Meet East Dallas’ Park & Recreation Board representatives & find out their visions for our parks

Informed Dallasites know that our representatives at the municipal level aren’t limited to city council. There is also the Dallas Park and Recreation Board, which oversees the department of the same name. This board was established by the City Charter and includes 15 members (one appointed by each city council member and the mayor). Four of them represent East Dallas.

District 7: Daniel Wood

Territory in East Dallas: White Rock Hills area

Best way to contact: ParkBoardDist7@dallas.gov

This Buckner Terrace neighbor and Wisconsin native, who moved to Dallas in 1998, found his way onto the Park and Recreation Board after advocating for more trees to be planted in Everglade Park.

“The park was really desolate, and it was just nothing, so I fought, fought, fought to get more trees, and I couldn’t get them,” Wood says. “I think I got 10 trees, and they’re like, ‘You can’t get any more.’ So I figured out that if I advocate through the park board, I can get more stuff. That was when I first learned about what the park board was, and so I got on the park board, and basically, I just said, ‘We’re going to plant trees,’ and we’re currently up to about 300 and some trees.”

Wood, who is in his final term on the board, didn’t take all the credit for improvements in the parks but praised the people who actually do the work — City staff. In the same breath, he spotlighted maintenance as a challenge to tackle.

“We have a lot of great people that care a lot and work their tails off to make our parks great,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s challenging because of the funding, so that’s going to probably be our biggest challenge in the future is we can build all these great things, but we can’t maintain them. We really got to come up with a way that we can maintain our parks at a better rate, so that we’re not in the positions of having dilapidated and rundown parks and buildings and rec centers and all this stuff that’s falling apart because it doesn’t do us any good if we have it if it’s falling apart.”

In the White Rock Hills part of his district, he is proud of the new Lakeland Hills Park dog park, which was installed last year. There have also been tree plantings there with more on the way, particularly between the alley and soccer court. Pickleball courts are coming to Lakeland Hills, and a new playground is needed. And the skate park, the City’s first, is expected to be redone and is funded by bond money.

“Right now, it’s a concrete pad that has metal ramps and stuff like that. We’re actually going to build it in and probably put a small bowl in some of the concrete features, make it more of a permanent type,” Wood says. “Back when it was built, it was the first skate park in Dallas, but it was just kind of like an add-on kind of feature. So they’re going to actually do a little bit more permanent-type feature, and we’re excited about it.”

Caring for City parks is up to neighbors, too. Picking up trash and joining or creating a friends group contributes to making parks great.

“We have a lot of opportunities for people to be supportive,” Wood says.

District 9: Michael Jung

Territory in East Dallas: Casa Linda, Lakewood, Forest Hills, Little Forest Hills, Old Lake Highlands, Lochwood

Best way to contact: peter.jung@dallas.gov

Jung is the newest park board member representing East Dallas. He was appointed last year after Maria Hasbany resigned.

Jung, who has been hanging around District 9 since 1966 and has resided here since 1980, worked with District 9 Council member Paula Blackmon before as her appointee to the City Plan and Zoning Commission and the Charter Review Commission. He also previously chaired the White Rock Lake Task Force. So when Blackmon asked him to join the park board, it only took him 24 hours to say yes.

His goal?

“Just more of what I’ve been doing for the last 40 years — protecting White Rock Lake,” Jung says. “Now, let me hasten to say, White Rock Lake takes up about 75% of my time and attention, but there are 19 parks in District 9, and I’m sensitive to the fact that I’m the park board member for those parks as well.”

The new White Rock Master Plan was adopted recently during his tenure, though Jung at one point was opposed to the concept of it.

“I thought to do it in a way that would respect all the planning processes that had gone on before was going to be a very elaborate process, and I don’t think the City thought initially it was going to be an elaborate process, but I was right, and it took almost three years and a lot of revisions to the original draft,” he says. “But I’m very proud of the way it came out because it’s got some good new ideas in it, but it respects, really, 40 years worth of citizen-involved planning processes.”

The master plan doesn’t eliminate old proposals as long as they aren’t contradictory or are obsolete, Jung says. For example, firework displays were prohibited in 1986 at the lake because when the City hosted a pyrotechnic show there in the 1980s, cars clogged the narrow roads and filled small lots. Jung says a man died of a heart attack because the situation hindered the paramedics’ ability to reach him in time. The new plan leaves important rules like that one intact.

Upcoming projects near the lake and trail include sinkhole prevention and erosion control. Jung reports that White Rock Lake Trail will eventually have to be closed for six weeks while an abandoned wastewater pipe, the collapse of which led to the sinkhole earlier this year by the spillway, is filled.

As for erosion, waves undercutting the shoreline near Garland Road, Dallas Water Utilities plans to add baffles on the dam.

“I think of it like a pachinko machine, where the ball comes down and hits this barrier and goes over and comes down and then hits that barrier,” Jung says. “They’re going to have this crisscross system of baffles that slows the water down, so when it hits the bottom, most of its force has already been absorbed by the baffles. And as part of that, we think they’re going to agree to participate in putting sheet piling up to keep the trail area from being undercut.”

Dredging is a priority for White Rock Lake, though the previous practice of doing a big dredging project every 20-25 years is not sustainable, Jung says. Now leaders are thinking of developing infrastructure to do smaller projects on a semi-continuous basis or just do enough to ensure safe boating depths in key areas.

However, smaller projects may not make the lake any better than it is today as 170,000 cubic yards of sediment continues to enter each year.

“Most of the sediment comes from the major flood events when we have three days of pouring rain,” Jung says. “So if you can design a smaller facility to prevent a huge dollop of sediment flowing down, if you could deal with the sediment 10 or 15 days a year, that would have a huge impact.”

Aside from the aforementioned projects and continuing to make White Rock Lake Park safer, there’s not much that needs to change.

“As long as you provide a safe and convenient environment for people, less is more,” he says.

District 2: Fonya Naomi Mondell

Territory in East Dallas: Deep Ellum, parts of Old East Dallas and Far East Dallas

Best way to contact: fonya.mondell@dallas.gov

Women are a minority presence on the Dallas Park and Recreation Board, and we in East Dallas can claim one of them as a representative. To Mondell, she’s not on the board to be well-known — just a volunteer acting on behalf of the neighbors in her district.

“I just get things done and help, and I’m just a bridge,” she says. “I’m the connector.”

And she means that. Mondell keeps in touch with friends groups to hear and meet local needs as well as connecting community leaders to the right City contact.

“The City is a huge entity, and if you don’t know how to navigate it, and if you don’t have the way to navigate it, it’s really hard,” she says. “I don’t mind calling a couple people, somebody 5 million times.”

Mondell, a longtime East Dallas resident who grew up off Henderson Avenue, joined the park board about five years ago. She was part of the effort to save the baseball field at Reverchon Park and was asked to join when Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Moreno left the Park Board to run for city council.

“I had always been active in City politics on the zoning side and fighting developers, making sure that the integrity and the quality of life in the neighborhoods were where we could all lay our heads at night,” she says. “I also served on the Boys and Girls Clubs board and was president for a very long time, for 15 years, off of Worth (Street). So rec and kids and parks and everything was my niche.”

In her tenure so far, Garrett Park at Henderson and Greenville Avenues got a new playground and has been cleaned up, Mondell says. Last year, the Old East Dallas Work Yard Park on Fitzhugh Avenue received a splash pad. Thanks to Nancy Lieberman Charities, a new basketball court was built at the Work Yard a few years ago. Putting these kinds of improvements is supposed to help ward off unwanted activity.

“Activating it to where it’s a place where parents and caretakers and grandparents and cousins and aunts and kids can all come in and enjoy and play and feel safe and find that peace that they need, the reason why they go to the park in the first place,” she says.

Creating equity has been important to Mondell, ensuring that parks amenities are well-maintained everywhere, not just in affluent neighborhoods.

“Like, a parent or child can go to the bathroom, and it’s clean, just like you would expect anywhere, but sometimes they get overlooked because it might be in that area,” she says. “To me, it was all about equitable opportunity and making sure that the park user was in a place where they could be happy and that it would create happiness.”

District 14: Rudy Karimi

Territory in East Dallas: Hollywood/Santa Monica, Lakewood Heights, Lower Greenville, the M Streets, Junius Heights, a western part of Old East Dallas

Best way to contact: rudy.karimi@dallas.gov

For East Dallasites on Facebook, Karimi may need no introduction.

He uses his dedicated park board page to provide information frequently, from the Breakaway Music Festival situation to new playgrounds to potential budget cuts. But being online allows him to listen as well as talk.

“On Facebook and X, I am reading what people want,” he says. “I’m reading the good, the bad and the ugly. And that allows me to reach out to some folks and be like, ‘Hey, I picked up a trend.’”

Karimi came to Dallas by way of Iran, Louisiana and Plano and has lived in East Dallas for 11 years. Before getting on the park board, he was an outspoken opponent of plans to turn the soccer field at Willis C. Winters Park across from Woodrow Wilson High School into a football stadium. This proposal didn’t come to fruition, and in this victory, Karimi caught the attention of District 14 Council member Paul Ridley.

He took the chance to serve on the park board five years ago and plans to stay on as long as Ridley is on council. And after that, he’s eyeing a spot on council himself.

Despite his stance on the proposed Willis C. Winters Park football stadium, Karimi is not anti-change.

“There is a balance between preservation and innovation,” he says. “We’ll probably never find it, but we should always continue looking for it. … We have some historic parks well over 100 years old. They are worth preserving, but we have things in them, like playgrounds and ball fields, that don’t operate like 20 years ago.”

For Willis C. Winters Park, progress includes the project to upgrade the turf. The soccer field was also redone a few years ago, thanks in no small part to community fundraising. Under Karimi’s tenure, the City has added a walking path around Cochran Park and a sand volleyball pit to Tietze Park. Both amenities continue to be used by the community — stroller pushers at Cochran and all ages, including teens, at Tietze — despite the sand volleyball pit being opposed by some neighbors at first.

“The best part about that is six months after it was done, I ran into some of the folks who were opposed to it, and I said, ‘Look, we’re six months in. What are your thoughts?’ And one lady said, ‘All of those things that I said before turned out to be untrue,’” Karimi says. “That’s music to my park-loving ears.”

Per the last bond program, playgrounds will be replaced with new and innovative ones at Willis C. Winters, Tietze, Cochran and Exall, in that order. Karimi says there will be opportunities for neighbors to provide feedback.

The ambitious park board member has plans to turn the parking lot off Clermont Avenue, which has been the site of “gunfire, nefarious activities,” at Tenison Park into the City’s first traffic garden. This is a space that would be designed as a miniature city with roads, crosswalks, signs, railroad tracks and the like to teach young children how to ride a bicycle and be safe on the streets.

“It’s designed for bicycles, but if you got a scooter, you’re welcome. If you got roller skates, you’re welcome. If you’re on an electric mobility device, you’re welcome. If you just want to come push a stroller, you’re welcome,” Karimi says. “We’re inclusive of anything with wheels, and even if you just want to walk it, if you got feet.”

Police and community groups could schedule programming at the traffic garden or it could be used as is, he says. It could also be helpful to teens learning to drive, bike and skate alongside adults.

Karimi also imagines other amenities to add to the traffic garden attraction, like a shipping container filled with bike repair kits volunteers to fix bicycles and repurposed play features. This would take a somewhat unsavory area and make it wholesome.

“These are all bigger ideas of just what could start if the park department and I work together with transportation, (Dallas Police Department), the council member’s office, perhaps even the mayor, and our partners, like BikeDFW and other nonprofits, and really do something that’s never been done,” he says.