City needs to recognize Lill's efforts

Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will present her recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2010-11 Monday during a special city council briefing session. Most of the headlines will involve her recommended cuts in the library and parks departments, her elimination of jobs, and her recommended pay cuts for all city employees, including those in the police and fire departments.

However, if past budget presentations are any indication, her recommendations will also include cuts in cultural affairs. In fact, her last recommended budget included the elimination of the Office of Cultural Affairs, merging its activities into, as I recall, the Library Department. That plan was shelved largely because of the efforts of former city council member Veletta Forsythe Lill who is, without question, the most tireless champion of the arts this city has ever known. You can bet that Lill will be at the forefront of any attempt to slash funds to the arts and to the libraries again this year.

I may not always agree with every one of Lill's priorities. I was a longtime opponent of Dallas Community Television for reasons that are now evident to all: Since that institution's demise, the quality of the city's cable television channel has improved dramatically. Lill supported DCTV. But I also know that the city's so-called Arts District, of which most of us are proud (or should be), would not exist in its present form if it were not for the passionate involvement of Veletta Forsythe Lill.

The city now needs to recognize and celebrate those efforts. One suggestion would be to re-name something after her. How about The Veletta Forsythe Lill Bandshell at Fair Park?

I'm sure that greater minds could come up with something better than that, however. Specifically, what I would like to see happen is for Suhm to instruct the Office of Cultural Affairs to get together with the Parks and Recreation Department and come up with a series of recommendations to recognize Lill's efforts to preserve and enhance the arts in Dallas. I would then want these recommendations presented in a briefing to the City Council's Quality of Life Committee, which would then present one of these recommendations to the full City Council for enactment. And I would like to see the City Council vote to approve this recommendation before the end of this calendar year.

It's imperative the city honor its cultural hero.