Park to Obamacare. “President Obama said “we gotta get health care done” and then he powered through it”… that’s how Rawlings wants to “power through” Fair park Care.
Last Saturday morning, a lively panel discussion about Fair Park took place at Paul Quinn College sponsored by the African American Leadership Institute and state senator Royce West.
At the podium were Mayor Rawlings, Walt Humann, Don Williams, Royce West, John Wiley Price and Michael Phillips (author of White Metropolis). The panel was said to be full of fireworks.
Well, now you can take a look for yourself. We’ve posted some of the shorter videos here. You can clearly see that the audience was not pleased with the Mayor’s plan. Listen for the applause after Don Williams spoke. Folks like the notion of getting a park first and serious economic development underway, not just more low paying jobs mowing lawns etc. John Wiley Price –yes! — was amazing. Oh and the 800 lb. gorilla was mentioned, too.
But my favorite part was how Mike Rawlings compared the urgency for getting this plan shoved through to Obamacare: sometimes you just have to get ‘her done. Even if it turns out to be as messed up as Obamacare.
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10 for and 5 against. So after all the meetings and media reporting, the needle hasn’t moved by a single vote one way or the other. Hopefully you never find yourself in court with this City Council as your impartial jury.
Those with some concern for governance know that a vital part of keeping municipalities operating is to maintain their credit rating.
Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit have very little flexibility as a result of their lowered Moody’s ratings.
You might find this linked New York Times piece on the severe problems that cities are having with their pension
funding problems, which was the root cause for General Electric to exit Connecticut, which made no pension fund payments for decades and thus is dangerously underfunded:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/business/dealbook/a-sour-surprise-for-public-pensions-two-sets-of-books.html
Doing something with Dallas Fair Park is interesting, but any proposal should have as its basis funding to come from sources other than the City of Dallas, which has no discretionary funds after years of mismanagement.