Maria Hasbany at Lakewood Park. Photo by Renee Umsted.
District 9 Park and Recreation Board member Maria Hasbany is resigning from her role at the end of her current term, and she’s not shying away from talking about her reason why.
Hasbany has been on the Dallas Park and Recreation Board as the District 9 representative for six years, and her term will end Sept. 30. Until recently, she said she’s had a good relationship with her corresponding City Council member, Paula Blackmon. However, she said they haven’t seen eye-to-eye on the contracts of White Rock Lake operators, specifically those for rowing and sailing not-for-profit organizations.
The Dallas Morning News reported last year that sailing and rowing clubs lease boat houses and water facilities from the City using a portion of their revenue.
“This subject came up about the contracts of the folks that are the operators out on White Rock Lake, and she just took it in a very different direction and couldn’t really articulate what the end goal was and then, as part of that, just completely took me out of that process,” Hasbany said.
Blackmon confirmed that she is looking into contracts regarding usage of the water-related facilities, which includes rowing and boating. This involves finding out what is available at these facilities, what their five and 10-year strategic plans are, and what state their financials are in, among other questions.
“I think I’ve outlined what I’m wanting — a baseline understanding of what is happening there because the next step of this is to we’re going to hire a consultant to look at are we maximizing our facilities for our community and is there a better way to do it and give them this information to say, ‘We’ve already done a lot of the heavy lifting for you,’” Blackmon said.
The Dallas Morning News reported on this topic late last year. According to the article titled “City Council seeks to squeeze more money from rowing clubs on White Rock, Bachman lakes,” the council instructed Park and Recreation officials to “reassess the City’s contracts with the rowing and sailing clubs, come up with ways to raise more dollars and tamp down budgetary pressure.” Blackmon was quoted during a parks and trails committee meeting as saying, “We have to find revenue streams because we can’t keep taxing, and we can’t keep cutting.”
Hasbany said she wasn’t included in discussions regarding the contracts, and Blackmon enlisted private residents to help her look more closely at the contracts.
“When we sat down to talk about it, I just said, ‘I don’t know how we can continue to work productively if we’re not communicating.’ And ultimately, her stance was (that) it was her project, that I didn’t need to be included, and that she didn’t want or need my opinion related to those things,” Hasbany said. “At that point, it’s like, ‘Well, if you don’t want or need my opinion, then what is the point of having me as your appointee if we can’t work collaboratively?’”
Blackmon defended her right and duty as a City Council member to ask questions and said she doesn’t have to include her district’s board members and commissioners in those inquiries.
“I, as the council member, have the authority to go in and ask the questions,” Blackmon said.
Hasbany claimed that Blackmon was seeking to change these contracts, but it wasn’t clear what issue she was trying to address.
“For her to say, ‘I want to do a deep dive into all these contracts and hire a consultant to look into it,’ … that’s fine if we can sit down together and agree that there’s a problem we’re trying to solve, but we could not get to that point of understanding what the issue was we were trying to solve,” Hasbany said.
When asked about this claim, Blackmon said, “I am not solving a problem. I’m asking a question.”
Hasbany described Blackmon’s position toward the Park and Recreation Department as “adversarial,” but Blackmon said that is “plain false.”
“Am I asking hard questions and holding our partners and contract holders and our staff accountable? Of course, I am. But to say I’m adversarial, I think that is a total false statement,” Blackmon said.
Hasbany said she resigned because she didn’t feel that she was effectively able to do her job in this position. She clarified that City Council members don’t always need to agree with their Park and Recreation Board appointees, but they do need to be able to have discussion.
In response to Hasbany’s resignation, Blackmon issued the following statement.
“On behalf of the District 9 community, I want to thank Maria for her six years of dedicated service to our city,” Blackmon said. “We accomplished a great deal together for our community, and her commitment to advancing the goals of the Park Department and improving the East Dallas area has been deeply appreciated. I wish her the very best in her future endeavors.”
Moving forward, Blackmon said an active and longtime District 9 resident has been nominated to serve as the next Park and Recreation Board representative and is going through the approval process.
Hasbany isn’t sure what she’ll get involved with after she leaves her volunteer post with the Park and Recreation Board. She said she had previously volunteered within the public school system for 15 years, and overall, she enjoyed working with the City. Her advice to the next District 9 Park and Recreation Board member is “to really get to know all of the different organizations there and understand their mission and continue to work as an advocate for those organizations and for the park system and White Rock Lake Park, of course.”
