With Little to Show After 30 Years, Why Should We Trust the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund?

We really need to talk about the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund -- sorry, the South Dallas/Fair Park Opportunity Fund, because a name-change ought to fix it. Totally worked when Radio Shack became The Shack. Mmmm, tastes just like New Coke.On Monday a Dallas City Council committee had one in a never-ending series of grim sit-downs about the fate of the 30-year-old fund that was supposed to put development dollars into South Dallas but damned if anyone can tell you what most of those dollars -- now in the millions -- developed. I keep hoping that after more than two decades of debate, the council will eventually talk this thing to death and put the fund out of its misery.But it's still alive, with a different name but with a re-dedication to its original mission: Develop South Dallas by doling out tax dollars to businesses promising to invest in a neighborhood strangled by redlining. In recent years the fund has been a pot of giveaway dollars for nonprofits offering everything from Hep C testing to teen-mother mentoring to tree-planting. Which is nice. But that was never the fund's purpose.   Continue reading...