It started with the city giving a sweetheart deal to billboard companies to turn static signs hanging over the highways into bright light digital displays.<\/p>\n
Then they came for the sides of buildings in and around downtown with \u201csuper graphics\u201d \u2014 that is, digital billboards hanging over the sidewalks.<\/p>\n
Then they came for the sidewalks themselves, placing digital billboards right there in the walkway, complete with Wi-Fi that draws hovering homeless people to the signal.<\/p>\n
Now, they are coming for your parks with a plan to place digital billboards as large as 2,500 square feet inside of our green spaces.<\/p>\n
Beware the city scrounging for dollars, because you are the product they have to sell.<\/p>\n
Dallas City Hall went all in on the billboard business long ago, despite a city policy that called for street and highway billboards to actually be eliminated over time.<\/p>\n
The Park and Recreation Department appears poised to get in on the action as a way to drive revenue. In a briefing to the Dallas City Council earlier this month, a top parks official gushed about the money that could be made. And it is significant. Your attention and the public spaces you paid for are truly valuable to advertisers.<\/p>\n
We understand the impulse and even sympathize with parks leadership. Parks are persistently among the first places the city cuts when it has budget problems. And we are in a place where budget problems are going to persist in Dallas. Paying cops, firefighters and pensions has gotten too expensive for the tax dollars coming in.<\/p>\n
But what the parks department is preparing to sell is something we might never get back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have no faith that our council will put up any resistance to what is a taking of public space for private profit. It has already demonstrated a near-total indifference to the way these sorts of signs interrupt sidewalks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exactly where these signs might land we don\u2019t know. But advertisers want the most valuable spaces, so maybe enjoy this super graphic on your stroll around White Rock Lake?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We encourage everyone who reads this editorial to go have a look<\/a> at the kinds of signs parks officials are envisioning. They included many images in their presentation to the council. These are not subtle, and they are not small.<\/p>\n It is a mistake to attempt to resolve our budget problems by selling the very essence of a public space. A sidewalk is designed for walking, not advertising. And a park is designed as a place of peace and recreation, not another place to have your attention stolen.<\/p>\n City Hall has lost the thread on the real mission. That\u2019s a shame for Dallas.<\/p>\n Have\u00a0an opinion\u00a0about this?\u00a0Send a letter to the editor\u00a0using our letters form<\/a>\u00a0or email\u00a0letters@dallasnews.com<\/a>.\u00a0Letters should be no more than 200 words and include the first and last name of the writer and city of residence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It started with the city giving a sweetheart deal to billboard companies to turn static signs hanging over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,90221],"class_list":["post-408412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-editorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}