General Meeting August 18, 2024 – Minutes
Announcements
- 27th: next DART board of directors meeting
- 28th, 9 AM: Dallas City Council
- Shifting focus to contacting state legislators
- Addison may be the next city to consider a resolution to support cutting DART funding- keep eyes peeled
Guest Remarks
Enrique Macgregor (DART Board / Dallas & Cockrell Hill)
- Coordinate remarks at CC meetings to avoid repeating talking points
- DATA has been noticed
- Michelle Krause took note of our speaking at DART board meeting about cuts
- There are some board members very dismissive of us and riders in general (not naming names but you can probably guess who)
- Some false narratives being floated about DART and government inefficiency to justify cuts
- “DART is not listening to us” - also not true. DART is listening to the cities, DART just disagrees that there should be cuts
- Budget components: operational, capital projects, debt servicing
- Budget cuts being proposed are totally arbitrary
- Increase in operational costs are due to new contracts for cleaning and safety, and increased rates for existing contractors
- Proposed budget is a cap of 3% YoY
- DART is overfunding pension
- Question from Connor: what does this mean for any service improvements to work towards Tier 1 and Tier 2 bus networks?
- Legislative agendas are going to be a priority and making sure that as few cities as possible are advocating for cuts to the Lege
- Think about talking to businesses, hospitals, etc about what the impact of cuts to DART would be on them
- DART wants TOD, and developers want DART, but Dallas needs to let it happen
Garrett (Dallas Bicycle Coalition)
- Week Without Driving Sept 30 - Oct 6
- Requirements to be an official partner organization: promote WWD on socials, participate in planning, etc etc etc he went through it really fast
- Can participate as an individual
Individual Reports
- DFW Progressives: Lots of people unaware of cuts but supportive of our cause. Lots of people there actually running for state house
- Irving Democrats: didn’t go as well. Talk got hijacked by an anti-DART city council member who put Connor on the defensive. Once council has voted, hard to change minds. Met a candidate for TX House who is likely to win her race and is pro DART (!) addendum from Hexel: don’t let bad faith actors interrupt your presentation and derail (heh) the topic
- MLK Station Canvassing: learning experience, need to pick a busier station. Goal was to target a particular CCM’s constituency. Future events: need email addresses, materials, for any city council because not just people from the district use dart in the district. Lots of people don’t have smartphones so we need physical petitions for people to sign
- FB Trash Pickup: not a lot of trash lol, irony was not lost on us, good mini-canvassing
- DART budget meeting: Enrique basically covered this above
Qui (Social Media and Engagement Updates)
- most email subscriptions are from last meeting
- Demographic info
- Social media channels: Facebook is growing slowly, Reddit shows strong engagement, Discord and GroupMe are strong, instagram is popping off
- Hexel: DART board members check the dart instagram and the DART subreddit (!)
Hexel Colorado (Petition Updates)
- 1571 signatures, 1044 of which are confirmed in the DART area
- Richardson almost has 100
- Side note about how narrow city council election margins are. The more people we raise this issue to the more we can potentially swing elections to pro-DART candidates
- Lots of support also from across the country, very cool
- FB and Carrollton tabling and canvassing could be very effective
- Connor: What do we do with the petition? Who do we show it to?
- Hexel: outreach tool for email blast, can show it to CCMs, Hexel will share the heat map of signatures.
City Reports
- CEO of DART gave a presentation to Addison, council seemed moderately supportive. Need to talk to economic development corporation people
- Canvassed 17 businesses in DT Carrollton. Generally good reception, small businesses want the foot traffic from DART, larger businesses want DART for their employees. Made flyers, you can have QR codes that create an email for people to send directly to relevant officials. Main concern people had was re: homeless on DART.
- Tomorrow she will be talking to the DT Carrollton apartments. There’s one guy on the CC who is a stick in the mud about this but everyone else seems amenable to public transit.
- Hexel conversation with D1 representative. Statements about “having to consider all the options” re: DART cuts to fund pension. mostly public fluff, not representative of CCM opinions.
- Alex conversation with D9 secured verbal commitment to not support cutting DART funding. Main talking point she kept bringing up was ridership and empty buses. (Didn’t have time to say it but also she was talking a lot about DART transparency with cities)
- Garland budget mentions DART four times but nothing of note
Glenn Heights/Park Cities - Skipped
Irving (Jonathan) - skipped
Plano (Warren/Daniel) - skipped
Richardson - skipped
Rowlett - skipped
Topic Agenda
Strategies for public comments at Dallas city council 28th 9 AM
- If you have to prioritize between talking to DART board and talking to Council, prioritize council
- Councils are voting on legislative priorities- one of them is to seek restructure DART funding structure. We can blame Cara for that one. Message Dallas needs to hear is we don’t want funding cuts and we don’t want the state involved
- Enrique: CC doesn’t have the votes to support reducing penny, but might be open to capping growth which would be a very bad idea.
- Narrative about dart ridership being down is unequivocally a lie. Consistent month over month and year over year ridership growth since pandemic. Weekend ridership is HIGHER than pre pandemic
- If state caps dart funding, where does the rest of the money go? To be determined
- Dart is more than just ridership- it’s also congestion reduction, increased property values, freedom of movement, environment benefits.
- We need to go beyond just asking not to vote for this, we need to provide the why. How does this help someone get re-elected. Tailor message to the audience- “equity” or “environment” won’t ring for everyone
- Prior to board meeting or cc meeting, split up talking points to one or two per person to create a broader message and not repeat same point over and over. Link it to a personal story if possible
- Dallas has already agreed to certain environment and traffic safety goals and cutting dart will set them even further back on them than they already are. Example goals: Reduce single occupancy vehicle trips by 10% by 2030, federal emissions regulations that we’re on the verge of being fined for
- We need a concerted effort to try and reroute money in TxDOT for highways to be for transit but that is a very uphill battle. Take it one year at a time
- Hexel advice on public comment: you get 3 minutes but plan for 2 in case of stumbling or extra anecdotes, practice with someone and get feedback, do a rough draft
- DART board has no online comment, city council requires prior registration
- Connor will create a GroupMe chat for coordinating speaking at CC
- Personal stories are VERY effective- tell city council what dart means to you
- Technically the CC rules allow only 5 pre-meeting comments but if they see a lot of people there to speak from a group they’ll waive the rules and let everyone speak.
- We need a group identity – suggested to all wear yellow shirts. Hexel has buttons.
- Talk about DARTable events and leisure- remember weekend ridership is up
- Budget cuts would hurt debt payoff
Speaking at DART board on 27th
- More presentation tips on conciseness, rehearsal, clarity, time management
- August 27th: separate item about public hearing for fare structure
- Think about what activities you can do as subgroups with your peers and neighbors
- What’s the message to convey to the dart board?
- Advocate for frequency improvements and new bus routes (even if they can’t do it, we should still advocate for it so it’s on their minds)
- Limit to one or two main points
- Highlight to the board that the cleanliness and security improvements are visible and appreciated- the investments in those are working
- Pushback on narrative that dart isn’t working to improve
- Why is Paul Wageman a lobbyist for Uber? We should be openly questioning this especially when city councils float Uber as a replacement for DART save that for letters to media
- If you don’t know what to say, keep it simple and agree with prior comments
- We need to put stats and stuff (fact sheets) on our website for easy access when talking to council members
- Cutting revenue will tank dart’s bond rating
- Express interest/nomination in running in the GroupMe, will do an online ranked choice vote
- Tyler will build list of offices and nomination process
- Next meeting will be the “official” election day but polls will open beforehand via a Google Form sent out in email blast
- Offices (so far): president, vice president, secretary, committee chairs
- Committees can meet outside the monthly meetings
End of meeting
Meeting adjourned
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