I became the extemporaneous speaking guy. What is that, you say? The short explanation: We drew a news-oriented topic at random from a basket, spent 60 minutes preparing a seven-minute speech, and then we delivered the speech to three judges for a grade.

To save time, I developed an opening statement that worked for virtually every topic:

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“When you look at both sides of an issue, you soon find out there are more than both sides to an issue.”

Get it? If you really understand an issue, things become more complicated rather than less.

That’s the Trinity corridor debate in a nutshell, and that’s why we’re doing our best this month to give you enough information to understand the issue without (hopefully) giving you so much that you’ll throw up your hands and skip voting Nov. 6.

We’re not trying to tell you, subtly or otherwise, what to think or how to vote; I suspect you’ll find plenty of that in your mailbox, in the newspaper and on your television.

But as you’re wading through everything here and elsewhere, I hope you’ll think about these questions:

  • Can a world-class park and a high-speed tollroad really coexist side-by-side? If you think they can’t, which is more important to Dallas’ growth?
  • Is a high-speed tollroad connecting southern and northern Dallas going to increase the number of people living in the central city (and increase our tax base), or will it encourage more taxpayers to move to the suburbs?
  • Can a tollroad actually decrease pollution because cars driving faster pollute less than cars idling in traffic? If so, will more cars flock to the tollroad, eventually jamming it up and making our air quality even worse?
  • Is a hard-to-get-to park in a seedy river bottom all we can realistically expect from the Trinity, or if we spend more time and money on the park plans, can we do significantly better?

As for me, I’m going to buck the conventional wisdom of virtually every city leader and vote against a tollroad next to the park.

Why? Despite the seeming sincerity of the pro-tollroad people, their plan will build us a great tollroad and a pointless park.

Although I have nothing against a great tollroad, I think a great park near downtown would do Dallas a whole lot more good in the long run. And despite what the tollroad-in-the-park people are saying, if the referendum wins and the tollroad can’t be built in the park, you can bet the house that the billion-plus dollars earmarked for the tollroad will wind up being spent on a tollroad anyway – this time along Industrial Boulevard, which just happens to be a much better place for a tollroad.

Confused yet? That just means you’re trying to do the right thing, because once you look at both sides of the Trinity referendum, you’ll see there are more than both sides to the issue.

The problem is you can only vote for one.