Drats! They've Done it Again!
A Civics in How Bureaucracy Works in Real Time
As a leader with Dallas Area Interfaith, I was taught a lesson I have never forgotten: the purpose of bureaucracies is to wear citizens out. Exhaust them, and, I might add, distract them.
Distract them from who has the power to do what. Distract them regarding where to go. Distract them regarding who to talk to. Distract them regarding information. And distract them about money.
For new readers, I’ve been writing about the future of downtown Dallas and this City Hall imbroglio for several months now — trying to ask the questions our civic leadership hasn’t been willing to ask publicly. If you want the fuller picture, I’d encourage you to look back at some of those earlier posts. What follows makes a lot more sense with that context in hand.
It turns out that’s most likely what this whole “demolish/don’t demolish” City Hall debate has been. One huge distraction. According to a recent television interview with City Councilman Paul Ridley, the real reason is a play to get the Dallas Mavericks to move to 1600 Marilla — a move cementing Dallas’ transition from being a People City (if we’ve ever been one) to being a true Market City.
It seems the conversations about this move were made last year, in an overture to Rick Welts by our City Manager, Kim Tolbert — a flex made without any express consent or knowledge of the City Council. Harmless on its face, a move like this without the least official cover of broad council knowledge signals not only what an individual thinks of her role, but what she thinks of the citizens who — beyond city staff work environs — are supposed to be the ones who actually run the city.
Astonishingly enough, Welts is the source of this information about these conversations. The Dallas Mavericks CEO is making sure to let the city know who is to blame in this major kerfuffle. He’s not the one who came up with the repair estimate. He’s not the one pushing the idea of an arena on City Hall property. He’s not the one who even started the conversation. That was the City Manager.
And the upshot is that while we have been distracted — arguing with one another about iconic architecture, repair estimates, tax implications, and calling one another names because of our preferences — the real objective is to anchor downtown with a brand-new arena for the purpose of redeveloping downtown. We wouldn’t know it, however, until the bill came due.
Jim Schutze rightly pointed out that I sound agnostic regarding the demolition or preservation of City Hall. Let me put it this way: personally, I’m not agnostic at all. I believe it’s a perfectly ridiculous idea to tear down a structure that should be pointed to as a landmark. If you want to argue that it is little used, fine — call for more public programming inside and outside. I’m for that. But not one figure or cost estimate I’ve seen has come close to estimating the cost of losing the one most artistic, civically accessible piece of human design in this city. That would be a tragic loss to our city’s soul, no matter how much it would add to our collective purse.
But here’s where I’m willing to lay my preference down — and here’s what Schutze actually got right: City Hall doesn’t need to be torn down, and it doesn’t need to be the centerpiece of this argument either. The “demolish or keep” debate has become the entire conversation — when it should be one chapter in a much longer book. What is good for the city’s purse and the city’s soul cannot be separated into two different conversations. And a conversation about the demolition of City Hall is not enough. The real question is what kind of downtown and by extension, what kind of city, is Dallas is building? And that question — the one that actually matters — is the one nobody in power seems willing to ask or answer seriously.
The problem with downtown is not that it doesn’t make money. The problem is that it is empty — and getting emptier by the day. An arena’s usage is not going to be enough to fill it. You need a comprehensive plan that will support City Hall’s presence while providing a broad range of life. Movie theaters, restaurants, and social venues that will bring people downtown and keep a working populace downtown after hours. You also need places for people to live. So yes, it calls for fast food restaurants, but it also calls for grocery stores — small and large. It calls for green space, movie theaters, dry cleaners, bars, and a thousand other little amenities that make a neighborhood. It means places where people can not only drive, but park, get out, and walk around. And it needs thoughtful, long-term planning — something to which our city seems allergic.
We ought not feel surprised that Tolbert and Welts seem to have been cooking up a plan to do something to or for downtown. She trying to keep the Mavericks here; he trying to find a new home for the Mavericks, ostensibly downtown and ostensibly in Dallas. Perhaps we shouldn’t feel surprised, even though we may need to feel a little foolish. There’s this shiny bauble thing we keep falling for. The substance is in the right hand, while over here in the left, there’s this shiny thing making this siren-type noise that we keep capturing our attention.
And here we go — distracted again.