Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson affirms his commitment to growing the City’s park system, remarking that parks are one of the few things the City of Dallas government can do effectively.
“This really is the golden era of parks for the City of Dallas right now,” the mayor said. “But there’s a reason: You get so many benefits from that investment.”
In a recent interview with CBS News Texas, Johnson elaborated on his decision to leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
Johnson discussed the importance of fiscal conservatism regarding taxpayer dollars but maintained that spending on parks is a responsible use of City funds. He said adding more parks in Dallas is good for residents and provides incentives for building developers.
“The [parks] system needs to grow and expand, but it needs to grow and expand intelligently. It needs to grow and expand only in ways that we can sustain,” the mayor said, adding that the private sector is more than willing to contribute to adding more parks in Dallas.
“There are people right now who are willing to give us tens of millions of dollars to do certain things if we will commit certain parts of the bond program to parks, and I think we need to secure those contributions,” Johnson said.
Johnson has held that the City should allocate a significant portion of the $1.1 billion 2024 Bond Program to parks. The Community Bond Task Force has recommended nearly $350 million for parks, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“We need to grow the system in a way that we can sustain and that we can maintain,” Johnson said. “There’s nothing worse than a poorly maintained park … because it becomes a dangerous place for crime.”
“We need to grow our park system. We need to green the City,” Johnson added.
Johnson explained that Dallas needs more parks due to their beneficial impact on the environment and on residents who get to use them.
“We are not where we’d like to be in terms of having everyone be within a 10-minute walk of a park or trail,” the mayor said. “We need some more, but we need to do that in a balanced way where we also are maintaining the system.”
Johnson said he remains committed to parks because few other government projects have “such a high return on investment.”
“A park is just a win-win-win situation,” he explained. “We’ve seen when they’re done right that they make communities more vibrant. They give people a place to gather. They give children a safe place to play. They have education aspects.”
“They have economic development benefits,” Johnson continued. “People want to build near parks. … And there’s a reason for it: Because at that point, you literally minimize the development’s risk of a nuisance being put there.”
He said these benefits have been seen with parks nationwide and in Dallas, most notably with Klyde Warren Park.
“Once a park is in place, you’ve preserved the view. You’ve preserved the use of that land. You’re not going to get some self-storage facility there or something that people don’t necessarily want to look at,” elaborated Johnson. “You’re going to have [a] beautiful view preserved forever if you put a park in a certain location.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Johnson has spoken about how city government must “do fewer things, better” and spend taxpayer money more efficiently rather than trying to solve every problem in Dallas with City dollars.
He maintains that parks are something that City apparatuses “actually know how to do.”
“That’s a big part of my … being conservative about how we approach government,” Johnson said. “The goal is not to grow government as big as you possibly can [and] take on every possible challenge you can whether you are effective at it or not. It’s to be good at these things that you do with taxpayer money.”
“We’re good at parks. We actually know what we’re doing. We develop parks well. Our parks system is excellent,” he continued. “We need to lean in on that and not start doing things that we have a terrible track record of doing and that we’ve never done before.”
Johnson cited the current effort to allocate $200 million for housing in the bond program, saying that “no one can even tell me what” they specifically want the $200 million to be used for.
Community Bond Task Force chair Arun Agarwal discussed the importance of parks in the 2024 Bond Program in the most recent episode of The Dallas Express Podcast.