A fine-print-reading Friend of Unfair Park noticed in this morning's item about Belo Garden that the Park and Rec board was also set to approve a resolution related to the W.W. Samuell Trust and the Samuell park properties over which the city and the Texas Attorney General's Office have been back-and-forthing since March of last year. As you may recall, when last we checked in, the AG's office was threatening legal action over a missed deadline, which it extended till September 11.
After the jump you'll find the approved resolution, which boils down to "We're gonna keep on keepin' on" -- but First Assistant City Attorney Chris Bowers, per our request, has also forwarded to Unfair Park a small stack of .PDFs related to the Samuell Trust. After the jump, you'll find them all, including one from September 3 titled "Samuell Property Update: Current Operations of all Samuell Properties [and] Future Plan for Samuell Farm." Again, those paying close attention will notice a couple of things: In August, Park and Rec offered four options for the beleaguered Samuell Farm, including one that have allowed the city to contract with an outside agency to take over the farm. Per the September 3 briefing, that choice has been taken off the table. The city has also opted not to consider operating Samuell Farm as an "open non-gated park"; if Dallas keeps it, rather than turning over the maintenance duties to another municipality or selling it outright, the fences will stay up.
Also after the jump: Bowers's letter to the AG's office, in which he writes that, yes, the reports were tardy and it won't happen again, but "the tardiness in this case resulted in no demonstrable harm to the OAG, the Samuell park properties, or the public (the beneficiaries of the W.W. Samuell trust)." Bowers has also gone so far as to provide third-quarter financial statements for the Samuell park properties and a look at year-to-date expenditures for the same. Numbers, consider yourself crunched.
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Chris Bowers's Letter to the TexasOAG
9-3-09 Samuell Property Update Revised and Formated
Samuell Park Properties 3rd Qtr Statement
Report - 2008-09 Samuell Prop Expenses Thru 07 31 09 (2)_1