Think Dallas’ Horse Park Is a Boondoggle? Meet ‘Mighty Mora’ and a Trail-blazing Iraq War Vet

Even if 3-year-old tiny but mighty Mora could pronounce the word boondoggle, she wouldn’t have a clue what it means.But as the legal battle between the city of Dallas and one of the Texas Horse Park’s tenants drags on, Mora Wolf is part of another story no one talks about. She is one of the hundreds of special-needs children and adults, as well as veterans, who receive life-changing help in this peaceful, beautiful corner of Pleasant Grove.Like many endeavors whose wagons are hitched to the oft-ridiculed Trinity River Corridor Project, City Hall critics have tagged the horse park as an embarrassing, wasteful mess. With a $15 million cost, mostly paid out of 2006 bond money, this property, in the shadows of the Great Trinity Forest, has hardly lived up to the grand visions forecast at its 2015 opening.All the way through the bitter end of last week’s runoff elections, the horse park was held up as just another poster child for Dallas’ apparent obsession with creating world-class failures. The critics had more ammunition for their nay-saying as City Hall has recently tried to evict one of the horse park’s two nonprofit tenants, River Ranch Educational Charities, which city attorneys say has violated the terms of its contract.Undaunted by all the bad publicity, the other horse park nonprofit, Equest, plods steadily along and quietly continues its miracle work with North Texans coping with disabilities and veterans and their families.Call the 300-acre park a boondoggle if you want, but I maintain that Equest’s 43 acres is a hidden treasure within it.  Continue reading...