FY 2014 Popular Annual Financial Report FY 2014 Popular Annual Financial Report | Page 14

Building a Thriving Community

C

reating a culture that embraces big ideas to improve quality of life results in a thriving community. In
Arlington, that means sprucing up parks, setting the tone with philanthropy and looking for efficiencies
to make life a little easier. Various departments kept busy throughout the year improving municipal
services and staging festivals and other events to help residents enjoy Arlington. Through the Arlington
Tomorrow Foundation, the City aided local nonprofits on North Texas Giving Day, assisted a revitalization project
at Grace Lutheran Church and helped fund a new senior citizen’s bus. And, through innovative, award-winning
programming, the Arlington Animal Shelter achieved a first-ever 90% shelter live release rate in January 2014.

Parks Programs Expand, Continue to Entertain

Empty the
Shelter
Water Department Increases
Use of State-of-the-Art Meters

Thousands of water
customers received new hightech wireless water meters that
will make meter reading more
accurate, enhance customer
service, and reduce costs by
removing vehicles used for meterreading activity. The new meters
read water usage hourly, giving
customers a new tool to help
analyze their water usage and
locate potential leaks. The City
plans to expand the program to
cover the entire system.

Vandergriff
Park
14 | Popular Annual Financial Report

Arlington ushered in its
largest public skate park in 2014.
The new 21,000 square foot facility
in Vandergriff Park was a long time
in coming.

Since 2000, skateboarders
had been requesting a public
skate park. Realizing that one
skate park would not adequately
serve the skating population, the
Parks and Recreation Department
developed a Skate Park Strategy
to help create facilities for a
broad spectrum of skaters. The
long-term vision was to identify
a combination of skate spots,
neighborhood skate facilities,
community skate facilities and a
single citywide skate facility.

The first phase of the
Vandergriff Park site, which used
$1 million from the 2008 bond,
includes plaza style skate areas, a
flow bowl and a snake run along
with multiple level terrain areas.
Phase II will add an additional
10,000 square feet to the current
location when funding becomes
available.

Food trucks took off in a
big way in Arlington this year.
Lunch-goers embraced the trend
earlier in the year when a few
trucks rolled out to test the idea
at Founders Plaza in downtown.
The idea continued to expand
and Food