CBS Report on DART
March 18 is the Deadline to Deal with DART
We covered the DART pullout issue in detail here.
CBS aired this segment a couple days later:
The interview is with the leaders of two regional non-profits: the North Texas Commission President and CEO Chris Wallace, and the new Executive Director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Todd Little.
Background: The North Texas Commission is a advocacy group that serves 13 counties. It’s actually based in Irving, and is funded by member dues from cities, counties, businesses, and schools, plus some sponsorships and foundation money. The North Central Texas Council of Governments is a COG: a voluntary association of local governments in a region (usually multiple cities and counties) and one of Texas’s 24 COG regions recognized under state law. “We are of, for, and by our members” according to Little. It’s a voluntary group that covers over 200 cities and 16 counties and helps them plan, especially for transportation needs. They take care of compliance demands that come with federal transportation dollars on behalf of their members.
(Chris Wallace was present at the December 11 Irving City Council work session. Two staff members left their seat at the table and shook his hand before the meeting started.)
These two organizations formed a working group of 6 cities, and their city managers have been meeting with DART leadership every two weeks since September.
Some takeaways:
Both leaders have been working behind to scenes to stop the pullout from DART. They got together last September because of the rumblings of discontent over DART. They got the mayors and city managers of the 13 cities together with DART leadership. “We wanted to think how we could compromise to prevent these elections,” said Wallace, referring to the pullout elections. What about democracy? Later on Little clarified: “We want to let the citizens decide; we are their partner.”
“A couple more cities may be coming out for elections in the next few months,” said Wallace, presumably referring to Carrollton and Garland.
Wallace said that “city managers of two of the big cities who have already voted for a May election” — he means Plano and Irving — “made it clear at our last meeting that they will rescind their elections if we could come up with a compromise.” What is the compromise? Getting some of the money back for on demand services.
The last day these cities can strike a deal and cancel the elections is March 18. That’s because mail-in ballots must be sent to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before Election Day.
“Our economic competitiveness depends upon mass transit” according to Chris Wallace. Unclear how this attitude squares with the miniscule ridership. Honestly, the beginning of this interview is something from another planet, where the buses and trains are full instead of empty — which just isn’t the case.
Little admitted that microtransit — Uber and Lyft — have changed the transportation game. Cities can be flexible and innovative if they are not in DART. “All the cities that are not in DART have some use for their sales tax,” said Little. “Via is popular and successful in other cities,” said Wallace.
Wallace raised the question of the legality of DART stopping service immediately upon a successful pullout vote. “There’s a lot of questions out there.”
Wallace said there have been disagreements over DART governance; “We’ll go to the legislature and help make that happen if we can get member cities to agree.” Little: “The City of Dallas holds the key…. In the last 40 years, we haven’t had one additional city become a DART member.” (!) He said they are looking at stripping Dallas of their majority vote. “Dallas would be requested to reduce their majority percentage. Something like 7 out of 21.” Is Dallas open to it? “They are. The transportation committee is meeting in January to discuss this. Until we get the governance model fixed, it does not matter about the money, it does not matter about the service.”
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