Brandon Formby reports on the latest bit of information to leak out of the trove of Trinity Toll Road-related emails that was released by the City of Dallas after council members Scott Griggs and Philip Kingston pushed to have access to communications between city staff and former City Manager Mary Suhm as well as Mayor Mike Rawlings’ so-called design Dream Team.
The nugget of the article suggests that a design firm — led by “Dream Team” member Ignacio Bunster-Ossa — was the beneficiary of a private grant of $105,000 that was donated to the city of Dallas by the Trinity Trust under the condition that said design company receive the contract for the work from the city. We don’t know who donated the $105,000 to the Trinity Trust, but the implication is that moving the cost of projects through private, non-profit entities like The Trinity Trust can not only cloak the source of funding for parts of the Trinity River Project, but it also allows for conditional contracts that offer contractors an “inside track” on obtaining future work relating to Trinity River Project. In Formby’s piece, Suhm denies that the situation creates a conflict of interest.
Expect more information to surface as the emails continue to circulate. In the meantime, the juiciest insinuations derived from the emails come towards the end of Formby’s article:
Among them were emails between Bunster-Ossa and city officials about his firm’s work on the lakes, including one in which Standifer asked when his work would be complete so Thomas could begin raising money for some of the planned amenities.
Other emails highlighted how the city planned to eventually build the full Trinity Parkway even if the road started smaller initially, how opposition last summer prompted supporters to focus on their message and how Rawlings relied on former and current officials for information about the project even as he served as a chief champion of it in public.
Another email also included concerns among other contractors and the North Texas Tollway Authority about using dirt excavated from the lakes as the foundation for the toll road. Project supporters and experts have said that cost-saving initiative inextricably links the park plans and the toll road plans. But an email said concerns that a mix of new dirt and dirt excavated for the lakes would create “uneven settlement” that would cause “undesirable longitudinal cracking” in Trinity Parkway’s foundation.
“We just wanted to make sure that the soil excavated for the lakes was properly compacted before it was re-used to construct the bench,” said NTTA spokesman Michael Rey.
