Money for Nothing

Hicks never wanted the gig. He was working for the Office of Economic Development in January 2004 when he was tapped to administer the trust fund--a job he took because, hell, he figured it was just his turn. He got more than he bargained for: a bunch of bad loans, a stack of sketchy grants and his own chapter in a tumultuous tale.

Hicks, who must answer to both the community and the council, is in a tight spot. He must appease those in the neighborhood who demand more and more money from the fund, and those at City Hall who want it brought under control lest it keep leaking precious dollars down a drain that looks more like a rat hole. He wants big things for South Dallas--more stores like Walgreen's and Minyard's, which, in recent years, have sprung up across from Fair Park like roses in the desert--but is perpetually bogged down in the small turf wars fought between two groups of "stakeholders," to use Hicks' term, that keep anything from getting done.

On a warm fall evening, with the State Fair of Texas hopping just down the street, Hicks sits in the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund's offices in the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreational Center. He's a thin man, whose suit and tie look a size too large for him. He looks tired, too, not just because he's at the end of the day, but because he's at the end of his rope--tired of being blamed by the mayor for the trust fund's failures, tired of being yelled at by community residents who demand their few thou, tired of having to run the fund almost single-handedly as a result of budget cuts that have left him with one part-time employee and one temp.

In front of him Hicks keeps a binder of papers bearing such headers as "Trust Fund Talking Points" and "Vision." Among the talking points, many of them written in bold letters, are such things as, "No One has Ever Been Harmed By the Trust Fund," "No City Resources Have Ever Been Lost, Misplaced or Misappropriated by the Trust Fund" and "The Story is Not What the Trust Fund Has Not Done--But What The Trust Fund Has Done." Occasionally, Hicks will answer a question by reading directly from the binder. And occasionally, he will use florid, overwrought language, the poetics of politics and then some. But he does have a particularly good read on why the trust fund ain't workin'.

"I think the community has been underserved historically, and there are certain [parties] that think they are entitled to the trust fund," he says. "And without saying that's good or bad, I think it's a fair representation of one group of stakeholders. The other group of stakeholders you might call 'the city,' for lack of a better word, and this particular group elevates form and procedure and the process over results. So one group is concerned about substantive outcome, what actually happens, and one is concerned about the procedural process by which to make it happen.

"Everybody agrees on the goal, and that's to make this a thriving community, but there are fundamental differences on how you make that happen. And because the differences are so irreconcilable, it's almost like two tectonic plates that collide into each other, and that produce earthquakes. And when they collide, that collision produces a great deal of energy, a great deal of friction, a great deal of heat but, sadly, no light. I think what the trust fund needs is not the heat but the illumination."

What he means is this: City officials have never liked the fund, because some believe they were guilted into creating it, and Fair Park residents have always loved the fund, because they believe it's nothing more than money owed them all these years.

The South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund began as little more than a recommendation of a commission assembled in the late 1980s by Ragsdale, among the most polarizing figures in recent city politics, which is to say, she was loved in South Dallas, where she helped to launch the Inner City Development Corp., and feared in North Dallas. In 1987, the council adopted the South Dallas/Fair Park Neighborhood Preservation and Economic Development Plan, of which the trust fund was an essential piece, and in 1989 it began distributing money--$200,000 of which came from the city's general fund, with other contributions coming from Pace Concerts (which owned the concert venue formerly known as the Starplex Amphitheatre), State Fair of Texas ticket sales and other revenue generated by Fair Park.

"Fair Park was an isle of plenty in a sea of poverty," Ragsdale says now. "People would say, 'Well, when you have different events there, it benefits the community,' which was bunk. If anything, the fair discouraged business because of the traffic and the noise...What we said was we need to be more direct, and that means we will create a fund from revenue generated by Fair Park to benefit the residents and businesses in the area."

But almost from the very beginning, the trust fund was under attack: In 1992, then-Councilman Chris Luna suggested to his colleagues that they kill the fund, which he (and others, though less vocally) believed to be little more than a private slush fund for council member Charlotte Mayes, who beat Ragsdale in the 1991 council election. Mayes made it easier for folks to get those grants, which they didn't have to pay back, and some on the council, like Luna, believed Mayes used the trust fund "to reward campaign supporters in a fierce battle to retain her council seat," according to a March 11, 1993, story in The Dallas Morning News. Mayes, who served four terms on the council and died last year of leukemia, denied the allegations, and for his efforts, Luna was branded a "Tio Taco" by then-Councilman Al Lipscomb.