The DART board has approved funding and governance changes that it hopes will appease member cities seeking to withdraw from the transit agency. But University Park leaders say those moves won’t cause the city to rethink holding a special election this May.
“What we’re mainly concerned with is how much money we’ve paid into DART,” mayor Tommy Stewart said in response to a question during his State of the City address. “When we started in DART, we had ten routes. We’ve got one now. And we haven’t paid less money.”
DART’s restructuring would shrink Dallas’ representation on the agency’s board to 45%. The decrease would mean that Dallas would surrender majority control of DART for the first time in the agency’s history. The transit agency also would return a portion of sales tax contributions to member cities, according to news sources.
The legislature would need to approve the moves before they became effective.
Stewart expressed skepticism about whether the governance changes would actually lead to a power shift, adding that other cities could ally with DART when it came time to vote.
City manager Robbie Corder explained that the city council wants to put the question of remaining in DART to University Park voters.
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“Should we still contribute 1%, or 1 penny of our sales tax, to that operation? That’s about $8 million for us next fiscal year,” he said. “It’s a big number. It’s a big topic.”
