_ The Dallas Morning News Sunday, April 18, 2004 Page 3WA ROAD MAP FOR RENEWAL

“A can-do city,” that’s how Dallas loves to see itself — and with good reason.Energy, ambition, vision and hard work have made it the centerpiece of the

fastest-growing region in the country.The trouble is, Dallas itself isn’t nearlyas healthy as the region. And a lack ofself-analysis blinds it to that fact.

Story by Victoria Loe Hicks

DALLAS

That conclusion by the consultingfirm Booz Allen Hamilton rests on a far-reaching statistical comparison of Dal-las and 14 other large U.S. cities.

The study, commissioned by TheDallas Morning News, used dozens ofmeasures — from life expectancy to li-brary visits — to produce a comprehen-sive, clear-eyed picture of each city’sperformance.

Dallas is not in the top tier. Amongthe 14 peer cities, only three have worseviolent crime rates, only four have lowerstudent SAT scores, and none saw lesseconomic expansion in the 1990s.

Wrapping together those three mea-sures — identified by Dallas residents astheir top concerns — Dallas ranks No.12 among the 15 cities. Only Rust Beltcities Philadelphia, Baltimore and De-troit perform worse.

Moreover, the numbers suggest thatDallas — lulled by past successes, cush-ioned by North Texas’ robust growth,blinded by a lack of self-examinationand hobbled by the legacy of racism andneglect — is at a tipping point, wherewrong moves could precipitate a pro-tracted slide.

Crime and troubled schools sendfamilies scurrying for the suburbs; em-ployers follow; the tax base and the citybudget shrink; city services decline; thedrift to the ’burbs accelerates …

… And Dallas’ peril is all the greater,the consultants warned, because a su-perficial appearance of good healthmasks its symptoms. The city’s maladyis much like a “silent” heart attack,which goes undetected until it’s too latefor treatment.

Faced with Booz Allen’s diagnosis,city leaders fell back on their habitualremedies.

Mayor Laura Miller said the reportwould send her into “despair” — were itnot for her certainty that a few big-fixprojects, starting with the Trinity River,will affect a dramatic cure.

“The Trinity and downtown and Fair

Park, that’s the triumvirate that’s goingto get us there,” she said. “I think a lot ofills will be solved by those three thingshappening. We’re going to have interna-tional excitement about the city.”

Economists hired by the city wereless sanguine. They estimated that, 10years after completion, the city’s $246million investment in the Trinity Riverproject would generate real estate, salesand tourism taxes equal to about one-half of 1 percent of the city’s currentbudget.

Booz Allen’s findings prompted oth-er city leaders to lash out at The DallasMorning News.

“All you can do is find fault,” said CityCouncil member Bill Blaydes. “Thereare tremendous positive things happen-ing in Dallas, Texas, today.

“I think that is a piece of junk,” Mr.Blaydes said, pointing to the report.

Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans,who oversees economic development,flatly refused to look at numbers indi-cating that retail activity is shifting tothe suburbs. He thrust the offendingstatistics back across the table withoutglancing at them. He later apologized.

A common theme in the city’s re-sponse: Dallas was at a tipping point be-tween decline and renewal not long agobut has since rebounded.

“I could assemble all those numbersand get my own doggone numbers andcome up saying that we’re doing OK. Ithink we’ve already turned,” said CityManager Ted Benavides.

Ms. Miller’s predecessor, Ron Kirk,said Booz Allen’s work will only compli-cate the leaders’ job, which is to sell thecity — if necessary, by drawing attentionaway from its defects just as a home sell-er does in dealing with potential buyers.

“You put vanilla on the light bulb,” hesaid.

Boosterism helped build Dallas andmany of its peers, but in 2004, Booz Al-len’s findings suggest, the unexaminedcity is not worth living in.

“This is a critical time in Dallas histo-ry,” said Dr. Robert Fairbanks, whoteaches Dallas history at the Universityof Texas at Arlington. “My perception ofDallas is that it was very successful inone mode of operation that no longermakes sense.”

“We don’t measure things,” said Dr.Donald Hicks, a political economist atthe University of Texas at Dallas. “Wedon’t study ourselves.”

The city can’t afford to ignore thefacts, he said. “No city is guaranteed afuture.”

The Booz Allen report is not aboutblame. It is not about the past or thepresent. It is about the future — how thecity’s leaders, inside and outside of CityHall — can help residents create a citythat does work, that fulfills their indivi-dual and collective aspirations.

“This decline is neither inevitablenor irreversible,” the consultants wrote.A strong dose of basic managementprinciples plus an infusion of politicalcourage “can alter the trajectory andbreak the cycle.”

But to get there, Dallas must startfrom where it is. And that means recog-nizing where it is.

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UNLIKE MR. KIRK, DEL BORGS-dorf deals in figures, not flavorings.

“Numbers are very important,” saidMr. Borgsdorf, the city manager of SanJose, Calif.

When The News began this investi-gation, it polled Dallas residents aboutwhat issues matter most to them. Threetopped the list: crime, education andeconomic growth.

Booz Allen gathered statistics mea-suring each city’s performance in thoseareas. The News combined the resultsinto the Quality of Life Index, weightingeach item according to its importance topoll respondents.

San Jose was No. 1 on crime, No. 1 onschools, No. 1 on economic growth and— naturally — No. 1 overall.

San Jose faces two urgent challeng-es. The first is an economy rocked by thedot-com bust. In late 2001, the cityhired a top-drawer economic plannerfrom the private sector to spearhead afine-toothed analysis of its economy.The city is already implementing the re-

sulting strategy, just as Dallas embarkson the analytical phase.

San Jose’s second weakness is hous-ing prices; a two-bedroom bungalowwill fetch $600,000. Even so, the city isdesirable enough and wages highenough that home ownership — a goodbarometer of a community’s stability —runs 20 percentage points ahead of Dal-las’.

It doesn’t have to be this way.Dallas is a city with “tremendous

natural advantages,” Booz Allen noted:its location, climate, river and huge ur-ban forest. Within its borders are thou-sands of undeveloped acres — room forits population and its economy to grow.

The city boasts a strong transporta-tion network of highways, rail lines andone of the world’s great airports. Dallas’infrastructure — streets, water mainsand the like — isn’t decrepit, like someof its older peers’.

It doesn’t cost a lot to live here. Thecity’s economy is diverse, which shouldmake it resilient. The people of Dallasare ambitious and entrepreneurial.

The city’s population is growing, in-stead of shrinking like its Northeasternand Midwestern peers. The 1990sbrought a tremendous surge of Latinoimmigrants, who — if they follow thetrajectory of earlier immigrant groups— will create prosperity as they seek it.

“We still are a good community and agood city,” said former Dallas City Man-ager George Schrader.

But in many ways Dallas comes upshort. Why? Because short is as shortdoes. That is one of the underlying les-sons of Booz Allen’s analysis.

Dallas is shortsighted, devoting littlethought and fewer resources to plan-ning for its future.

It is short with a dollar, pinchingpennies rather than investing systemat-ically to build more livable neighbor-hoods and stimulate its economy.

It is short on trust: People don’t trustCity Hall, and City Hall doesn’t trustpeople.

It is short on “civic capital” — ener-gized, politically engaged residents andeffective mechanisms for collectiveproblem-solving.

It is short on leaders who seem able

10 reasons why Dallas is at risk — and doesn’t know itThe Booz Allen Hamilton consultants found that North Texas’ tremendous economic strength has masked important warning signs inside the city of Dallas:

1. Job growth and economic growth inside the city are occurring much more slowly than in the region as a whole.

2. Dallas’ unemployment rate has run about 25 percent higher than that of the surrounding metro area.

3. The city fares poorly vs. its urban peers on the quality-of-life indicators that matter most to Dallas residents — crime, education and economic development.

4. Weak performance by the Dallas Independent School District holds down the growth of the well-educated workforce needed to keep an economy humming.

5. Most of Dallas' housing inventory is low-value homes and small apartments, despite the positive image that surrounds the $138,000 median price for home sales.

6. An antiquated City Charter leaves Dallas ill-equipped to respond to its challenges. Alone among its peer cities, Dallas lacks a long-term strategic plan that would help drive progress.

7. A dysfunctional government — and an “anti-business aura’’ — drive businesses to avoid the city and discourages business leaders from civic involvement.

8. Residential property now accounts for more of Dallas’ tax base than commercial property — an imbalance typical of bedroom suburbs, not major cities.

9. Years of under-investment and lack of vision have saddled the city with pending bills for massive long-term liabilities.

10. Other cities have been more purposeful and successful in meeting quality-of-life challenges, putting Dallas at a competitive disadvantage.

Dallas calls itself “the city that works.” Dallas is wrong.By almost any measure that counts — crime, schoolquality, economic growth — Dallas looks bad. It’s notthat City Hall is lying. City Hall seems not to know.“Dallas does not see itself as a city in crisis. … But the

data indicate that Dallas is a city in crisis.”

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