Come next Monday morning the new — well, new-ish — Dallas City Council will be sworn in at the Meyerson Symphony Center, followed that afternoon by some busywork back at City Hall. Two days later comes The Really Big Stuff: On June 21, a week before it goes on summer break, the Dallas City Council will be tasked with making over close to half of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board.

The future of transportation in this city depends on how that decision goes down — everything from the long-promised, longer-overdue overhaul of bus routes that strand those most dependent upon DART to building those nice little live-work-plays in parking lots next to rail stations. DART touches everything in this city, from access to jobs and schools and hospitals to where housing developments are planted to how the city prospers or doesn't.

As Theresa O'Donnell, the city's chief resilience officer said in March: "The council has said repeatedly its priority is the transit-dependent, and repeatedly DART has turned a deaf ear to them. We have not seen a response to the council's call to action." Not just DART leadership, either, but a staff that withholds important information till the last minute and, especially, its passive board — including members appointed by city councils long ago forgotten.

After decades of letting it slide, of letting the people who got us in this mess try to get us out of it, the city's finally wised up that effective DART board representation means something. The council realizes it's imperative to stock its ranks with experts and experience, system users and critics, not lifetime appointees who do whatever president Gary Thomas tells them.

That makeover began in earnest Monday afternoon, as a small parade of 13 current and would-be board members paraded to the council's briefing-room table to try out for the role. Among their ranks was the urban planner and transportation big-thinker, Patrick Kennedy, whose appointment to the DART board in December hinted at the revolutionary overhaul before us.

Urban planner Patrick Kennedy, who is working to expedite DART's bus-route overhaul. He was appointed to the DART board in December. (Andy Jacobsohn / Staff Photographer)

Seven of Dallas' eight seats at the 15-place-settings table, the rest spread among the surrounding member cities, are up for grabs, including the one we share with Cockrell Hill. One's a late addition to the to-do list: Last month the council voted, 10-5, to dump DART board vice chair Richard Carrizales in the middle of his two-year term. Sandy Greyson, the council rep from Far North Dallas, said it had nothing whatsoever to do with Carrizales being one of five Dallas appointees who voted for the Cotton Belt rail line in October when the council said do not vote for the Cotton Belt rail line in October. Yuh-hunh.

At that meeting last month, Adam McGough, the council member from Lake Highlands, told Carrizales he was being simply swept out with the winds of change.

"Other transportation is crucial to this city, and we need to focus on high-frequency bus system that gets people who need to get there where they are going," he said. "And I just don't believe this board has done so up to this point."

Only Sue Bauman, just one year into her run, gets to stay put. But everything else is wide open, including one seat occupied by a guy who's been on the DART board since October 2001 — and, no, that is not a typo, that is actually how long Bill Velasco's been on the DART board. A world and a forever ago.

Velasco was back at City Hall on Monday, vying to keep his gig; so, too, was Jerry Christian. He's been a DART board member since 2007, but I like to think of him as the pastor who in 2010 took $1,000 to front that lawsuit filed by liquor stores trying to stop the citywide sale of beer and wine. Also at Monday's auditions in front of the council's Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee: Pamela Dunlap Gates, 11 years on the board.

Catherine Cuellar, in the orange-and-yellow vest, rode her bike to City Council in October 2015 with other Dallas residents and City Council members. (File Photo / Staff Photographer)

All three also voted to fund the $1.1 billion Cotton Belt, which will travel from Plano to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, even though doing so means taking on the kind of crushing debt that could imperil the downtown Dallas subway line known as D2, which the board also approved at that same meeting. Do not expect that trio to return.

Look, instead, for Catherine Cuellar to join the board: The committee not only voted to recommend the former Arts District director to the full council, but to give her Velasco's position as the Dallas-Cockrell Hill rep. She's just what the council's looking for: a downtown dweller and engaged DART user, of both the bus system and the light-rail lines, who can tick off the problems with the stations (too dark, poor way-finding), the reasons grids are better than hubs and spokes when it comes to laying out bus routes, and ways to improve the app that tells you when your bus is arriving.

Three other candidates received a majority of the committee's votes: Kennedy, current board member Amanda Moreno (who voted against the Cotton Belt) and Jon-Bertrell Killen, a former SMU basketball player with a master's degree from the Cox School of Business. He was perhaps most impressive, pushing data was a way to build a better DART and, ultimately, better neighborhoods. DART, he said, is much of Dallas' lifeline to "all the things that contribute to quality of life."

Other contenders will go before the full council without the committee's yay or nay, among them attorney Sonja McGill, who Skype'd in from the Canadian trade trip with mayors Mike Rawlings and Betsy Price; Ray Jackson, whom I hadn't talked to since he was Don Hill's attorney; Dominique Torres, the young attorney who just tried to wrest the Pleasant Grove council seat from Rickey Callahan; and Vonciel Jones Hill, the former council member who was the bestest friend the Trinity River toll road ever had.

The return of former Dallas City Council member Vonciel Jones Hill to City Hall

Over the weekend my social media feeds were stuffed with hear-hear's for the new City Council — something about a new day rising in the wake of three incumbents being ousted following Saturday's runoff . Not so sure about that: Between returning vets Tennell Atkins and Dwaine Caraway, who took two years off because they had to, tomorrow looks a bit like yesterday at City Hall.

But at DART? ¡Viva la revolución!