In 1998, voters approved $3.5 million to build an animal shelter to replace the too-small, too-old Oak Cliff and Forney Road locations. In 2003, we approved $11 million total in bond money for construction.
Guess what finally opens next weekend?
The new animal shelter’s history is a classic Dallas boondoggle, involving arrogant bureaucrats downtown, almost no oversight from the City Council, and a lazy mainstream media that regurgitates press releases instead of doing its job. How can it take 10 years to build a dog pound?
Briefly, because my head hurts every time I recount this, it took city planners seven years from the 1998 vote to come up with a shelter design. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, their project cost $17.7 million — only $6 million more than they had to spend. The other irony? After there was a bit of a stink about this in 2005, the shelter was redesigned to match the budget and built in 24 months or so. Isn’t it amazing what a little public scrutiny can do?
Here’s something else to ponder: If the city can’t build an $11 million animal shelter in less than 10 years, how is going to build something as complicated as the multi-million dollar Belo Parkway? Forget for a moment any political considerations about the toll road, and just look at the tremendous effort that will be required — levee construction, highway construction on a levee, flood control and the like.
No doubt Mayor Park Cities and his cronies will be at the new shelter when it opens, patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Hopefully, someone will be there to ask them why it took so long to get the job done, and why we should ever trust them on another construction project again.
