Chandu Garapaty, Colin Wong, Gladys Smith-Duran, Hexel Colorado, Hexel Colorado's Presentation, JL, Jonathan Garza, Qui Le
Chandu Garapaty: Okay.
Hexel Colorado: but just Desktop,…
Jonathan Garza: We're fine.
Hexel Colorado: Hold on. So I probably annoying the heck out of you guys. Let me change the camera real quick. Okay.
Hexel Colorado: Someone unmute themselves and just start saying hi so we can see it.
Colin Wong: Hello there.
Jonathan Garza: By five five here.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, Jonathan, I see your thing moving, but I don't hear audio. So just keep blabbering on about whatever you're blabbing about until. I got the speakers set up on this end.
Qui Le: Hello, this is a test.
Jonathan Garza: Hearing you five by five. You hear me?
Hexel Colorado: I lost it. Thank you.
Jonathan Garza: Speaking right now speaking and…
Jonathan Garza: speaking right now. one two three one, two three
Hexel Colorado: But right now I'm a bit busy.
Jonathan Garza: one two three, testing one two three
Jonathan Garza: one two three one, two three
Hexel Colorado: Jason
Jonathan Garza: one two three Okay.
Qui Le: Last time I remember I had to actually change all the audio on the TV to hear stuff. So I think they have to do that.
Hexel Colorado: says Okay. Hey, whoever was speaking earlier try speaking.
Jonathan Garza: You hear me? One, two,…
Colin Wong: Hello.
Jonathan Garza: three one, two three. one two three
Hexel Colorado: Okay, We got a few more sound checks to do because I have this thing. I'm holding. I don't know if it's actually on a scale of 1 to 10. How well can you hear me?
Qui Le: Very well.
Jonathan Garza: Ten five by five. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: All Hey You see this little piece of paper. This is supposed to be the microphone. I'm going to test if it's actually coming from the mic. So Yeah, no, you hold that and start talking to it and see if they respond. hey how y'all doing? No normally talk normally, yeah. You got I'm a late night. Radio DJ. Yeah, see what he just said.
Qui Le: Here you five by five.
Hexel Colorado: All right, and then let's test one more. All right. Say your name.
Hexel Colorado: honor
Hexel Colorado: hello.
Qui Le: I can hear Connor, too.
Hexel Colorado: Probably 22 of us. Okay, so that's the pass around get.
Hexel Colorado: we'll find you some hey JJ have another special or All right. This sounds like our audio. yeah, we're probably gonna have a Google stuff open and I'll be on my tablet and then you just have it open like we did last time when Qui, That I'll just share it to you and then you pull it up.
Hexel Colorado: they're here ditched virtually.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, yeah, they're like us they just couldn't make it.
Hexel Colorado: and she joined our Facebook group recently. now you've got a pretty retro theme Turning the mattress Very good.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, I mean if anyone playing
Hexel Colorado: We want to forward have saw the Google Doc. Yeah, you need to for But it's really bad for my I have the Canadian metromide. but get us confused agenda on the that's a slightly old one. Maybe put it on the and whatever you sent me.
Hexel Colorado: I need to connect.
Hexel Colorado: But that's the journey you took. Why? Yeah, how long did that take?
Hexel Colorado: Someone is telling a story of how they got here without Tre service. Yeah, I'm gonna give him the mic so he can tell this warm-up story. All right, go ahead. So someone was asking me how did I get here from Arlington on a Sunday? So both of us live on you take on campus at UTA and so we just biked the 20ish minutes to Randall Mill and I think it's Mill Village, Yeah, and then took that 21 and the 89 then text Rail and the orange line all the way out here to akard. I think going through Central Station? Yeah easy. It's a Tuesday. casual four hour ride
Hexel Colorado: Daniel is trying to get us to take the 2:30 from BMW remote South to Terminal B. Instead of the orange line. Yes another one.
Hexel Colorado: for you
Hexel Colorado: that the big Palace
Hexel Colorado: I think we're gonna get started soon. We just need one or two more minutes to set it up probably. I think was a b and I've got Fantastic, once that's up. We'll call it. beautiful.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Honor guesses here. I heard the man. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Apologies. I don't mean to give people on a zoom vertigo. That's three. targeted Lots mostly
Hexel Colorado: if I texted The social media presentation. What's the best way? Send anything on the group chat.
Hexel Colorado: Any more interesting stories of how did anyone come further than Brooklyn? All right.
Hexel Colorado: Are Greyhound?
Hexel Colorado: Already get started. Yes, I know you good. Yeah. All right bringing it in everyone. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order at what time is it? 3:23? I don't have a gavel. So I just throw this glass on the floor. So first thing we'll do is welcome. This is an amazing turnout some of you guys I know by name some of I know by face and some of your new so thank you all for coming. So we've got the agenda Up here. So just the first thing welcome so quick introductions Connor. Is there any upcoming events? You want to highlight? Yeah, so on the 27th. we have two upcoming events on the 27th. We are wanted to talk to go to the next board of directors meeting for Dart and on the 28th. We have a Dallas City council member that some of us are planning to show up to.
Hexel Colorado: it's on the 20. and it's at 9:00 am on a Wednesday, so not a very convenient time, but we can use that to just leave some public comments. So all of Dallas City Council can hear from our group because I'm not expecting a large turnout. You can join it digitally though. so you can leave your public comment digitally. I think the zoom or something.
Hexel Colorado: So we would like my goal was to get maybe 10 people to that meeting. Be nice to get more though. One thing to keep in mind. You're leaving a public comment. We're not commenting on a specific agenda item. You can only leave one public comment per month and I only mentioned this is because I know a lot of you are advocating at Dallas for housing. So if you're in those circles, I mean it just be mindful. I mean you can advocate for whatever you want.
Hexel Colorado: That's the dart instead. So someone asked if that counts the dart board meetings, no dart board. You can speak as much as you want without restriction. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: So correct someone yeah audience. just said that if you spoke at the last dartboard meeting you'll be last speak and that is true. They prioritize people who did not speak at the previous meeting at the dart board meeting.
Hexel Colorado: we're getting into that later. the other announcements yeah, so I think that the main thing is that
Hexel Colorado: where we're going to start focusing more on contacting State reps. So just want everyone to keep that in mind. We're really just gonna have to keep calling them or keep emailing them until we can. get on their radar and they'll talk to us. because at the end of the day to get these cuts through these cities that Pro-Cuts are gonna be trying to get it done through the state legislature. and another thing Addison is going to be the next city to consider.
Hexel Colorado: a resolution to cut darts funding No, not to support I think it's to starts funding right someone who is at the board meeting where they heard this because I wasn't there.
Hexel Colorado: someone was one of the members sent me an email that said Addison may be considering it but it was kind of generic. They don't say winner where they just said. This is under consideration in So Addison we might want to keep our eyes peeled because they might be the next.
Hexel Colorado: and just to have the more cities that pass these Revolution resolutions to cut darts funding. I think the more that bolsters their argument to the state legislature that hey we need to get State action because all these cities are Want to cut darts funding in the board's not considering whatever they're going to say. So the less cities that pasta resolution the better.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, so all this is in our agenda later. This is just the announcement sections we will get to this. So yeah, I think is there any so there was some City Council Members interested in meeting our group. I don if there are. You don't have any remarks or any? No, If not, we'll pass it over Enrique. Yeah, do you have any remarks Enrique? Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Thank First I want to mention on just a comment on the idea. If you guys go to speaking to counsel. It's a great idea. a tip if you'll accept it is those of you who plan on going connect with each other ahead of time and coordinate so that you don't all say the same thing maybe tackle it because you only get I think three minutes per person maybe five, but just you'll be I think more effective If you hit it from several different angles. So I didn't want to say a couple things and I thank you for letting me speak today. First of all, you guys have been noticed and I know you've done a lot of work to be noticed and the media has quite a bit of coverage about you guys. We've had discussions at the impact at the last budget meeting.
Hexel Colorado: As we were talking about the pros and cons of the cuts that are being considered right now Michelle Krause brought up you guys as a group and those of you had shut up speak and reminded the board, the writers are opposed to this. So you're making notes and you're being noticed. There was a board member that I spoke to during one of the breaks and I won't say names but I asked him if he seen the Cascade of emails that you guys sent out to us it all. No, I don't really read my guardian Oaks. I had my work email. I only have some whatever I said the writers are organized and they're speaking and you're mayor and your council members should pay attention to that and he was really dismissive. He was like, I don't worry about that. And I thought should I tell him?
Hexel Colorado: I'd rather not but what imagine who you think would say that and that's Okay, what's for sure, whatever. It's so yeah, so when you said that should I not telling that this really is important? Just stay there. it's Let him not think that you guys are important and she'll be surprised later. there's that a couple things to talk about is the narratives that are going on right now one of them. has to do with and I'm talking about the board members are bringing up over and over again in terms of putting funds one of them is governments are by nature and efficient and you always have to be honest. Yeah chop. and that's the false narrative and I'll get back to other budget and the numbers are working out but
Hexel Colorado: I mean, yeah It's true that governments tend to be inefficient and you really have to stay on them. You get the point where you have to say. Why are we spending money on pink ice for the urinals or just stuff it doesn't get to check through where we're feeling but Dart is not exactly It's a positive governmental organization and all of its employees are independent from government to report so We'll come back and talk about that in the fact that it is in fact a very efficient agency, but that's one of the matters that is being floated and as they tend to be repeated they become reality take over the conversation during the budget.
Hexel Colorado: Another one that keeps coming up is Dart is not listening to us, these cities and the Mayors are asking for cuts and We're listening and I'm fancy Computing that I haven't had a chance to say on the record. But the fact is we are listening. We're just not agreeing with them, and that's What I mean, you say we need to cut the budget and we don't think we should cut the budget and that's really the reality but they don't. This is really a mental case of they want what they want and they're gonna be upset until they get what they want. The budget and this is of course what's going on right now? So right now we're working off a budget that staff presented their recommendations and in that budget the agency grows. let's talk about what growth means the revenue to the agency the tax money to the agency goes up by
Hexel Colorado: God, I forget if it's 1.6 or 1.9 percent something like that. Which is not bad. it's But tremendous growth not too much. But then of course that's called The Other Side they come back. You can't even talk about that's the overall growth that includes three components the budget does as you guys probably know one of it is operations. That's the portion that relates to running the buses paying salaries headquarters departments marketing Communications maintenance and all that. Then there's the second component is capital projects. So that's a silver line. We're getting a hundred new buses. We're getting a little onion and so forth. There's that hold on and then there's a third one that's paying back our loans and that is just set by early years and interest rate and it's classic. So go ahead.
Hexel Colorado: What did?
Hexel Colorado: Okay, welcome back to so these are the three components overall as a whole it's one point again nine or 1.6 increase in revenue. And so the other side saying that's not fair to look at that way. That's where we don't know number but really what we can change here we can affect is the portion that relates to operations, that's where you figure out how to efficient the agency is And that number's 5% it's too high according to what I don't know. I like 3% but I think really what they're doing here is just like line is saying let's just
Hexel Colorado: so I said if you're going to look at that way that you want to just look Let's look at operations the correct way in that 5.5% a good chunk of the increase in revenue is for increase in contract prices. So these are the things that we deliberately said one of two things either reset. We want to have more cleaning services. We want to have more safety and officers. And so that was a deliberate decision the second portion some of the contracts that providers jacked up their prices significantly higher Transit I think is they probably know one of the biggest pieces of that. So if you really want to look at whether we're efficient or not, let's move those numbers out. And then what does the increase in Revenue to the operation look like then it's 0.2% and so I brought that up at the last meeting so
Hexel Colorado: you've heard I'm sure and you've read that. What they would like to do is tap. Are Revenue at 3% growth from last year and that's compared to the 5% to do that City staff came back with a report and said we can do that. We have to cut Services. We have to pick down we cannot increase the number of officers that would say we cannot increase the cleaning service that basically the things that we agreed to do in our strategic plan. Also, the things that the cities have been asking for it. We're gonna have to take them out because you want to cut it out three percent completely arbitrary, so that's where we're at right now at this point. Staff has already sent out to the cities. They're recommended.
Hexel Colorado: Budget with a cover letter that says and so that budget includes the 1.9 and 5.5% increase. It uses the cover letter says something like and I've seen the letter but it'll say something like but even though this is the budget we are still considering other options and bringing these three percent or even said 0% but I think we've all agreed with 0% increase is a no-go.
Hexel Colorado: so we'll see what happens next. I think what's likely that first of all, and several the board members support staffs recommendation as presented because that recommendation already takes a good deal of cutbacks from the agency. They asked every Department to cut down their budget by 1.6 percent in addition to that found. It was nine 19.6 million dollars in savings. it's a really really well put together budget and I think the danger for the sake of pushing and arbitrary trying to bring it down is that stuff would ever do this, but I hate incentivize.
Hexel Colorado: A behavior where next year they're just gonna inflate what they're asked because they know we're going to try to bring them down and I'd rather just work with facts. And so it is like me that there are a couple items that they will ask to bring down. We're staff said they could live with one of them is we're to simplify this we're overfunding our pension. We don't need to fund it as much as we need to we're still gonna be. Okay, so they may ask take some of that back and there are a couple other small items that could go down. We'll see what happens.
Hexel Colorado:
Hexel Colorado: I just wanted that ask a question because darts tier one and tier two bus plans. I was disappointed that it doesn't seem like the budgets making any progress towards that I was looking forward to see okay next year what new buses are gonna get a frequency boost and I just haven't talked about any so do you know if that's something?
Hexel Colorado: Maybe you because I just want to see more progress the way has talked about we're just gonna keep making incremental progress. And so we have this tier 2 bus Network, which is going to be very frequent new bus routes and all this so, if that's even on the table or Sentinel possible, so yeah that is definitely in the works. And by the way staff has said that that is not in the near future going to increase our budget or create our cause they're just moving things around to do that. there's a document that I can probably get for You need to go back and request it, but there's a schedule for how this is going to work and when things will be reads but it's not short term. Yeah. it's like I think they have something for the next three years plan. So I'll get that document for you guys. Sure, and let me just a couple things as I leave, I guess and if there are other questions, I'll take a picture, but I do have a couple of asks.
Hexel Colorado: One of them is I think you're already on it. But something to look for into the future. Is this whole State Legislative agendas? I'm meeting with councilman Chad West about the legislative agenda for the city of Dallas, which is coming up. I mean we need to make sure not only that the council understands that we will want parts of any kind of cuts of any kind would really hurt the agency and that would hurt the region but also I won't reproactive about bringing up bills that I know one board member supports a bill that would limit terms for board members, which I think would be really good idea, someone have been there for More than 20 years and that's never good.
Hexel Colorado: personally I mentioned it last time I think it should be illegal for the dart board to pass any resolutions which materially affect our so it just common sense, that's one thing the other one I spoke to Jamie Molina if you guys know her she's coming Outreach. I told her I was gonna be here today I said, is there anything you want them to talk about them essentially the same thing you got to do a great job and you reach out and one specific was think about if you can reach out to businesses, eventually, they will be our in that that's one component. That's not in the conversation right now. It's very important, hospitals employers and so on that relax either. Yes, think about strategically if you can begin to build those relationships and bring them into a fold, that'd be great. I'm sure start staff has been redoing the same thing.
Hexel Colorado: I think it's a good idea. I think it's healthy for any organization it forces you to develop leadership and to move on and stay fresh when somebody's been in that role for too I think it just a good practice.
Hexel Colorado: Do we have to tell me about time. You have to have a question I think if people can't stay if you have a burning question. Remember we're talking about a lot of the stuff in the agenda and Enrique. Will you be here the rest of the meeting or I'll stay as long as you fantastic so we will have a chance to get his feedback on something. But if you are leaving soon, or if you have a burning question, you cannot go ahead and ask it. Thank you.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, okay. I'm sorry my learning from
Hexel Colorado: Yes. Yes, so stuff is really good about that and almost everything we do whenever there's a decision about doing something strategic staff is very good at saying what it's compensation for executives. Transit 2.0 number things they do check and they have contacts and other cities we
Hexel Colorado: Yes, yes and have to be comparable is that San Francisco is not exactly couple of those because there's more density. So they look for some Atlanta. But yeah, they definitely better so a couple more can I Peter don't just
Hexel Colorado: How would he helped development? still around I'm so Gladys a question. So you know what these right? yeah. So, at the moment Dart has I think six sides that it's focused to develop tods. I think the city of Dallas needs to work harder and identifying places where strategically we can create density around Transportation. If not hubs, you can just even I mean dark stations, but also a bus stops where so that is a big one. There was something else I want to tell you on that Mom.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Enrique McGregor. sure.
Hexel Colorado: Thank you all afterward. But I love talking about and That's huge. Yeah, so I'm gonna let me have one quick thing because I want you to hear that about to use really quick. So an idea that was floated by a problem with trds is that as really? developers are not very eager to get in some because rezoning is a real pain. It's expensive. It takes a long time.
Hexel Colorado: and Michael Wade at City Hall came up with an idea. He said what if we create a zoning class just for two of these that's on the Shelf so that if somebody identifies an area and says, I want to develop this around the and transportation oriented development is what theodies are. So the idea of building density around the stations. It makes a ton of sense and he said if we have something off the shell maybe it'll make it easier when a developer decides to create a TOD. People already know these are the parameters on how you do it for that area. And so I think I want to investigate that idea and I want city council to get an authorized here on that. I'm picking up a lot of time. I'll be here for questions. Thank you guys and congratulate.
Hexel Colorado: So the next one is Garrett from there good. Yeah, if you got two or three minutes.
Hexel Colorado: Hey guys. I'll be quick about this. I'm Garrett from the Dallas Bicycle Coalition and I'm here to talk to you guys a little bit about week without driving. so maybe you've heard of this you probably have heard or possibly even felt that maybe Dallas isn't
Hexel Colorado: too easy to get around without a car. So a few years ago this organization called disability rights Washington created week without driving to just help highlight the difficulty of getting around without a car for people that either can't drive or have some kind of disability that prevents them from driving can't afford to drive and so on all these reasons that happen so a couple years after that I went National and so now America walks in disability rights Washington host this to social media campaign every year just to highlight the difficulty of getting around without a car in any participating City, so the Dallas Bicycle Coalition we are, helping to host this year in Dallas and would like to formally invite the Dallas Area Transit Alliance to the partner in this and I will briefly tell you what the expectations of partners are being listed as
Hexel Colorado: official partner of the campaign with the logo promoting week without driving campaign on social media September 30th through October 6th participating in a planning meeting with other partners in advance of week without driving on August 27th, and encouraging the network to sign up on the national site give up their car for the week and share their experience online or in their community. So that also goes out to anyone else who would like to partner on this. I'm gonna be here after the meeting. Please come talk to me. So if you want to participate as an individual, you can also do that. One of my three posts I've ever made on Instagram is just a video of me, biking to work a few times and just kind of the joys of that and some of the challenges of that. It's kind of both supposed to be a realistic picture of that. But yeah, just come see me after the event. I don't want to take up too much of your time today, but would love to have you participate either individually as a group or otherwise, so
Hexel Colorado: Good.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, so thanks Garrett. So this is something we can speak about more in the discussion section. We do have a quick item for that one. But now let's move into reports and housekeeping. So what we're going to do here is kind of go through data's activities and then some City updates from people who volunteer to speak. Let's do 30 seconds to a minute if you can because we got a lot of really good stuff to talk about so Connor will kick it off with your stuff. Yeah, so I talked the DFW progressives meeting. So I really just got the word out about these budget cuts. A lot of people weren't aware of them actually.
Hexel Colorado: And now everyone at the DFW Progressive meeting was supportive. There are some old people running for different house districts who are there so we got the word out to potential house candidates. So that went really well Irving Democrats. I must say did not go as well. But I think it was overall probably positive that I did it because it was a learning experience. So I came in with a talk prepared and as it turns out someone going there and we suspected this might happen. There's a city council member who actually voted for the resolution. who attended the meeting and I just kind of turned into discussion with me and him and I wasn't able to get to all my points. I do feel like I countered his arguments pretty well but he put me on the defensive and
Hexel Colorado: what I learned from that though and I talked to him after the meeting even more is that at least this councilman once and this is what I've heard from others. once the councilman's voted on something it's gonna be very hard to change your minds. So that's a bit of a challenge but one positive thing. I met a how handed it for Texas house there Cassandra Hernandez, and she's likely to win her race and she is prodart and against these Cuts she does not like them. She's very supportive of Todd and Transit so We have a potential ally there.
Hexel Colorado: Yes. So as an alliance, I hope as many of us as possible take these opportunities to speak to your counsels have these meetings go to your clubs your presentation's because I also had a chance to panel with the Democratic socialists chapter in Oak Cliff. and I think as we all do these things you'll start to learn lessons that we accumulate because not all of us have done this kind of thing before. when you encounter a situation like that where you have a council member who is clearly antagonistic and they're asking these questions that direct derail. No pun intended your presentation. Don't let them do that.
Hexel Colorado: Don't let us a actor especially a bad actor sabotage what you came to present because that basically takes away the message and the narrative that you came and you work really hard to prepare. It turns into their soapbox. And so we are on a mission or on a fight. So be aware that there are people who will work against us. And so be mindful of that. We have your presentation push through it when they say can I have a question say I have a presentation Let me get through it first and then I'll take questions at the end. Yeah, and that's exactly what I'm going to do going forward.
Hexel Colorado: And I do have a meeting with Metrocrest Democrats next. It's September 10th, maybe around there. so obviously if anyone has questions, I'll tell them to wait till the end. MLK station canvassing. This was an experiment we did and it was a learning experience. But really we kind of
Hexel Colorado: we probably should take a busier station to do it. One thing. We thought we were targeting Council district so we encountered it. We were targeting a particular Council District. So we came prepared handing out email addresses for a particular councilman who he later found out was already on our side. So we
Hexel Colorado: But when we were there there was people all over DFW at this station. It was not just residents nearby. So for future canvassing events, we need to have email addresses or material prepared for District any city council because people take Dart all over the place and do transfers all over the place. Just because it's in a neighborhood doesn't mean you'll have people from that District.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, it's something to keep in mind in the future, but it got us comfortable doing canvassing.
Hexel Colorado: So next time we're just gonna bring better material to hand out maybe and sometimes people have dead phones or no phones at all. So we wanted to get people to sign the petition too or email their council member wasn't an option next time. Maybe we bring a format that lets them write a letter to the council. We deliver it or a petition that they can sign physically without a phone just way better. because a lot of Dart Riders out here do not have phones so
Hexel Colorado: I got up in the mic already. So we put this together in response to one of the guys is on the Farmers Branch city council commenting on Dart writers being trash. We know what he really meant besides what he says he meant, so we thought we'd be a little cheeky and go pick up some trash out there. If you guys went to the meeting. Could you raise your hand or the trash pickup? Thank you.
Hexel Colorado: So glad you could be there. It was a good time there really wasn't a lot of trash. it's a very clean station. So the irony was not lost on us, but we talked some Transit. Thank you all for Moving into the dart board budget discussion. I think a lot of good wrap up has already happened Thank You Enrique. So that's something we're gonna continue to press on so we'll probably come out with maybe some content that can get you started on sending an email coordinates schedules for arriving and everything like that. Just look out for some updates on the group chat and probably some of our findings from the discussion section, but if you went in spoke to the dart board on Tuesday, Thank very
Hexel Colorado: that effort is very much appreciated a lot of energy here and glad y'all could do it. So more on that to come now the newsletter and social media Qui. Is there any chance he could yeah, could you turn it down a little bit?
Hexel Colorado: Why won't All right.
Hexel Colorado: then
Qui Le: People got the newsletter. It was mostly people that just signed the paper form the Tyler had. At the last meeting, but as of right now if you haven't signed it hexel can go to the next slide, If you haven't done it, you can go to this QR code and sign up and we'll probably be setting newsletters about once a month at this rate right now. And also with this we can also get some demographic information regarding if you want to be a reporter Tyler you can explain more about being a reporter and committees as well if you can't for me
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, sure real quick. So dot reporters is if you live in a dark member City you're kind of attuned to what's going on there. So we're gonna have a section in each of our general body meetings where you can give a quick update you will see that literally in a couple minutes and then what was the other one Qui
Qui Le: It's if they had an interest in committee, you can sign up to be in a committee as well. We have made that in the form as well. So we'll just stay here for a few seconds just for everyone to scan and register real quick if you need to and then we'll go to the next few slides.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, give it just one second.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, we got some people still working on it.
Hexel Colorado: all good.
Hexel Colorado: Is it possible to go to the website also, and it's Okay, so If you go to ride with data.org and then on the contact page newsletter sign ups there is what someone mentioned. All right quick. You're gonna keep going.
Qui Le: All right other things most of these codes. I'm really sorry. If you haven't joined the group me yet join the GroupMe Discord. I know some people do use Discord, but our main contact is gonna be GroupMe and then we also have a Facebook group as well. If you want to join that we'll stay here for a few seconds to anyone that wants to join these respective groups as well.
Hexel Colorado: Also it's also on the website they can go to ride withdata.org and…
Qui Le: Correct.
Hexel Colorado: then click contact. So if you don't want to fiddle with the QR code, I mean if it's quicker, but if not, you can just go to website.
Qui Le: Of course next one's also QR code. I'm so sorry. We have social media. We spun up some social media ever since the original formation and I will now start with social media updates now.
Qui Le: So I copy this from Connor our Facebook is growing a little slowly a little bit less than we want. But we do kind of want to build that We've been posting on Reddit either on Connor's account or on the ride on data Reddit account and that has been gaining attention people are contacting their Council people as well as dart board and as you could heard and like Enrique said people are contact in the dark board about that Discord remains active. It's one of our more active, but we're trying to also make group me as strong as well. we're trying to find ways that we can ping everyone. This is requiring some code and some know- so it's not on our immediate priority, but we are working on it. And the last one is Instagram is one of our most
Qui Le: Engaging platforms that we've seen so far in about two weeks since we've launched the account, we've already gained two or 250 followers. And another note here is me and Connor are spread pretty thin. I work a full-time job as does Connor and we cannot post content all the time. So we are looking for someone to manage or also design social media content as well. this is just a quick summary of our Twitter activation here. We gained almost 4,000 Impressions since our launch of the account and you can just see here. Some of our most popular posts was like the formation announcing the general meeting or the call to action for the dart board meetings next one. This is our Instagram as you can see here. We got 255 followers. Whenever I took this account, we reached around 700 accounts, which is actually pretty good next slide.
Qui Le: And yeah, here's our analytics if you just want to see we are doing pretty good on our engagement here relative to just a fresh new account and people are following us. I think there's one more slide and that's just follower count. Yeah, that's just follow our account. We are missing some data just because I didn't make it a professional account for about a few days but it is a pretty good data that we have so far and I think that's it.
Hexel Colorado: A quick and I add some details. you want to mention these other slides?
Qui Le: We also made a threads account as well and a blue sky, you might have seen that at the first slide. That's just for the people that don't want to use Twitter.
Hexel Colorado: Can't blame them. I have totally transitionally the threats full time over Twitter. I don't launch so some things I'll note just add on to what qui's report. So if you ever whatever social media on Yeah, there's a QR codes and website ride with data. That's our social media handle everywhere. So if you're like, what was the name of our groups on social media. It's ride with data. It's very easy to remember.
Hexel Colorado: I think that was it as all I wanted to wait the one more thing to mention is that I have it on good authority that people at Dart do check the Reddit and the Instagram so I run Dallas urbanists if you guys didn't know and whenever I post something Dart so dark video or start something like that. They see it and if commented about it to me whenever I've met with them in person same thing with the Reddit, I like one of my favorite interactions was not this last board meeting, the board meeting prior. They came up to me once a couple people staff came up to me and said that was a really neat flyer that you made. I was like fly I didn't make a flyer. It's like aren't you two to nine, man?
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, yeah. could you sign up wasn't it? Did you make the flyer? Yes, and so he made an awesome flyer and he posted on Reddit.
Hexel Colorado: and then it's John here is too much easy two two nine man here today Jonathan Hoover. How do you okay so he isn't here today? But Jonathan got interviewed by WFAA and people clearly he is flyer made a splash so all making the point that if you guys post things on Instagram and read it and you tagged dark daily on Instagram or just post on the art subreddit people do see it and so you don't have to worry about whether or not it's just being blasted Into The Ether. So that's all I want to add on top of what we mentioned. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: make a post on the Reddit if you want, I guess so then to see it or I guess there are monitoring it there's nothing that's on petition updates. So if you go to the ride with data, I mean that's the easiest way to find things. I'm gonna
Hexel Colorado: and then you click petition that's the fastest way to kind of pull up that petition again, as you can see we've got 1,571 signatures. It's very exciting. We hit a thousand in less than seven days. But we also had another Milestone which is that when we hit a thousand signatures, obviously, there's gonna be some outside of VFW, but recently we hit the Milestone of now we have bona fide. Let me pull up the screenshot I made earlier.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, so we have 1,044 signatures from actual Dart members cities, which is very exciting. a little bit breakdown so we can Note, I think there's a lot of things to take away from this obviously Dallas has a lot, but we're currently at 7:41, which means that we're very close to getting another Milestone of a thousand signatures from Dallas itself, which is also very cool. So keep telling people the sign to petition. Also, if we look at just a suburb cities, the closest one to a hundred is Richardson. So right now you're at 76 signatures, so you're basically one tabling event away from having a hundred.
Hexel Colorado: Plano is at 61 Irving 57. We were having a discussion with Mary at the last board meeting and she made an observation that one of the council members of Carrollton only one by 57 votes. I looked it up myself as well 57 was the number and so right now Carrollton has 33. So I think something to really keep in mind. I guess. I'm motivation for collecting signatures in your neighborhood and your suburbs is
Hexel Colorado: It doesn't take that much to build up a consensus that overpowers and overtakes the five or six people who voted in favor of cutting darts funding and so I think a really cool metric to think about is how many people do we need to talk to so that we can have the literal amount to flip an election in that City because that's a very powerful mandate on the right side. You can see 1,044 within dark member cities 172 across the FW outside Dart. I'm gonna pull up a map. Thank Jason for teaching me this tool. So there's people. Let me turn this on. There you go. So if you can see this map.
Hexel Colorado: It's pretty exciting. At first. I was like, we only want signatures from people within DFW, but it's very exciting actually to see the kind of constellation of support seeing how far ranging across the country people care about public transit in Dallas. So if we zoom specifically into Dallas or into, Texas. You can see we have a Texas triangle of support people from Houston, San Antonio, Austin. If we zoom in even further. So you can see in if we turn so, this is North, Texas, right? The white outlines are the dark member cities. You can see Dallas Irving Garland. And then you can see the Rail lines. So we
Hexel Colorado: I'm not doing I'm sorry. Thank you for telling me.
Hexel Colorado: if it works. Hold on guys technical challenges. Thank you for notifying me in the room. If I forget to share something on the zoom or on the Google meet then. Let me know.
Hexel Colorado: is it sharing?
Hexel Colorado: Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: You see the screen? Looks like maybe not.
Hexel Colorado: There you go. So this is really cool. So this is basically a heat map again, just so it doesn't look so intimidating. This is North Texas white lines are the dart service area and cities. This is where our signatures came from. So the color of are related to the Quinn 20% set. Increments so you can see that we have quite a lot of support from North Texas. We cover every corner of the Metroplex. If we just focus on at least in the top 75% It's interesting to know where we have support outside the service area. So we have some in Grand Prairie down in Southwest. I think it's Mesquite. Right here.
Hexel Colorado: far north Plano up towards Frisco where all that Murphy Rockwell area. So Brooklyn that must be an we have nine signatures from Alan. And so it is interesting to see that, just kind of get that reminder of the impact of what we're doing goes beyond.
Hexel Colorado: the service area but also this is the petitions we've collected so I don't want us to look at this and say this is where people care more about Transit. This is really more about where are region influence currently is and so obviously we have a lot of influence right now in downtown we have literally hundreds of people within just this essential City. So if we were like do we need to put a lot of effort or extra Manpower on downtown? I don't think so Props to Richardson you can see clearly that there's obvious influence of comments for better Transit. Yeah, UTD. It's a good job guys.
Hexel Colorado: so I think the thing that really note where we know that there's a large support for Transit, but clearly there's a gap in art influence as a group because I would point out Garland. We know there's a ton of transported in Garland our relative influences week there. So I think if we send people the table out there, that would be really valuable South Dallas. You can see same situation. another area if I just focus on I want to talk about Carrollton and Farmers Branch real quick. I think if we were to pick one place where It would make a really good headline and we'd make a really big impact is if we do something on canvassing at downtown Carrollton and it's interesting about Farmers Branch in particular. Yeah, so Mary was the one who brought up that the
Hexel Colorado: election results are super seven in One race. I think was a hundred and another in Farmers Branch. What's also interesting is that someone shared this? I don't know who appetizer is on Reddit, but they made a chart of the boardings at each of the stations. So this is actually something I wish I spent more time doing a comparison map of popular stations versus where are current influences because where our influences low but boarding to high. I think it's where we want to focus and Farmers Branch in particular.
Hexel Colorado: So they were saying this whole thing about there's nothing that comes to Farmers Branch station except trash but it's the most popular station between downtown Carrollton and Walnut Hill. So there's quite a lot of people who go through Farmers Branch same thing for downtown Carrollton and I think if we do it we already did Farmers Branch. I think we did another event in downtown Carrollton in particular. I think we have a heavy impact or really any of these I think Farmers Carrollton Trinity Mills North Carrollton, they have such a high number of boardings that I think maybe high impact by us going there and canvassing. So that's the petition update. I want to share. one last thing to share. I Took downloaded the board meeting from Tuesday, and I made clips of everybody's Three minute talks.
Hexel Colorado: So I'll send those to you. Mary Connor or no, you're not there. where's your hand? If you were there on Tuesday? Yeah, Tammy. So everyone who is there? I'll send you your video so that you can upload it to the petition page that thing that would be really cool to start building up that catalog. that's it Go for it. So we got this petition. What actions do we take? We have to present that to some City Council Members right particularly. In Dallas because that's sort of been effective. I guess and that's also Richardson and Garland are solidly on our side. We know that but Dallas.
Hexel Colorado: They're probably on our side, but we're not sure yet and I guess if we can get more signatures like Irving that would be helpful to or Carrollton. So What are you gonna do with this data now that we have it? Yeah, so one of the things is everybody who signs the petition I'm able to follow up with on email. So one thing I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to do a big email blast to everyone all 1500 signers and say hey show up at our next board meeting the dark board meeting on the 28th is a 28th or 2027.
Hexel Colorado: so that means that so every person who signs becomes an automatic subscriber to the updates that we put on blast and then what I'm also going to do is I'm going to update the petition page with kind of this update per City because then the petition page becomes this kind of like e brochure right? So anytime you emailing your council person or you're looking for what's a quick reference that I can show him, writing and testimonials. That's why I'm encouraging people to upload a video to petition page. It's something that anyone can collectively keep adding stuff to and accumulating and you just share, then it's easy to tell someone if you want to know the impact and the real stories go to ride with data.org and then click petition and you'll see everything that people are constantly accumulating. So that's you.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, just wondering are you gonna show this? yeah. I mean anyone could show this like you can Yeah, so I'm gonna put this map.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, I'm gonna update the petition with all this heat map so that they can there's a hundred people in Richardson or so, and so this morning
Hexel Colorado: I don't worry about that. It's not gonna disappear. That's just a dance teachers. What else can I mention? one thing I'll mentioned also about Farmer's Branch. and I don't know if this is something I am curious to watch out for I think if anyone notices one of these things and maybe bring it up to the group because I see there's some potential there. So one of the interesting things that we technically only got four signatures from Farmers Branch. But for some reason the number of the ZIP code that covers it's mostly Farmers has 20 signatures so I thought I was here. how is it that there's that seven five two whatever. this farm Zip code has 20 signatures, but only four people are associated with Farmers Branch. So I go into that it's like, okay. Let's see what's going on and what I found is that
Hexel Colorado: And if you notice this line, there's a bunch of apartments right here. So apparently there's these apartments have a high concentration of people who not only support Transit but are plugged into us. So I would suggest that if we were brainstorming for places to go and maybe door-to-door canvas or something like that. Those High concentration of Transit Riders are great place to look so that was one example, if you're like, I live in the village or I live in Victory Meadows and this is a very high density of Transit Riders and trans Advocates and that's something to put on our radar as well. All right, any last thing on the petition? Go ahead Tammy.
Hexel Colorado: hold on. Let me give me the mic.
Hexel Colorado: I was thinking I made Journal this week to tell which buses attack to be more positive with city council and what kind businesses I use at Dart. Where I shop what I do during the week. Now I'm gonna pop that up and send it to every council member and dark members. So I will let you please do that. Also if you go shopping or something.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah. yes. our bow tie man
Hexel Colorado: Can we get a link for the petition ride with data.org and then click petition. and also if you go to the petition page if you scroll down if you're making your own flyers or your own thing, which I encourage I want to do I know Tammy's been asking about Flyers forever and I think someone's working on it. But yeah,
Hexel Colorado: social media or something. I made they're floating around on the GroupMe. I've made some and if you want me to send you the canva link. Let me know. So Mary made Flyers you posted on the GroupMe and to her Point number one go check those Use those number two. This is a Grassroots movement.
Hexel Colorado: No permission necessary. I mean it's like if you want to put maybe the data logo then maybe talk to Curtis and Connor, but otherwise, you don't need our permission to support Transit and stand against Cuts. So if you want to make your own flyer and then link it to the petition go for it. If you're looking for verbiage or wording, you can go to a petition pull it off because it's one of those things that if you don't ask for permission, then we're not liable. it's like if you ask Dart directly, hey dark representative. Do you mind through a protest or rally, in your honor, of course, they'll go to say no. But if you just do it, yeah, this is Grassroots. You don't really need our permission do a lot of things. So just I think everyone here if you're here you have a good heart. So yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, anything else? I saw this. I don't know. So I assume most of us are renters here. I think if we're gonna get a lot of Apartments to talk about Dart and advocate for Dart it might be wise, you can ask your leasing office to put a flyer out for the petition because I mean if apartments are carrying Farmers Branch is pretty clear that maybe a lot of the ridership is coming from apartments for people are renting and they want to save costs by using cards. So it might be worth it by talking to your Leasing.
Hexel Colorado: What?
Hexel Colorado: Was just thinking if you're talking about apartments in a place like Farmers Branch if there's a heavy Reliance on Dart, it might be good to involve someone that's bilingual. It's just that we're one more because I'm sure you have more items on the agenda Brooklyn that Thank you. All right, Tyler take it away.
Hexel Colorado: Getting flashing, right? let's streaming switch. Maybe that one's you were charging us probably would yeah.
Hexel Colorado: it green Okay. Yeah, I think it's one.
Hexel Colorado: okay, so now we've got some reports on dartmember cities really 30 seconds, we got a lot to get through. We'll start with Addison Curtis.
Hexel Colorado: Hey guys, I'm in Addison. I try to pay attention to all the Council agendas for General things, but also for Transit last week the CEO of Dart and the Dean Lee and I believe our rep also you went and gave a presentation through the council talking about dart's plans. They briefly did mention the cuts and how it's not great and the council seemed generally supportive. Some of them have written Transit but not, very long time like 20 years, but they seem moderately supportive like apple. We're pretty supported. some didn't say much and there's one where I wouldn't say antagonistic, but He was inquisitive. And so I think he's
Hexel Colorado: he just went through the best thing and I talked to him Tyler talked to him and I think we can win him over so I know that maybe but I know that they said that Addison might be considering these Cuts later, but we're gonna keep talking to them make sure stuff happens. They did talk about the tier one two bus network, but they didn't really share any details. the main thing was Addison's ridership at the transit centers up to 95% from pre-pandemic levels. So higher than average for the nation pretty good and I'll probably get better with you.
Hexel Colorado: Work of Technology there closely. that's an Avenue where? positive business interests what reality is having one? Properly and the folks who are working. The economic company will be especially do you know any people I do? Promise any relationships? Okay like this so it agency that they affiliated with the city or
Hexel Colorado: got it.
Hexel Colorado: That's Outstanding so we will be in touch there anything else Phyllis we're really gonna get going. You haven't Economic Development you director of erson Wayne Emerson. That might be Right exactly. Yeah, so he's actually part of Addison.
Hexel Colorado: Exactly, right somebody take a note. Explains being recorded, Okay, cool. Alright bring it back in. Let's go over to Carrollton for Mary.
Hexel Colorado: Hi I went to 17 businesses on the downtown Carrollton. I lived there so it's easy for me. I had my own air conditioning to take a break in. it's generally very good reception a lot of the small They really want the foot traffic and the businesses that aren't as small are still interested because that is how their employees get there for the most part. So I made some beautiful Flyers they're on the GroupMe, but I can send out some links to that if you want to use those.
Hexel Colorado: One thing I want to talk about with Flyers. You can have a QR code that will pull up the email address you want people to send emails to and you can write an email for them if you want and that was received very well also, because it's lowering the barrier of entry for people to actually do something so the concerns I talked about with some people who were like, no, I'm not gonna help you. Their concerns are homeless people on the trains and drugs on the trains.
Hexel Colorado: and some of that is because we do get a decent amount of homeless people walking around downtown Carrollton and they do cause some commotion sometimes so that's the biggest issue I ran into but tomorrow I will be talking to the big apartment complexes around downtown Carrollton and one of them literally their marketing is trains So I'm going to be like hey, do you want to maybe keep them here? So that's what I'm going to be doing tomorrow.
Hexel Colorado: I want to do some more canvassing in Carrollton.
Hexel Colorado: in September keep an eye out for it. I can't be doing it myself all the time. So yeah again. That's my random. I'm trying to think of anything else.
Hexel Colorado: Yes, one more thing. There's one guy on the Carrollton City Council that I won't mention the name of who? Is really being a stick in the mud about this and everybody else From what I've heard, it's fairly amenable to public transit. so yeah, I think it's a great place to do some good work. Okay. Thanks.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, next Dallas I'm doing my best recorded So.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, hopefully. All right, so'll quick I'm not from D1 but I did have a conversation with Jake Edinger which is the policy analyst for B1 and I asked him because naturally what we asked which should be asking all of our counsel Representatives, where do you stand on this dark funding and some people were concerned because he had this statement of everything's on the table. So I asked him for clarification on that and he said okay to be clear. That's what they have to say in public because not a reflection of Dart but more reflection of the current situation that the cities in which is that they have this massive multi-billion dollar pension and in order to be fair to everybody who's also more likely going to get cut they have to say quote everything's on the table. But privately Chad. That's the dead last thing that he wants to cut.
Hexel Colorado: and right now it's not really something that he was even thinking about what trying to cut or wanting to cut he has so when he said that he really means it's the last thing he would ever want to do but he has to be fair and say everything's on the table. So that's good. Something else on the city front is
Hexel Colorado: Actually to be honest, most of my update was on the petition. So I don't think I have anything to say else. this is an important one.
Hexel Colorado: yeah. Okay. I am Alex. So I was at the budget town hall for District 9 for Paula Blackmon. And so I had a chance to speak with her about this issue and had a pretty good conversation with her started out a little testy a little bit. She seemed a little bit and antagonistic but I did, secure at least a verbal commitment from her that she would not vote for a resolution like the ones that the other cities have passed to support cutting darts sales tax a lot 75 cents. So that's good. But the biggest takeaways that I had were the kind of talking points that we may need hair ourselves for that. She was bringing up which what she mostly was talking about was ridership. She several times talked about how I see buses in downtown with nobody on them all the time. So we're
Hexel Colorado: We all know that writership is only been recovering since the pandemic so we should probably just want to make sure the arm ourselves with data no pun intended around ridership around, usage and things like that, but we do have at least a verbal commitment from Paula to not support cutting Dart.
Hexel Colorado: You Alice, which is that? There is a budget Town Hall every Monday through Thursday for the next two weeks. So that means that and I think every Council has multiple and a lot of them are virtual. So if you live in Dallas, they've really done their best to kind of make themselves as available as possible. So definitely, Go on I'll share this link on the GroupMe to everyone has it, but go to this page if you live in Dallas find your District. representative if you don't know what your Council district is then yeah, we'll help you find it. I will tell you but definitely find one of the one that you can make it to go there and say what needs to be said.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah. I'm trying to make sure there's nothing else that I should have wrote down but didn't okay. So yeah any questions about budget Town Halls? these things are very lightly attended. if you go there you're gonna be one of five ten twelve people maybe tops. So it's a very good opportunity to not just this but really anything else that you feel upset about. how City spends money These are the ones to go to. can we move on to strategizing for the board and Unless I know John Warren or Daniel had something for Plano or Garland anything big. I don't think we had a lot.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, so we'll keep an eye on there urgent. Okay, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so
Hexel Colorado: cool so we can speak to it So here's where we're gonna go into next. So normally we'd have something to the tune of exec reports of community chair reports. We're gonna talk about elections for positions and kind of get that organization done later. So moving into the topic agenda. We would have had a Q&A with the city councilor. If they were there big deal, it happens. So we're moving in a topic B discuss strategies for public comments at dart board meeting on August 27th. So just a quick refresh for everybody. This is the next public dart board meeting. I don't care we can do it. I mean
Hexel Colorado: so we do have two meetings coming up. I will say I just want everyone to know because this is board members have been advising us that you can talk to the board. But instead you can talk to a city council member do that if you have to prioritize one or another talk to city council.
Hexel Colorado: Do both. But if you can only do one or if you must prioritize one Council just want to make that clear so we are gonna make a presence at the board meeting. Even when you're at the board meeting maybe while you're waiting you can take that as an opportunity to email council members, but prioritize Council overboard, but we will be discussing boarding Council. There are budget Town Halls like coincide. Yeah, then yeah.
Hexel Colorado: or not I think we'll get to it later because if your town halls on the same night at the board meeting, don't you? go to your town hall over the board meeting if it's coincides, okay.
Hexel Colorado:
Hexel Colorado: Can you open a Google doc? Yeah, we're gonna open Dallas City Council first. Just because we are running low on time. But I think we'll get to both.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, that's it. so
Hexel Colorado: the first what do you think our general message? Is that like?
Hexel Colorado: We oppose cuts.
Hexel Colorado: So one thing I saw is that Enrique actually got this on my radar. They're voting on some legislative priorities and one of their legislative priorities was seek restructuring of Dart funding that was one of their legislative priorities. If you go to the meeting where they talked about this as one of the Dallas City Council Members who's actually known for being maybe less positive towards Transit. she was the one who got seek restructuring of dark sales tax funding on the legislative priorities. So I think the message that Dallas really needs to know is we do not want dart cuts, and we do not want the state to get involved and our Dart funding cuts.
Hexel Colorado:
Hexel Colorado: I happen to know that. Yes, of course. We're going through the legislative agenda. I think in terms of cutting the penny my senses that the city council is not going to be getting a votes to do that. However, there's another little piece that was slid into the legislative agenda and in the future cap. It's growth that's also a bad idea. So be aware that one because essentially city council should not be trying to move forward any legislation That starts doing fine the way it is and it's growing as we need it in the region. And so Cara has come up with a few strategies of how to still control in the future. So just want to make you wear that in addition to the penny. There's that capping.
Hexel Colorado: I think one thing I'll also add is should we drive home the point That rrative that dark ridership going down. Is a lie. There's a difference between it's lower than pre-pandemic and It's going up every month. Every year it goes up. But they're conflating the fact that pandemic numbers are still higher than technically today.
Hexel Colorado: And if anyone gets grilled on that remind them it's also a reflection of travel office pattern work patterns post pandemic not as many people are going into the office every day and that's what our system was designed for. So make sure you remind them that and you can also throw in weekend ridership is higher than pre pandemic more people are taking leisurely trips and dart then before so we must take any opportunity. You can to call people out. I'm not gonna say what to do. But if you have to pull you lie when someone says that are shrinking that's
Qui Le: We might have lost audio virtually.
Jonathan Garza: Yes, we did.
Hexel Colorado: Here. hold on by now try they're both green testing
Hexel Colorado: if the state were to kept this funding and if darts funding stream is coming from a penny per dollar. Within the member communities. Where were the different between the two? Money figures go wherever the money go in other words either way.
Hexel Colorado: Yes, so that has not been exactly determined at the point at the last budget meeting when they talked about say if we do do three percent that additional money goes to an account.
Hexel Colorado: but no no, I think the battery on just keep going. Okay I think okay. There's another question Mary make a comment about the
Hexel Colorado: this is the other narrative that has been the most singular issue that people have been using to attack Dart and that's ridership. and most of it is comments. I saw a buzz downtown empty and so forth. You can argue that back and forth, but it's really important to keep in mind that ridership is a very Singular not minor but it's one of many measures of the value of Dart. It does not take into account.
Hexel Colorado: What DART brings to communities in terms of value of property development growth Commerce not to say reduce congestion. There are numbers that are very strong. I think 200,000 hours a day are replaced for Dart keeps 200,000 cars a day off the street so environment and so forth. So when someone gets into that ridership thing just remember it's one of many sets of I always tell them I see people on my bus thank you. They're gonna sign anecdote eyesight and anecdote back. bring it back. If you guys all right, so any other suggestions on what we should say sure I'll keep this brief because could go literally for hours, but I did sign up. I'll be happy to help out with sort of media messaging. The question has to go well beyond.
Hexel Colorado: Don't vote for this because just to be blunt. who cares? I don't mean that flippantly I'm saying from the perspective of the audience. We're looking at people we're voting and just within 30 seconds you're talking about actual votes. So their biggest concern is getting re think about that competitive loss of federal funding equity for the right audiences, You will turn on other folks Heavy Hitters like AAC Arena the teams travel Crow, they're doing a big redo at Mockingbird increase tax revenues both from General growth. You don't have to take these notes. I'll give them to you and I'll be happy to help and also there's a linear line. There's an increase it's actually more than linear in property value when it's near Transit. So for all those reasons and this was just off the top of my head. You have to think why are they going to vote? Not to take away funding just saying isn't enough. but I'll leave it at that.
Hexel Colorado: Maybe just to kind of also add on strategy wise to I guess y'all's points a couple things that I think would be pretty beneficial would be at least prior to the board meeting or to the city council. We only get it's I think a minute at city council to speak and I think it's two minutes at the board meeting from correctly for three. And so especially if you are going to present I think it's probably beneficial for us at least take one or two of these points per person, to at least link up with a broader message, so we're not all going in saying things like we oppose Cuts, ridership is high. We post Cuts right when there are 40 different reasons and then yes one more piece on that which is picking obviously opposing Cuts together, but if you could possibly link it to a personal story using
Hexel Colorado: that is something that I think at least personalizes or humanizes the action.
Hexel Colorado: so I think maybe something that might be useful to bring up to the city council is that Dallas already has agreed to certain goals like CCAP the comprehensive environmental and climate action plan the vision zero the idea that we should have zero traffic deaths on our streets and I think also the Strategic Mobility plan, which I know less about but sounds relevant. Anyway, Dallas is already agreed to do these things and defunding Transit is going to be moving in the opposite direction of achieving those goals. That's a very good one.
Hexel Colorado: That is to speak related to that too. I was actually reading it yesterday because I wanted to see what they have and they said one of their main goals was to reduce single occupant vehicle trips and lower it by 10% by 2030 and you cannot do that. If you cut service to dark there's also that environment ones DFW is I believe someone said at the last meeting that they're well outside of the pollution levels. And so the national government's going to start buying us and cutting our Highway funding. So essentially anything you put in the cuts is
Hexel Colorado: Going to be paid in the fines. Anyways, you might as well use it productively. I have a quick question for Enrique for legislation. How would it be beneficial to try to Target text dots funding because I know the vast majority of their funding has to go towards highways currently and that's a legislative thing if they can make it more balanced that could help everyone.
Hexel Colorado: You just brought up something. That's really great idea to put on your Agenda for about a year from now. It would be great to have a conservative effort to reroute money that's within the roads to use instead for public transit because the return on investment on a dollar to add one lane you get I don't know 500 buses and move a lot more people and people at the very high up levels at meeting at Federal level.
Hexel Colorado: Meaning goodrichage is really unfair of this. He supports that but the money routes to the state and then comes throughout too many economic interests. From what I've heard from our own board members who are I didn't ask them that there's too much money going into road construction to make that flip that easy so it'll be a long trip to think that wasn't your question. Your question was. smile.
Hexel Colorado: sorry, I got I don't know in the audio stop but
Hexel Colorado: okay. What do we need to do this year to take Dart and
Hexel Colorado: is there media here? Are It has been recorded. All no. but yeah, right. So there are there legislative initiatives that the dart board can't propose to move forward. However, because the dart board is divided in terms of where some of us think it should survive some of these initiatives. There are a couple that I have in mind and I know another board member in mind we'll have to be Independently a Citizens Advanced by us working with legislators in Austin or the city's legislative effort.
Hexel Colorado: they're probably not your audience for that. I mean, I think I would focus on the issue at hand at the moment. That's the budget.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah real quick.
Hexel Colorado: Show off hands who has given a public comment. Let's say that to a dart board before.
Hexel Colorado: Okay, so I think I'm more interested in if you have never done before raise your hand. So if you've never given a public comment to the dart board before of those who have never keep your hand up if you've never given any public comment to anyone. so all right, you can put your hand out. So I got the general idea. So basically if you've never done it before either you've never done any public comment or you've never given specifically a dart board number one, we will talk about how much time you get. Typically they say you have three minutes. if you're going to speak in a dart board, I've noted they always give three minutes but I recommend planning for two. because you in that moment will
Hexel Colorado: stumble on your words you might throw in an extra anecdote. You're planning on saying so very often if you plan on three minutes, you don't get to finish your three minutes, but also if you've never done before find a friend or make a new friend and practice it with someone type out your speech online on a Google doc and then shared with the GroupMe. That's a great way to get feedback. One thing. I found very useful is Do a rough draft or write it down and then paste it in the chat GPT and say rewrite to keep it under two minutes.
Hexel Colorado: that very works never used to happen. You just alone with that just raw, but that's a very good way of your stuck. You're hanging over words. That's a very good way to keep it two minutes but practicing each other plan for less time than you actually are allotted. So that gives you the most flexibility and that's for the dark board. if you've never done dart board, all you have to do is just show up and then fill out a paper card there's not an online sign up for the dart board if you're going to city council check as always different depending on the meeting. So if you're going to city council, you have to register online the day before at a maximum. Yeah. Im to it yeah. I'm already good. So actually
Hexel Colorado: Do speak at Dallas City Council you do have to register beforehand. I would actually like everyone who plans on attending this meeting either virtually or in person go into the GroupMe and say that you are the reason why is because one I want to just create a group chat just for this event. So that way we can all coordinate which arguments we're going to use And another so I can push updates like hey, you can now register to speak at the meeting. So for everyone who's attending to speak. I know it's a bad time Wednesday morning.
Hexel Colorado: say so I also wanted to point out if you don't feel like you're ready to speak on I'm support Dart because of this statistical reason just as effective if not more. personal stories if you just tell them why Dart is important to you and why you care about it. That's probably just as good as trying to bring up ridership statistics or whatever you want.
Hexel Colorado: Is it I thought they did.
Hexel Colorado: I thought they did public comments a few of them in the morning and then they would do the rest after the meeting. But I've also heard that if a large group of people shows up, they will likely just front load it. Yeah. That's it. So here's the way it works. Technically the rules. only five people are allowed to get public comments at the beginning of the meeting. The reason that this rule exists is because there's a certain Self-proclaimed comedian who will abuse the system and to show up and just give a very not funny stand-up.
Hexel Colorado: So what happens is when you show up and it's clearly obvious, especially if everyone's wearing everyone that's why I've been making big deal about these buttons, right if they look out in the audience and they can clearly see that there's a lot of people there to speak actual and also if they see the backlog and people who registered what they'll usually do is they'll waive the rules for that particular media make a motion the way the rules and then they'll let everyone speak that being said in order to get that effect. They have to see that there's a line of people who are clearly there to comment and so that's kind of what you can expect because that's what happened whenever there's a Housing Coalition or this or that when they see that there's a large number of people there clearly there to speak then they'll wave the rules but that's how it works. So, how do we do that? We just all wear the same color shirt.
Hexel Colorado: You could do that. we're excited after we adjourned the program of this. I brought my button machine so it can make more buttons. You can see he's wearing one now. I think that's something we can all take away from here, but then I'll let the group chat decide what to do for maybe same color. That's probably the most efficient thing to do. Okay.
Hexel Colorado: Time where we had? we have 10 minutes left so I know there's so many people who wanted to say more on Dallas City Council. We probably should move on to Dart. Yeah, so just last thing leave a say something in the group chat. If you're gonna go to Dallas City Council and we'll get to dart board.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, so there's a few ways to engage. What I recommend is sign up for our email sign up for the group meeting in the Discord because we will post the events with the logistical details, right you might be wondering how the hell am I gonna get there? Excuse me, and that will all be taken care of and we can coordinate the Dallas group chat so the main data group chat the Dallas section great also great place to post your suggestions your data your stories Etc so we can kind of engage offline because this is very inefficient way to do it, unfortunately, so if you have more to keep it say it or talk to us after the meeting or any time on the group music and everything. So really appreciate you all for coming here. Sorry if we didn't get to you. Although if you have something just a real good Zinger about Dallas it hit me you got one.
Hexel Colorado: This is more about the dart board and the Suburban communities and that is that we're trying to reach the people that are difficult to reach in terms of these council members and be looking for people that are really Into The Prestige of getting a mega event we just got through watching the Olympics and everybody's looking at that and saying God, I'm gonna get to wouldn't that be so cool to get the Olympics in Dallas something like that, but of course. It's hard to do because of our transportation infrastructure. See you mentioned the World Cup.
Hexel Colorado: Meadowlands got the final game and if you've been to Meadowlands, New York, New Jersey, they've got wonderful public transportation. So we want to be competitive in getting the next Super Bowl and that sort of thing. And if this is something that appeals to people The Prestige of getting that event and also the revenue that comes from the hotel motel tax in the car rental tax every time you get a mega event. This is something that you can use to appeal to them that if we can have better public transportation that ties together in a logical way, especially if it connects directly to high speed rail, which we're not proposing that is something that could turn some of these people
Hexel Colorado: Entire one we might not even get that today. but that's something we're kind of keeping an eye on and we'll keep everyone posted. Okay UT. We're gonna be my last ones about Dallas gentleman, and I'll get you second notice even yellow
Hexel Colorado: Hi, one more thing. I wanted to add with in regards to what you said about going at city council meeting and sharing stories. one more thing. I wanted to think about it audible events and entertainment and Leisure. I've used art on multiplications to get to Leisure events go to restaurants and meet up with friends. That's also really important. And that's also what you said weekend traffic that is pretty huge and the idea of defunding dark that would cut service basically everywhere and it would impact even the people who have the choice of using Dart for these Leisure opportunities. I think that's also pretty important thing to address.
Hexel Colorado: Thank you.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, I don't mind. my name is shamba. I'm fine with either. Yeah, this isn't really real very related to this. It's on rather the budget cuts. this isn't directly related to this. It's more of the budget cuts. I believe some City Council Members have said that Dart has some debt that they need to pay but wouldn't budget cuts only put them into even more debt.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, I did see the financial plans.
Hexel Colorado: So let's move into the dart board discussion. And I think we have two people who are on the citizens or we have three people here including Dave and Phyllis for engaging with the dart board. I might let them speak first so that they can kind of speak to it Dave you want to take the something that all of you need to think about when you make comments to the dart board or the city council or any of the organizations that you go to get your topic clearly. in front get your support items in place. Do what hexel said practice what you did or what you're going to say?
Hexel Colorado: At some point in time prior to going to the meeting that way you'll be able to make sure you get all of the quality points and comments and your support information into the time frame. It's limiting you to speak because when the dart board sees that there's 50 people out there to speak they're going to be about making sure that you're held to that three minute limit. So be prepared to get your points clearly in place and your support items clearly in place and squeeze it into that time frame of three minutes.
Hexel Colorado: Appreciate it. Yeah good call. what you support upfront. I totally agree. Good one. Okay,'s you've got a mic. Okay, since we're talking about August 27th. I want to bring to everybody's attention who is going to go to the board meeting that they will be a separate item on there about the public hearing the fair structure on that same evening. It's a separate item. Like I said, that's not public comments. it's considered the public hearing and my next thing is a question. I don't know which is we haven't talked about the board meeting yet. How are we gonna decide who says what because I don't have this computerization to Yeah, right, I happen to be talking at the public hearing but that's separate from these public comments, correct? And I want everybody to be clear about that. but I'd like to say something about public comments, but I don't know how we could coordinate so I got
Hexel Colorado: Phyllis, what was Phil's in our neighbors? So we talk at least twice a week? So I will take your stuff and I'll kind of let you know what everyone else is talking about and what coordinate in the next couple weeks. I'll mail also suggest because I'm also on a CAC by the way, if there's a lot of people here from different parts of the Metroplex. let's take advantage of the fact that
Hexel Colorado: Some of us our neighbors to each other so maybe for example if Phyllis and Tyler and anyone else in Addison Carrollton Farmers Branch, it would be a whole lot to get the entire Dart service area to come to an event but it's very easy for all of you who live close to each other to have your North Dallas or Northern suburb practice session, just want to encourage you guys to think about what activities can you do a subgroups because that's a lot more flexible and Nimble agile, then only relying on things that are All right, so it is five. It's probably okay that we stay over and No One's Gonna care, I want to start thinking about what's the message. We want to convey to the dart board. so
Hexel Colorado: we did talk about Capping the operating budget last time and we can probably continue to hammer that in. But is there anything else for example, I mentioned this way early in the meeting. There is no plan frequency or service improvements in next year's budget. Maybe we should say that's what we want. Even if Dart can't make it happen. At least that tells the board. They want better service, And who knows maybe Dart will look at this be like, okay, we can fit in a frequency Improvement to the 229 or something. Yeah. I would remind that especially with only a few minutes per person and then if everyone's giving personal stories or a lot of people giving personal stories, there's not gonna be a whole lot of room for a very big Nuance message. Yeah, it is a good idea to kind of keep it.
Hexel Colorado: To limit it to one or two main points. Yeah. up there
Hexel Colorado: I guess it's a question and a suggestion would it Would be useful to just kind of highlight to the board all of the improvements that we've seen over the past couple of years with cleanliness security. I think frequency is improved on some routes that I don't tend to take very often, but just to kind of say look you guys have been doing a great job to bring this stuff up to par? They're still work to be done. But just kind of reinforce that the Investments that they've been making have been working and have been felt and are appreciated. Would that be useful? Yeah, I think that there's this narrative that darts doing a bad job people. I think they're doing a great job. I really do. So. Yeah, I think we do want to emphasize that we can probably emphasize that in the Dallas one as well. Yeah. I'll copy that over before so.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, I think honored if some of us can mention it and hey Connor, I got two points here. So the stuff we're talking about for a city of Dallas. We can also say if the dart board to a large extent. So what we've kind of discussed you can Hammer that home that's really good and second. And Enrique quick question, or are those who engage regularly? Can I go to this dart board meeting and say hey I see data on the internet that Paul wageman takes lobbying money from Uber. Can I say that? I don't think so. Wait, This is one of those don't ask for permission. gotcha God because look I don't want to be liable for whatever I answer but if it's public information. who's gonna see freedom of speech So don't have information about that in there. Cool.
Hexel Colorado: I speaking right your own risk. so I think obviously it's not illegal but always been the Plano rep takes money from He's an Uber lobbyists but it is questionable when the council members that appointed him say, hey we should cut Dart and replace it with They said that I forget. I don't like Mark shaking. Shelby Williams has said on Reddit. Yeah, maybe both so one of them is bias there But the other one's like hey, we should cut this thing that we're in charge of for this thing. We're getting paid for it's a little questionable. I will say I don't know if it's the most effective tactic. I don't think we're changing Minds so I would recommend against it. So I'll just save it for a letter to the editor just for me. Yeah. Yeah just for you. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Tyler's letters to editor has been published by the way. Yes. I've had so not to derail as too much, but writing to the Dallas Morning News under the letters to the editor, look up their requirements for how that works, but it is an effective thing. especially recently that's news. They're not the most Progressive on all issues, but they're very on the ball with this dark funding d magazine as well. I mean, we have a lot of good media so if anyone's listening or will listen later, thank you.
Hexel Colorado: all yeah, so I think really what we're trying to hammer and the dart board and I'll send this document out to those who don't have a computer. I'm sure someone else in the group, anyone will take care.
Hexel Colorado: iron this out more.
Hexel Colorado: so I think for the dart board main thing is maybe ask for better service in leures Revenue caps, no budget cuts and just talked about how great Dart has been doing. You look like you really need to say something in retail. Okay.
Hexel Colorado: One more thing if you don't know what to say. just say I agree with what they've been saying or I like what everyone else saying. My comment is the same just something like that, you can always just say hey.
Hexel Colorado: ? Lots of work there and say my name is hexel. I'm with data and I'm against cuts and sit down. Weirdly enough because everybody fills up their entire time if you just have a 15 second thing to say that's also super impactful. So just throwing it out there that you don't have to overthink it so Connor, I want to take maybe a couple more from yeah and we can close this. So yeah. Sam Chris, I'm in Kara's District. So that's your heart. So just I'm here my idea if we could get all the stats. On the website. So we can quickly look if I'm going to go to Kara or anybody else say hey. we could get it Addison transitors at 95%
Hexel Colorado: We get all those stats on the website so we can quickly grab them back sheet or yeah.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, or all kind of I definitely want to add more narratives or more arguments more data onto our website people can quickly references like the economic development how much? development is pretty Mills stationed developed their under construction right now is it they are 100 I'll just say I have a PDF from the CAC that has an update on every single Tod currently in progress. So if anyone wants that PDF then hit me up. that's what I want. to know
Hexel Colorado: Okay, last one. What's your name? Sorry, I've seen you before so. He's having Greenbergs Timmy Greenberg's husband just told me that I can do play. something came up that really triggered something that was said earlier. And that is borrowing cost. Now there's two types of debt. There's what are called revenue bonds, which are like Omni Hotel. For example, you build a hotel and you guarantee the bond by the revenue that's coming from the room rentals. And then there's what DART typically uses which is a general obligation Bond now. The interest rate that you pay on a bond is a factor of the financial. strength
Hexel Colorado: of the borrower and so the borrower gets a bond rating and the bond rating determines of the interest. that's charged on the debt. And so what we're talking about here cutting 25% of the revenue. That is going to tank dart's Bond rating because dark will find it increasingly difficult to pay back any money that it borrows and it's going to be able to borrow less money for projects and it's going to be charged a higher rate of interest for the money. That's borrowed. So not only are we bringing in Less Revenue, but were increasing our operating costs. And so this is something that needs to be brought out. Yes.
Hexel Colorado: 25% cut the sales tax means way more than a 25% reduction in service is how I understand it. and for those reasons, yeah, I think they call it like a public service desk spiral. So where you get more cuts, which means worse service, why are we funding this? Anyways, which means more guts Etc. So I think with that we have some engagement strategies for both Dallas and the dart board if you can make it.
Hexel Colorado: Awesome, so dark orders on the 27th at what 5:30 you want to show up so you can thought a card a six but yeah 530 get there fill out a card across the street from acreage station, It's at Dart headquarters. So it's just you get off you go right there. The 20 28th is the Dallas City council at 9:00. Am remember we will share the details on the group me and the Discord and probably post about it on social media so you can get the logistics sorted out there. Please share any more thoughts you have with is it at ride with data.org?
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, yeah info at ride with data.org. So you're tods please contact us and input ride with data.org. We'll get with So just remember you guys can continue to engage with us outside of this meeting. Thank you all for coming. We have a couple more agenda items to hit. Is there anything we've really need really? I don't think what's that? officer elections. So that's a good one. My move is kind of doing what hexel did for the name where we have people who are interested can kind of Join a specific channel in the group me and say hey, my name is this I'm interested in the VP president Etc or one of the chairs for the Committees and just kind of say here's what I've done in the past. Here's why I'd be good for this and then you can kind of engage over the week and then we can do kind of an online ranked Choice vote where you guys can pick your people who you want and then by the next meeting we can get through the results of that and say here's our officers. thoughts
Hexel Colorado: Yeah, Alex.
Hexel Colorado: So will the range Choice ballot be just like a bunch of names which I know barely anybody's names or will be able to put a blurb of here's who I am. Here's my qualifications and stuff. How's that gonna work? So the blurb would be in the group meet we can have a channel that just says election Channel and if you want to run you put your blurb there and so when somebody goes through and enters, hey, I want to talk I'm ready to vote. You have that blurb as reference material for anybody who said what they wanted to say about the position. Is that cool, please question about this is there going to be a nominations period where we put your people in the South nominee or nominate others and then that nomination spirit and then there's a ballot Yes, so we're for nomination either to be honest, yeah it just
Hexel Colorado: You are signing up for responsibilities. So you might if you want to do it. You're probably gonna get it. I think because you're basically asking for work to do. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean if you're willing to even ask for it, you're most likely qualified I would say so but I will be nominating people. I'm just gonna start throwing I was like, hey, you'll be good for the chair. Leader had some list of Physicians to fill. I mean, yeah, I'll take care of that. I'll publish that detail Phyllis. I'll call you about it. And so if anybody needs it offline or wants to kind of run the paper ballot talk to me right after this and I'll take your number and we can work that out. But any objections that kind of idea or any suggestions for elections?
Hexel Colorado: Yep, just like Carousel for some positions. Does it make sense to wait until the next big I guess group meeting. I figure it's like you're saying your sign up for responsibilities. So if you're looking to be present or VP that if you attend one meeting and then try to nominate, I'm sure informally it's probably not super hard to get a couple votes your way. But at least for something like that. I wonder if it makes sense to take an in-person vote. There's another idea. elections at the next
Hexel Colorado: so that's another idea where we just do elections at the next meeting in person and maybe we can find a way to take online votes and then the period between this right after this and the next meeting would be you can come out and say hey I'm interested in running in this here's my blurb and then people have been here kind of know She's like hey if you've been here then you have a bit more credit. So I think that's another idea.
Hexel Colorado: Yeah to just add on to that we could treat it as the next general meeting is the official election day. And then the online poll is open just like any other lecture like the early voting right in ballots people who can't physically make the next meeting and so it would work just like any other election. There's a people who submit your votes prior and then on the day and if there's anyone who hasn't voted yet, they can make that decision. Yeah. I was just gonna say that and then I have the spreadsheet macros already program for Grand Choice voting. So we could get the instant results that day. So here's what we'll do. We're pretty busy with kind of this engagement. If you've signed up for the newsletter Etc. We'll probably send out a blast when the polls are open, but I think between some of us who have kind of been running some of the tech and some of the logistics we can get that set up for everybody. If you're interested in running you can contact us or just
Hexel Colorado: Just saying is a free country and we'll keep that in mind. We do need to roll this out kind of in pieces. And like I said, we're spread Somethin. So if anybody's like, hey I can be an election worker. Anyone wants to run the Instagram. Yeah. Yeah, you want to run the Instagram? No, that's
Hexel Colorado: yeah, right. Yeah.
Hexel Colorado: so I think that's kind of where we'll Look out for more details on polling if you're interested start thinking about it General positions are going for president and vice president secretary at the top executive level. And then we have a few committees. I think there's about a half dozen looking for chairs. And if we have enough people interested otherwise chairs will just appoint the chair and so that would be presidents kind of the face of the org runs the meeting Etc VP helps with that and it takes the place. exactly where the presentation. So basically what we're doing is Presby p and then kind of being head contact your head escalation point secretary would take minutes at the meetings and kind of coordinate all the paperwork the committee chairs would basically be presidents of their little committees and give reports. And so then the idea is committees will start meeting outside of this time and you guys can write engagement strategies for the social media for the policy Etc. And so that's where we want to spread that out so we can actually start doing
Hexel Colorado: things out of these two hours We had the ball rolling. I nominate Tyler. It's not running. So yeah, we'll see about that. I'm moving to close this section. unless anybody has any last-minute watch Irina close the meeting now. Yeah, I think we can close the meeting too. Yeah, so thank you again for coming. I'm gonna stick around for a minute figure out my train ride home. Thank you close meeting dinner. I'm gonna go somewhere probably.
Hexel Colorado: you
Hexel Colorado: he. Yeah.
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