PART 3: WHITHER GARLAND?: Do citizens really count here? I've long had my doubts.

With a securely cordoned-off skate park right behind them, these youngsters gear up for a picnic. A small road in this well-designed parks complex separates the skate park from a dog park in the vicinity. The municipality's government office building and a police sub-station are part of the complex, enhancing security.

(Third of three in Whither Garland? series)

My wife and I may be among the few Garlandites that have experienced a perfectly designed dog park/skate park plan up close and personal—and working splendidly.

In the Arizona community where we own investment properties, a top-notch dog park and skate park have been meticulously designed and built as part of a master plan for the community. They draw hundreds of visitors each day.

Our grandchildren, who visit, love to stand outside the fence surrounding each. They like to see the puppies arrive for their outings. They like to see the kids on skateboards. We all enjoy watching the great fellowship of the owners while the dogs are at play. It's a fun place for observers and skateboarders as well as for the canine population.

In this same recreation complex also are a walking trail, bike trail, kids' playground and splash pad, soccer fields, and a small cafe and picnic areas as well as many other attractions—all intertwined in a marvelous architecturally pleasing way. The dog park and skate park are separated from each other by a small road. We always feel perfectly safe and feel confident about our grandbabies' safety when we visit.

A nearby small cafe that serves ice cream is an allure for onlookers. Kiddos carry their ice cream over to watch the puppies and the skaters. The complex is close enough to attract nearby residents but far away enough not to be an impairment.

 
It is situated close enough to be effective for nearby residential subdivisions but far enough away to not be a nuisance. Our properties are just the right distance from the park. From our street one can easily see the park lights at night, but they are far enough away not to bother us or our snowbird tenants in the over-55 community.

One of the reasons we like the dog park/skate park is because the overall park includes a city government complex and a police substation. These entities maintain careful watch and aren't about to let anything happen that poses danger to visitors to the surrounding park features.

Considering myself having had firsthand experience with a successful dog park/skate park combo, ever since the issue of a dog park and skate park arose in Garland almost a year ago I have volunteered in various city circles to sit down and offer my lay expertise, provide contact information in that particular community, and put my suggestions in the mix. We even would have hosted appropriate city authorities to go and stay in one of our properties to see first hand how a dog park and skate park work successfully in tandem.

The dog park, surrounded by high fences, is positioned well behind the children's playground. Those who live in the area appreciate that the parks complex is a high traffic area because it gives the feeling of added security, especially with the police station a part of the mix. Surrounding neighborhoods are close but not too close.

I mentioned it to a current parks-department official, whose employment history has even included tenure in another Arizona municipality.

"Blink blink" has been the only reply. Those to whom I offered my suggestions blinked at me politely but never followed through on information that I believe would have been helpful to Garland—and might even could have saved the current dilemma.

This situation as well as many others make me wonder: Do citizens really matter in Garland?

Some years back, Mayor Athas decided to appoint then-private citizen David Gibbons (now council member and mayor pro tem) as chair of another of his "secret" task forces, this one assigned to work on a plan for the so-called Bankhead Triangle (where State Highway 66 divides into East Avenues B and D). He appointed a group of citizens and developers to figure out how to make that portion from the beginning of the triangle to First Street blossom. 


Gibbons wisely included District 2 Councilmember Anita Goebel on the secret committee. Her name appears in the minutes of that group. All was rolling along quite nicely when something went dreadfully wrong. Goebel decided the "secret" committee was holding "secret" meetings with the mayor at the Main Street Cafe downtown without her.
 

At the end of a televised Council meeting two weeks before Gibbons took office, Goebel publicly confronted the mayor and Gibbons, who was sitting in the audience, about the "secret" meeting. The meeting was soon ruled adjourned and the city's communications staff worked swiftly to shut off the TV cameras, but not before the TV audience caught a glimpse of the dramatic confrontation.

That task force never met again and soon was disbanded. Valuable citizen input was dropped.

So much for another great project! I and many others would have loved to see this idea and area developed to completion. An out-of-state developer was visiting the other day, so I drove him by the "Bankhead Triangle". We both saw such great potential there but felt sad that the disregarded citizen input lost over a council fight over secrecy had destroyed a great opportunity for our city—at least for now.

The old and abandoned Eastern Hills Country Club presented another opportunity for citizen input—and not just from the angry citizens living in that area.

Repeatedly I told elected and other city officials about a retired citizen who moved to Garland after spending his life building world-class golf courses all over the world, including Europe, China, and the Middle East. He has friends worldwide who are still in that business, including some who have transitioned into the specialty field of either restoring or re-purposing golf courses that have closed down.

It seemed normal to me that city leaders would want to meet and hear this citizen's insights regarding Eastern Hills Country Club.

While the fight flared between a representative of the Henry S. Miller Co., who proposed cramming 500-plus homes onto the old golf course, and Eastern Hills residents who opposed the Miller plan and struggled to find their own solution, my friend easily could have provided the contacts necessary to perhaps solve the problem.

He was never consulted.

About 10 months ago, my friend contacted someone in his field who has an interest in finding a solution for the Eastern Hills Golf Course. The three of us, along with an Eastern Hills resident, toured the golf course and talked about ideas. A few weeks later, we all four went to one of the citizens' meetings just to listen.

My friend's friend is also talking with investors about his idea. Will his plan work? I don’t know. My purpose here isn’t to tout one developer’s ideas. I’m more concerned that our citizens are not consulted, especially when they have more expertise in a field than the consultants with high price tags the city hires.

In this day of instant Internet access and public TV airing of important city business, where do citizens fit into the mix in this city? Do city bureaucrats believe that only they and their consultants deserve the right to have input taken seriously? Why are citizens minimized again and again and again?

As we worked on redeveloping our 11th Street in downtown Garland, I came across in a university library in West Texas a 1985 Garland citizens study of the future of downtown Garland. It contained absolutely fabulous ideas, including a proposed National Register historic district for our Travis College Hill neighborhood (only larger because it included houses that have since been torn down) and Downtown Garland around the Square.

When I finally located a now-retired city official who remembered the study, he shrugged it off as just another citizens committee that came up with a bunch of ideas that were never implemented. In the list of that committee’s members were names of people who still live in Garland and have lost their appetites for the “latest, greatest idea” for downtown Garland—because they and others were not taken seriously more than 40 years ago. One of those was the owner of the building on the north side of the Square that so many complain about because it sits empty. Had the committee he served on been taken seriously instead of just kissed off, think where we might be today with that empty building on the Square!

A recent public citizens' task force on streets, which recommended a slight tax increase to improve our wretched potholes, got treated about the same way as that 1985 committee.

Our neighborhood has just completed the first successful historic tax credit application in Garland. I have guided the application through the state bureaucracy and received 25-percent tax credit for an improvement on Garland's Historic Pace House, an investment property.

"It's too complicated," protest other citizens who have been reluctant to apply for their own downtown projects. I found it to be just the opposite, with a bevy of employees at the Texas Historical Commission and in the Texas Comptroller’s Office eager to help me. Significant amounts of additional outside funds could be pumped into Garland redevelopment, at no cost to the city. I have tons of tips at my disposal. To get the city's attention, I have had to work about as hard as I did to complete the tax-credit project. And the city reception has lacked enthusiasm.

To me, this should be information that the city is eagerly, aggressively seeking out. I wonder why I had to approach the city about this matter instead of the city approaching me? Because it's coming from a private citizen, and not a consultant under contract, is it given less value?

Do citizens really matter here? Or only city employees, their consultants, and elected officials?

Now enter the third of the known Athas task forces—the makerspace task force aka the makerspace ad hoc committee.

Apparently, unlike the other two I've mentioned in this series, Councilmember Goebel was not included in this group's meetings. Neither was I nor Councilmember Gibbons.

Though the group says on its website that other city councilmembers besides the mayor were involved with it, none of the current councilmembers claims foreknowledge. And the makerspace advocates have not publicly identified any sitting councilmembers as involved with their effort. They do, however, work closely with former city council member Randal Dunning.
 

So, here we are today in the middle of a great big political mess. The current crisis was created when the makerspace task force, with Athas' blessings, asked for the old National Guard Armory as its place of operation—setting it on a collision course with the Parks Department's efforts to follow council's direction a few weeks earlier and locate the new dog and skate parks at Central Park on the same property being eyed by the makerspace task force.
 A collision was inevitable and thus it happened. The fallout is sickening us all!

And all of this because yet another of the mayor's "secret" task forces had been at work—secretly. The makerspace ad hoc committee needed to be out on the table from the very beginning, with council and others aware of its existence early on. This is a microcosm of how secrecy on the part of elected officials and staff gets the City of Garland into so much difficulty.
 

So, how could this mess have been avoided?

Very simply: The mayor could have publicly acknowledged each of his special task forces, brought council in on what he was doing, and refused to call them "secret". He could have been more open with his council members about his actions. In fact, he could have encouraged some of them to set up their own private task forces to look into issues in their particular districts.

I also would have preferred this: During many of its reviews of its policies during the Athas years, council could have set guidelines on these mayoral task forces, kitchen cabinets, citizen committees, etc. Council could have requested—or demanded—that this mayor and any succeeding mayors simply make the groups he created known to council with or without an authorization vote and agreed to guidelines that the mayor was to follow about routine reports from his special task forces.

These seem like very natural and workable solutions to the problem.

Unfortunately, none of that has happened. Few in this culture seem to know or understand the principle, "Who else needs to know?" Secrecy just doesn't work!

So where are Garland's citizens in all of this? Too often left out "in the cold". Expertise from the public—beyond just reports from paid consultants—gets little regard. Those who seriously could lend a strong hand to helping solve city dilemmas are shunned.

The system is broken. It must be fixed, before Garland—a city with huge potential—becomes the laughingstock of all.

The city must find a way to include its citizens, who pay the bills for all the city does, to feel empowered and not minimized by their community's bureaucracy and elected officials.

Great ideas for the city's East End, hatched up by a citizens' committee, lie fallow while the area remains undeveloped. Does citizen input, because it's not the work of a high-priced consultant, make any difference? Are the only ideas that are taken seriously those that cost taxpayers money?