09/13/2026
Grounding the Billboards Debate in Facts, Not Panic. And a Bold New Vision for Parks
It's completely fair for Dallas residents and critics like Mark Lamster of The Dallas Morning News to scrutinize alternative revenue streams. But for him to suggest last month that the Dallas Park and Recreation Department would ever drop commercial advertising in the middle of a neighborhood park, along the shores of White Rock Lake, or across a peaceful trail is simply absurd.
When you strip away his clickbait alarmist rendering and panic, what the park department's executive leadership team and park board is actually exploring are highly restricted, tightly capped placements (no more than 10 citywide) on the absolute fringes of regional and metropolitan parks. Think of an outer edge of Fair Park facing a busy intersection, the outskirts of the Dallas Zoo along I-35E, or on Lemmon Avenue at the fringe of Bachman Lake as you approach Dallas Love Field Airport.
Another critical miss in Lamster's article last month is that each site would require strict park board approval (your advocacy has now entered the chat) and focus exclusively on major roadways where thousands of vehicles already rush by. Again, not your quiet neighborhood park, not the shores of White Rock Lake.
It's no secret the City of Dallas is in a severe budget crisis. It's been a broken system for too long and only gotten worse thanks to the city manager's inability to manage it. The park department's reliance on the General Fund will continue to leave us vulnerable. If we don't actively find alternative revenue sources to wean ourselves off this broken model, it's only a matter of time until we are forced into the inevitable realities: closing rec centers, shutting down fully functional public pools, delivering less afterschool and senior activities, and even more cuts to park maintenance. While I wish our parks ran on wishful thinking, they actually run off dollars just like everything else.
What we need is to start looking more critically at the long-term vision. Billboard revenues only treat a symptom of a deeper issue. The ultimate solution is to completely break away from the city's General Fund and evolve into an independent Park District, modeled after the gold standard of municipal systems like Minneapolis, which consistently rank as the top park system in America.
Imagine a world where a completely independent park system with its own dedicated taxing authority, governed by ELECTED (no longer appointed) Park Board Representatives, and completely decoupled from city council districts and the politics that go with it. Imagine a world where public parks are insulated from the mismanagement of the city's General Fund. And finally, imagine a way to achieve that without any additional net-new tax burdens.
Not only is it possible, but we're also past due in building a park system fully designed for We the People, not the bureaucracy. I'm going to explore this further in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, I would love to know what you think!
