WHO CARES?

Just a few reasons to really take notice of local elections

We’re going to write about something during the next two months in print and online that most of us care little about.

Local elections. Specifically city council elections.

How do I know we don’t care?

Generally, not much more than 20 percent of us decide it’s worth the trouble to vote in city council races. And heaven forbid there’s a council runoff election on a rainy day — then we’re looking at school board-election turnout numbers, with a few thousand voters making the decision.

We also know what happens when we write a story on our advocatemag.com daily news website about politics or education: Readers scroll on by.

Maybe a comparison would help: If we write about both a new neighborhood restaurant opening and a city council policy initiative on the same day, it’s likely that 10 or even 15 times the number of people will read the story about the restaurant.

Think about that: 10 times the readership for a story about food, while only a fraction of us care about the latest shenanigans at city hall, most of which cost us a lot of money.

Just as an example, how many of us know the council will be handing about $270,000 of our tax dollars to six protestors because it voted to approve (with the exception of councilmen Griggs, Kingston, Davis and Medrano) an ordinance so illegal that a judge wrote a 62-page opinion ridiculing it?

How many of us know the Dallas Convention Center is angling for another $250 million or so in expansion money, even though it has tens of millions of dollars in outstanding debt from the last couple of expansions?

How many of us know a quasi-govern- mental agency has basically said that even if the city council votes to block the Trinity Toll Road, the agency may just go ahead and build the billion-plus-dollar road anyway?

And speaking of the Toll Road, how many of us have any idea how close it is to becoming a reality, even though no one — not even the mayor or council members — can honestly tell us what is going to be built and how much it’s going to cost?

What about the horrible condition of city streets (nearly $1 billion in deferred maintenance)? Shouldn’t we be concerned about how that type of negligence will eventually affect our home or business property values, not to mention our vehicles?

During the next couple of months leading up to the May 9 elections, the candidates will be talking about whatever we as neighbors ask them, and they’ll be filling the mailboxes of the few of us identified as likely voters with mailers telling us how great they are. (If your mailbox isn’t full of candidate boasting, you’re considered an unlikely voter whose opinion doesn’t count.)

There are a lot of great things happening in Dallas these days — the economy has improved, home values are increasing, and people are finding jobs again. But in order to keep the momentum going, we need to be smart about our next moves, and we need to start reinvesting in our city’s infrastructure to benefit the people already living here, rather than spending hundreds of millions more trying to impress the people who don’t.

Candidates have talked about repairing our streets since I moved to Dallas 17 city elections ago. The streets are worse today than ever, and no elected official has paid any price for promising action and then hiding the ball.

The least we can do is make them show us the ball during the election and then keep an eye on it after they’re elected.

The three-card monte hustle needs to end one of these days, and it can end only if enough of us keep our eye on the ball. Every day.

Rick Wamre is president of Advocate Media. Let him know how we are doing by writing to 6301 Gaston, Suite 820, Dallas 75214; or email rwamre@advocatemag.com.

DISTRIBUTION PH/214.560.4203

ADVERTISING PH/214.560.4203 office administrator: JUDY LILES

214.560.4203 / jliles@advocatemag.com display sales manager: BRIAN BEAVERS

214.560.4201 / bbeavers@advocatemag.com senior advertising consultant: AMY DURANT

214.560.4205 / adurant@advocatemag.com senior advertising consultant: KRISTY GACONNIER

214.264.5887 / kgaconnier@advocatemag.com advertising consultants

SALLY ACKERMAN

214.560.4202 / sackerman@advocatemag.com

CATHERINE PATE

214.292.0494 / cpate@advocatemag.com

NORA JONES

214.292.0962 / njones@advocatemag.com

FRANK McCLENDON

214.560.4215 / fmcclendon@advocatemag.com

GREG KINNEY

214.292.0485 / gkinney@advocatemag.com

EMILY WILLIAMS

469.916.7864 / ewilliams@advocatemag.com

MICHELE PAULDA

214.292.2053 / mpaulda@advocatemag.com classified manager: PRIO BERGER

214.560.4211 / pberger@advocatemag.com director of digital marketing: MICHELLE MEALS

214.635.2120 / mmeals@advocatemag.com

EDITORIAL publisher: CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB

214.560.4204 / chughes@advocatemag.com senior editor: EMILY TOMAN

214.560.4200 / etoman@advocatemag.com editor-at-large: KERI MITCHELL

214.292.0487 / kmitchell@advocatemag.com editors:

RACHEL STONE

214.292.0490 / rstone@advocatemag.com

BRITTANY NUNN

214.635.2122 / bnunn@advocatemag.com senior art director: JYNNETTE NEAL

214.560.4206 / jneal@advocatemag.com assistant art director: EMILY MANGAN

214.292.0493 / emangan@advocatemag.com designers: LARRY OLIVER, KRIS SCOTT, EMILY WILLIAMS contributing editors: SALLY WAMRE contributors: ERIC FOLKERTH, ANGELA HUNT, GEORGE MASON, KRISTEN MASSAD photo editor: DANNY FULGENCIO

214.635.2121 / danny@advocatemag.com contributing photographers: JAMES COREAS, JACQUE

MANAUGH, SCOTT MITCHELL, RASY RAN, JENNIFER SHERTZER, KATHY TRAN copy editor: LARRA KEEL

She’s a survivor

How the reality TV star is giving back to our community

When neighborhood resident Missy Payne returned from spending 40 days on “Survivor: San Juan del Sur,” some acquired instincts were hard to kick.

“I carried extra water bottles and snacks in my purse whenever I’d leave the house,” she says. “It made no sense. I could drive to any store to get food.”

For the most part, the reality TV show is not a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Payne says each contestant received a handful of rice a day, and that’s it. The already slim and fit cheer coach lost 23 pounds.

“They really don’t feed you. You really are starving.”

Along with her 20-year-old daughter,

Baylor, Payne competed on the show’s 29th season, which aired last fall. She made it to the final round as second runner-up, the $1 million prize just out of reach. Payne has been off the island for several months now, but the life-changing experience put her on a new path — one that involves inspiring local kids to achieve their goals.

Aside from running her gym, Express Cheer, in Preston Hollow, Park Cities and Frisco, Payne is launching a nonprofit organization, Cheer 4 Your Life, which aims to help fund extracurricular activities for children who can’t afford them. The circumstances don’t have to be extreme; she says she wants the organization to be ac- cessible to “normal” kids who might miss out on attending football camp or starting their Eagle Scout project because of financial reasons they can’t control.

“Adversity comes in all shapes and forms,” she says.

Payne experienced her own share of adversity long before she was dropped on an island in Central America with 18 strangers. She’s been married and divorced three times, and the drama that ensued on “Survivor” paled in comparison.

“I was prepared,” she says. “That was way harder than ‘Survivor’.”

To her athletes back home, Payne has become not just a cheer coach but also a life coach, especially after the show. However, during her toughest years, she says, it was the other way around.

“The first half of my career, the kids were my life coaches,” she says. “They grew me up.”

Payne draws from her life experiences to show young people how to make good decisions.

“I start with my own children. We talk about relationships and how you get to choose the people you want to be around.”

Payne has taught cheerleading at schools such as the Episcopal School of Dallas, Parish Episcopal and the Covenant School, but she says working at Hillcrest High School was one of her favorites.

“At Hillcrest, you get such a diversity of kids,” she says. “People have written off DISD, and that’s not fair.”

She lives in the Hillcrest attendance zone, and if her 14-year-old daughter, Abby, doesn’t get into Booker T. Washington High School, she’ll be going to Hillcrest. Payne admits, though, that had she not worked at the school, she, like most Preston Hollow-area residents, would not have considered it.

Payne studied theater and initially pursued a job as a drama teacher at Aspen High School. They asked if she would settle for the cheer coach position until the drama slot opened up.

“Begrudgingly, I took the job,” she says. “I went to cheer camp and got down on the ground with the girls and learned how to do it. That was 1990, and I never stopped.”

She opened her first gym, Park Cities Spirit, in 1998, taking serious athletes to competitions that far exceed the elementary stomp-stomp clap routine.

Cheer 4 Your Life is still in its early stages, but Payne already is planning the first annual fundraiser in September. The theme is “It’s a Jungle Out There.” She’s inviting her “Survivor” castmates and will have kids participate by performing and sharing their stories.

Making some green

Our neighborhood could have a dog park, if it can find the money more to consider.

Our city councilors are working to turn an unused piece of green space into a temporary dog park — if they can find the money.

The vacant lot at the northwest corner of Forest and Nuestra is the future home of the new Preston Royal Library. The city plans to rebuild the 50-year-old structure on Royal Lane at the new location, for about $6 million. Details were presented to neighbors in summer 2011, but it could be more than five years before the project even begins to come to fruition. The earliest funding opportunity is the 2017 bond program, and that’s not a sure thing. Councilman Lee Kleinman, whose district borders the site, says that even if funds for the new library make it into the next bond package, we wouldn’t see the dirt turn until 2020 or later.

Gates says it’s unlikely to come out of the city budget, so they’re hoping to receive sponsorships from local pet-service companies and private citizens.

Gates and Kleinman have received no negative feedback so far from the adjacent Melshire Estates neighborhood. It’s common to see neighbors with their dogs off leash on sports fields and whatever open spaces they can find. The Westminster Community Dog Park is a popular hangout among Devonshire neighbors. The Friends of Northaven Trail have hosted pop-up dog parks along the trail.

Still, North Dallas ranks low when it comes to the amount of public green space.

“When our neighborhood was developed, it was developed around backyards and not open spaces,” Gates says. “There’s a movement now, and people want more open space. It adds to the community element and enhances the quality of life.”

—Emily Toman

Payne can add writing to her résumé, too. She hopes to publish a book about her experience on “Survivor.”

LEARN MORE about Missy Payne and Cheer 4 Your Life at c4yl.com.

In the meantime, it’s just an empty lot. And those are hard to come by in North Dallas. So, Kleinman and Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates have been kicking around the idea of creating a temporary dog park on the site.

They’ve come up with a rough design and a cost estimate, just over $230,000. It requires more than simply putting up a fence. There’s irrigation, signage, lighting, marked parking spaces, ADA ramps and

Even though the dog park would be temporary, it would help gauge the use of such a space in our neighborhood, as well as potential concerns, making it a little easier to establish a permanent dog park at some point in the future. —Emily

Toman