10 June 27 - July 3, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents saw the area developing, they decided to form a coalition to advocate for the commu- nity. They stopped a sewage plant and an airport from being built in the years they were active. Most recently, they stopped a concrete batch plant from setting up shop on Kleberg Road. They didn’t want the heavy trucks from the plant rolling down their already crowded roads. “Life’s experiences show you that if you don’t speak up, nothing gets done,” Freeman said. Wojtowicz first got heavily involved in the community when a new trailer park was pro- posed for land behind his house. He got about 100 people to sign a petition against it. “I won the war,” Wojtowicz said. “I stopped them.” Now, there are traditional homes behind his plot of land. “That’s what kind of pulled us all to- gether in the beginning, was having a little bit of a say about what went where and what the quality of it was,” Freeman said. Now that they’re getting older, Freeman and Wojtowicz are relying on people like Ramirez and Carranza to carry the torch. Ramirez, who lives in a mobile home, doesn’t want any more trailer parks in the community either. “Mainly, the big reason is, it’s a private-owned sector,” she said of the parks. “So, they make the money. They own the property. We just pay rent. It’s not a good type of housing, I would say. It’s a transi- tional housing.” She stays in Kleberg-Rylie partly because she feels she doesn’t have the means to leave. “My parents moved back to Mesquite, and I stayed because there’s no way for me to get out, if that makes sense,” she said. “They keep raising the rent.” Carranza said development has been creeping toward Kleberg-Rylie’s doorstep for years. He wouldn’t mind it so much if the city did some work on the community’s in- frastructure so that it could support this growth. “It is chaotic, but they’re not making the road stronger,” he said. The roads can get so backed up that it takes 30-45 minutes just to drop off the kids at schools in the neighborhood. There are also few sidewalks. “Putting all this stuff into Kleberg and not giving us eco- nomic development is a big thing,” Ramirez said. “It’s just not fair.” Carranza said many of the mobile homes in Kleberg-Rylie are falling apart because home- owners don’t have the money to fix them up. He thinks the city has programs to help tradi- tional homeowners, but nothing specifically for mobile home owners. “It’s sad,” Carranza said. “They’re keeping these people down be- cause they’re in a mobile home.” Ramirez said many Kleberg-Rylie resi- dents have lost hope. “They’re not speaking up because they just feel like there’s no point,” she said. “They feel like they don’t matter, and Dallas has done a good job of making them feel that way, making it seem like they don’t matter.” Guardado doesn’t live in Kleberg-Rylie, but she owns land there that once belonged to her father, who died about a year and a half ago. She’s now speaking up for her late father. “People here have been neglected, misused and mistreated,” she said. Because her father’s land is in a flood plain, she can’t build on it without acquiring special permits. Before her father died, a homeless encampment on city property spilled over onto his land. He called code en- forcement. He called the police. But both said they couldn’t do anything. “Even though they came out, I’m still told that be- cause it’s private property, it’s my job to clean it,” Guardado said. It took a lot of fight- ing to get the homeless off her father’s land. “I think people here are very hopeless, and I think they just wait for a miracle to happen,” she said. “I know I do.” She and the others wonder why Atkins doesn’t do more to advocate for Kleberg-Ry- lie. “It just makes me so mad,” Guardado said. “Why can’t the people here get the same treatment? It’s equal. They live here. They pay taxes. They pay bills. What’s the problem? No one wants to outreach and come help, and it’s sad.” Carranza is on one of the steering commit- tees for ForwardDallas, the city’s latest com- prehensive land-use plan that’s in the works. There are plans for Kleberg-Rylie in For- wardDallas that seem promising. For exam- ple, it calls for natural areas to be integrated into developments in the community to act as a natural buffer between residential spaces and more intense development. It also calls for creating a well-connected network of streets with an emphasis on linking residen- tial areas with nearby commercial centers. But Carranza worries these plans will only fade into nothing like previous schemes such as the West Kleberg Community Plan, which was passed by the City Council in 2007 but seems to have been forgotten. Carranza moved to Kleberg from Oak Cliff about four years ago to get away from urban life. He likes that Kleberg-Rylie is more rural and hopes it stays that way. Despite the com- plaints of gunfire and loud music, he finds it generally peaceful. “It’s like a whole different thing. That’s why I got involved.” That’s when he met longtime residents Freeman and Wojtowicz. “I started getting pissed off,” he said. “These people have been fighting for 20 years, and they’re getting older.” One thing Kleberg-Rylie residents are trying to do is get a trail running through the community. “This trail has been on the plans since 2007,” Carranza said, but it has yet to be built. The residents, at least in part, blame their city leadership. Carranza said he’s been an activist since he was a kid. These days, his cause is the bet- terment of Kleberg-Rylie. “Things have to start happening,” he said. “We have a beauti- ful area out here, but the city’s allowed it to be ruined.” Trying Times Atkins says he is just as frustrated about the issues facing the community, and he de- fended his leadership passionately. He had his office send a plethora of flyers to Kleberg residents about various events he’s held in the community over the last few months. Atkins said he just cannot please every- one. “I spend a majority of my time in Kle- berg-Rylie because it’s a rural area,” he said. According to the council member, apart- ments have been placed in the community, some streets have been repaired and the rec center has been redone since he was elected. Half of the gym at the rec center is closed because the floor is damaged, but Atkins said the city just recently found the funds to get it fixed. He said he’s brought the police chief and fire chief out to the community, as well as code enforcement. He’s held meetings there about the budget, the 2024 bond package and ForwardDallas. He said he’s done a lot for Kleberg-Rylie over the last 15–20 years. “Is Kleberg-Rylie better off than when I started? Yes,” he said. “I’ve got passion for Kleberg-Rylie because, No. 1, all they’ve got out there’s a rec center.” He said it’s just the small group of people we spoke to who are complaining about his leadership. “And I wish the Dallas Observer would come to my town hall meetings. Then you’ll know what’s going on in Kleberg-Ry- lie,” he said. He said he’s put millions of dollars into the community, but he has 53 square miles in his district to watch out for. “I get $25 mil- lion for infrastructure,” he said. “Everybody [on the council] gets $25 million, and I’ve got 53 square miles, and some have 10 square miles.” At this rate, he said, “I’ll never catch up with equity.” He said he can’t do anything about the lack of restaurants and shops in the area be- cause developers go where they want, and they’re not ready to be in Kleberg-Riley. But he said he’s always done what he could. “I’m very passionate about Kleberg,” he said. “When I first ran back in 2007, I spent 90% of my time in Kleberg-Rylie because they feel like they did not have a council member representing them. I’ll be darned if someone says I don’t represent Kleberg-Rylie.” He said he wishes the city would give him more money for infrastructure in his district. Maybe then he could bring more fixes to the community. “They’re still on septic tanks out there,” he said. “But I don’t have the money. I use what they give me. … It’s a rural area. It’s very difficult, but I do not have enough resources.” Atkins said he wishes people in Kleberg- Rylie would go downtown and tell the City Council what they need. Better yet, they can stop by his District 8 office, he said. “Kle- berg-Rylie is my No. 1 priority. It’s always been my No. 1 priority,” he said. The community needs more resources, but so does the rest of his district. “We could send all the code officers in the city of Dallas out there and you still won’t resolve all the problems,” he said. “People who call me, we respond, espe- cially in Kleberg-Rylie because we know they feel like the stepchild to the city of Dal- las,” Atkins said. “But, like I said, I cannot make everybody happy in Kleberg-Rylie.” Chickens and Eggs Try as Atkins might, the economics and rules influencing how land is developed make Kleberg-Rylie’s problems especially knotty. Professor Cullum Clark, director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Ini- tiative, said Kleberg-Rylie is in a bit of a co- nundrum. Generally speaking, North Texas is good at developing rural land, and that includes infrastructure. But things are a bit different in the city limits, Clark said. For one thing, the land in Kleberg-Rylie isn’t that desirable for developers yet. “Therefore, the kind of classic economics that develops new land aren’t operating very powerfully there,” Clark said. On top of that, there’s just a lot of extra red tape in Dallas that might slow develop- ment down. Dallas’ permitting office has been exceptionally slow in turning around building permits, for example. “I think it’s important to note that there is a real difference there because like in Pros- per or Celina, they are, today, growth ma- chines in a way the city of Dallas may have been … 30 or 40 years ago,” Clark said. There’s probably some desire by the city to keep the area affordable, as well, which presents challenges to bringing more devel- opment and infrastructure. In Prosper and Celina, areas are being developed for mid- dle- to upper-class residents. In these cities, developers absorb most of the costs of build- ing streets, sidewalks and sewers and price homes accordingly. Trying to build with affordability in mind, especially in an area that’s already partially built out, presents extra obstacles. “The numbers won’t work for a devel- oper,” Clark explained. “So, now the infra- structure would have to be paid for by city government, but city government doesn’t have any spare dollars. So, you see how it’s kind of a different economic problem in a mature place.” Unfair Park from p08 Dallas Police Oofficer Bryan Joseph tells Kleberg-Rylie residents to keep reporting crime even if the cops don’t show up when they call. Mike Brooks >> p12
