The City of University Park applied to take about 18 acres of land off of Dallas’ hands. But at a Tuesday committee meeting, some Dallas council members have questions about the proposal.
The land is within District 13, which is represented by Council Member Gay Donnell Willis. Michael M. Boone Elementary School — currently in the Highland Park Independent School District system — and Northway Christian Church are on it.
“I know at face value when you see the word University Park and read about this, it may not appear beneficial to the city of Dallas, but this really has tremendous upside to our city and our taxpayers,” Willis said during the meeting.
“And it wouldn’t have made it this far if I didn’t think so,” Willis added.
Boone’s students are 80% University Park residents, according to a Dallas city staff memo. Wills said during the meeting her son attended day school at the church on the property.
Not everyone agreed with the idea of giving up city land. Council members said at Tuesday’s Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee meeting they wanted to know what the benefit to Dallas would be — and what they might be leaving on the table.
“I see very little advantage to Dallas in doing this,” District 14 Council Member Paul Ridley said. “Staff hasn’t really presented us with any advantage to the city why we would do this.”
Ridley said the city needed to consider a different kind of agreement to accomplish the same thing University Park officials are trying to do — “without giving up, permanently, part of Dallas.”
The deal
The affluent University Park — home to Southern Methodist University — applied for the boundary adjustment in 2022. City staff said there’s been a lot of “back and forth” to get to this point.
In July 2023, the University Park City Council voted to approve a contract with Masterplan — a land use consulting firm — to take care of the boundary deal. The president of Masterplan is Dallas Cothrum, who has done work for Highland Park ISD in the past.
“I’ve been in several of these meetings, and I think Dallas Cothrum is necessary for us to move this thing along to get through in a speedy manner,” University Park Mayor Thomas H. Stewart said during a council meeting last year.
Masterplan was paid around $24,600 for consulting expenses. That includes coordinating with city staff and officials, attending meetings and hearings — and lobbying “city staff and or elected officials in order to achieve desired result for Client.”
Andrea Gilles, the director of Dallas' Planning and Urban Design department, said during Tuesday’s meeting that city staff does not make recommendations on boundary issues. but the staff provided a report that included some data around the area in question.
“It’s about two years old at this point," she said. "It did show some longer delivery times for either fire or police, so they were slightly increased.”
The Dallas Police Department reported 23 calls to the area in the last five years. The reasons range from a “business hold-up” to reports of a “suspicious person” in the area, according to a staff report.
Dallas Fire Rescue reported 10 calls in five years. Those included a “person locked in a vehicle”, welfare checks and service for automatic fire alarms.
The church and Boone Elementary do not add to Dallas tax base. If Dallas decides to let go of the properties, and they were redeveloped in the future with “taxable single-family uses”, according to the report, the city could also be letting go of just over $2.5 million annually.
“I know up to this point there’s been conversation about future revenue sharing...if the properties were to ever be redeveloped into something else,” Gilles said. “We have been told very firmly that is not the case, but again, none of us can see the future.”
Gilles said in conversations, University Park officials seemed open to the revenue sharing idea — and to the idea of funding street improvements on the property as well.
“In this scenario the properties would not be taxable for the time being,” Willis said. “But the scenario is different in that we take the expenses for those things like storm water, streets, alleys…and another entity would pick up that tab.”
Willis said it has taken so long for the deal to come to committee because she was concerned about if the properties would ever “revert back to a taxable use.”
“That would not make us happy if we didn’t have a way to receive any tax revenue for it,” Willis said.
Willis added that University Park was “highly motivated” to make the deal work.
‘What’s in it for them?’
Almost immediately, others on the committee voiced concerns about voting on moving this process to the next step — which is ultimately another discussion with the full council.
“I don’t know the cost savings my colleagues mentioned, I have no idea what those are,” Dallas District 11 Council Member Jaynie Schultz said. “I would like to know what’s actually the financial implication to the city.”
Schultz also voiced concerns over a permanent deal — either a land transfer or a contract – beyond the current city council. And she had another question.
“I’d like to understand why…University Park wants this, because they aren’t going to get any tax revenue from it,” Schultz said. “So what’s in it for them?”
A People Newspapers article from late May reported that more than 100 Boone Elementary parents, University Park city officials and school board trustees gathered to listen to Willis speak about the potential deal.
Parents who advocated for the boundary adjustment said it would improve “student safety and [Boone Elementary] ability to fundraise,” according to the article.
A petition started last year urged families of students going to Boone Elementary to “show support” for the boundary adjustment.
“Currently at least 94 of the 300 families at Boone Elementary reside in the City of Dallas,” the petition reads. “There is no negative cost consideration for the City of Dallas… As such, I ask that you help champion this initiative.”
Questions still remain as to what exactly University Park will gain from the annexation of the church and elementary school.
Moving forward
Tuesday’s discussion was only the start of the process — and council members were asked to vote on moving to the next step.
“This is just to ask that we move into the negotiation step so we can start to gel what some of these numbers would be, because we haven’t been able to get to that point yet,” Willis said.
The full council will have the opportunity to weigh in on the negotiations process — but an initial approval is needed for both Dallas’ and University Park’s city managers to start discussions about the deal.
“Where it seems like there may be a little heartburn is the fact that we are bound to the process starting because another municipality put an application in,” District 7 Council Member Adam Bazaldua said.
Bazladua wanted to know if the committee denied the item, could the negotiations with University Park still continue.
“To me that would indicate closure of the discussions,” Gilles said.
Gilles said the city could initiated discussion at any point about revenue sharing agreements and a different property deal, but she added that denying item indicates “more closure in those discussion than moving this forward to discuss all the range of possibilities.”
Similar situations have happened in District 3 and close to District 11, according to Bazaldua. He said those conversations happened without a pending application. Gilles said that she couldn’t talk about those other examples because she didn’t work on them.
The committee voted to send the item on to the next phase of the process. The land deal is far from done — and council members said they will be waiting for more answers to their questions.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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