FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — Farmers Branch is not the first North Texas city to officially express their desire to cut the amount of sales tax revenue they send to Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART).
They join Rowlett, Plano, Irving and Carrollton, who have already said they want to cap funding to the agency. But a video clip of comments made during a city council meeting Tuesday has one city leader getting a lot of backlash over his reasoning.
“Forty years and they can't seem to police this parking lot here. We’ve got residents in pretty high dollar townhomes right here in front of a beautiful little rose garden area with nothing but a chain link fence between them and all the trash that comes up here on their trains,” said Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Richard Jackson says in the clip.
Brenda Pope knows DART and it’s station in Farmers Branch well.
“It's convenient,” Pope said. “I'm always using get to get to work, or if I just want to get downtown and maybe go do a little shopping.”
Pope is who you’d call a seasoned rider.
“I use this every day, I've never had any issues,” Pope said. “I've never seen anything going on.”
And when Pope watched the clip, like many others she took offense.
“That's really discouraging, I don't think I'm trash,” Pope said. “I'm a working middle class working woman.”
Over the phone, councilman Jackson told WFAA what he said was taken out of context. He declined an interview but sent this statement:
"My comment about trash referred to litter, not riders. The video removed my statement regarding vagrancy, trash and crime associated with the DART station area in our city- real issues that impact our city, its resources and residents."
WFAA pulled the full video – here’s the transcript of what he said prior to what’s seen in the clip circulating online.
“The impact that I’ve seen on our city from DART is vagrancy, trash, crime, threatening the safety of the neighborhoods were trying to build at Mustang station. It’s rather convenient for my wife and I to jump on a train and run downtown for a concert and come back on the train. The two times we’ve done that, both times coming back late at night, it's unsafe situations. So I’ll echo your comments mayor to tell us will this cut result in less policing or more unsafe or reduced services? I find [that] offensive for a city that’s been paying half of its sales tax for 40 years.”
DART warns cutting funding could be "catastrophic" for the agency. The agency also said they have strong feelings about how the councilman worded his comments.
“Dart riders are every person who goes to work in the morning, who needs transit to get to school, to get to education, to get to the their doctor's appointment,” said DART Spokesperson Jeamy Molina.
The vote to reduce funding is largely symbolic – only the DART board itself can vote to start the process of cutting its own funding.
Molina said the loss in funding would amount to $6 billion over 20 years and cause staffing and operations cuts to the agency.
"It would be a huge, huge deal for our riders," Molina said.
DART told WFAA they’re fighting hard against the challenges the councilman brought up.
“We have worked so hard to improve on all of the things that they're talking about,” Molina said. “So cleanliness, reliability, security.”
And working hard to prove to the member cities the value their service brings to people like Pope.
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