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DISD, Eminent Domain and The Familes Who Live There

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DISD, Residents of East Dallas and Eminent Domain Many residents and business owners of East Dallas are at risk of losing their homes and businesses due to a costly construction plan by DISD and its use of eminent domain.  In our fight to keep the best interests of our community intact, the residents of East Dallas are hereby reaching out to DISD and our elected community leaders to demand to know:
 
  • WHY the taxpayers of East Dallas spent 2.6 million dollars to renovate O.M. Roberts Elementary School only to now face DISD’s attempts to enforce eminent domain in order to acquire more land and knock down the newly renovated school, thus requiring the taxpayers to shoulder an additional 22 million for an entirely new school?
  • WHY DISD is ignoring the community’s demands that its neighbors not be unnecessarily uprooted from their homes, some of whom are seniors, veterans and/or disabled, because the planned location of the new elementary school cannot be a long term solution since it will be constructed next to a major highway with expansion plans, which is not safe for our children?
  • WHY, if a new school must be built using taxpayers’ money, DISD refuses to consider an alternative and safer location for the school, such as the property it already owns 7 blocks from where O.M. Roberts Elementary is?  That location has adequate acreage to hold a new elementary school, will ensure long-term safety for our young students by not being next to an expanding major highway, and would eliminate the need to displace families and prospering businesses, specifically The Vickery Wholesale Florist.
  • WHY DISD is not being honest and forthright with its community members about why it has plans for a newly constructed school?  For example, DISD has asserted that O.M. Roberts Elementary school is overcrowded, however, Arnie Veramontes said the exact opposite at an April 8, 2010 Town Hall meeting conducted by Senator Royce West when he stated enrollment at the schools is low.
  • HOW and WHEN does DISD plan to show the taxpayers of East Dallas that the displacement and abandonment of its businesses and families, most of whom have been in their homes for generations, will benefit the community by using eminent domain in East Dallas and will not, in fact, cost the taxpayers more in tax dollars due to DISD’s current plan to construct a new school on the inadequate site with short-term benefits?
  • WHY DISD is forcefully pursuing the takeover of all homes and businesses within the eminent domain dispute by the end of May 2010 when it has admitted that any construction plans for a new school may not even begin until at least August of 2012, or worse, the construction may not occur at all?  Either action will undoubtedly cost taxpayers even more in wasted tax dollars and needlessly force out hardworking community members.
  • Is this the type of behavior our elected officials condone in our East Dallas community? To negligently and forcefully remove without recourse our hardworking neighbors from their homes and businesses for a school that may or may not be built, on land that is not suitable for a new school?
If you agree with the actions of DISD and its policing efforts through eminent domain, then do nothing.  If, however, like many, you are outraged by the costs already used by DISD to renovate O.M. Roberts Elementary school only to now be told to expect another bill for the costs associates with constructing of a new school and absorbing the cost of evicting our established families and prospering businesses who give back to our community, then
 
please contact Bernadette Nutall, DISD’s District 9 Board of Trustee at 972-925-3700 to demand answers to these questions and to demand that DISD pursue alternative options for its taxpayers.

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