Saturday will mark the beginning of the end of the Dallas campaign season. And though a June runoff is all but certain in the crowded mayoral race and is likely in some City Council races, voters will still make significant choices Saturday about Dallas' future.
The candidates have talked for months about how they’d strengthen the city's neighborhoods, shore up the Police Department, root out corruption and address big, hairy, audacious problems such as housing affordability.
But other significant governing challenges await the next mayor and City Council after their June swearing-in.
Here are four major issues they’ll face that could render campaign promises moot.
Life after the cap
The state Legislature is considering a plan that would cap the amount of year-over-year property tax growth allowed by cities, counties and other taxing entities without voter approval. As a result, outgoing City Council member Mark Clayton said, “the next council is really going to have to deal with problems we didn’t have to deal with.”
“Our fundamental sense of budgeting and government is going to be completely turned on its ear,” Clayton said.
Dallas’ property tax-roll booms in recent years have helped pay for some wants and needs: raises for police and firefighters, street maintenance, code enforcement, parks operations, animal services improvements, homelessness services, library services and more. But that also has meant homeowners have paid rising tax bills, which threatens to displace people in gentrifying neighborhoods.
Currently, the cost of public safety expenditures — police, fire and municipal court services — is more than the amount the city collects in property taxes for its general fund. And the Police Department continues to be short-handed and is still shrinking. During the first half of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, the department lost 124 officers and only hired 96, according to city statistics. And with fewer officers, the department has struggled with response times.
Although police officer starting pay is now $60,000, mayoral and council candidates have largely called for spending more. Some have offered ideas such as increasing officer pay again, improving health benefits and offering housing incentives.
But a cap could mean city officials will have to get much more creative with the budget — and possibly cut back on key services. State officials who support the cap say local governments will have to make priorities and eliminate waste.
Dallas residents will probably look to the next mayor to lead the council in making tough decisions.
Former City Attorney Larry Casto, the new executive director of the Coalition for A New Dallas, said “accommodating much-needed growth in public safety personnel without diminishing other public services is going to be a significant challenge” in the years ahead.
“We’re going to have to do that by growing our tax base and not just relying on tax increases,” he said.
Bob Bland, endowed professor of local government at the University of North Texas, said the state has “tied another hand behind the city’s back.” Property values go up in part because services and amenities are improving, he said.
Dallas and other Texas cities will have to figure out how to stave off decline if they can’t make investments in city services and infrastructure, he said.
“And if we don’t make those investments, well, you can just look a little further to the north and the east to cities like Detroit to see what happens,” Bland said.
Pensions, again
During Mayor Mike Rawlings’ early years in office, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s leaders lauded their fund as a success story — all while deep and unusual problems mounted.
But Rawlings spent much of his political capital and attention on the pension system’s crisis in 2016 and 2017. He galvanized the city’s elite business leaders' support as some legislators and police and firefighters maligned him. And Rawlings still nearly came up empty in his demands. But with key assists from two state senators, all sides of the touchy issue reached a stopgap solution they found palatable.
But Dallas Police and Fire Pension System executive cirector Kelly Gottschalk said the retirement fund remains “in a risky place.”
Gottschalk has sounded the alarm about the system’s ongoing challenges, especially the city’s inability to meet its hiring goals. Dallas is committed by law to minimum payments into the fund for now, but the system needs more officers and firefighters paying into it.
Gottschalk said the pension crisis made clear that the system needs to be stable for public safety's sake. And right now, she said, “it’s not stable. Any small disruption in the stock market or any of the assumptions can cause us to really be on shaky ground.”
She believes the next mayor can’t afford to kick the issue down the road.
“The sooner we address the issues, the cheaper it’s going to be for everybody,” she said.
Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata said the public safety pension needs a funding stream, and with the Legislature's possible cap coming, "the options are pretty slim.”
But, Mata said, the “biggest positive coming out of this election ... is that both parties — being that [next] mayor and this association — understand we have a joint problem to be fixed. And letting the pension go defunct is not an option.”
Some mayoral candidates have proposed pension obligation bonds as a way to further shore up the fund — but that comes with a high risk. And the city will also need to keep an eye on the Employee Retirement Fund, its civilian pension system, which is still carrying bond debt from its 2005 fix.
Downtown highways
Saturday’s election will be the first in about two decades without debate over a possible Trinity Toll Road.
But while the road is dead, other downtown-area infrastructure projects — the possible lowering of Interstate 30 and removal of Interstate 345 — could take its place.
The idea of tearing down the elevated highway that connects Interstate 45 and North Central Expressway has gained steam in recent years, thanks in large part to the efforts of urban planner Patrick Kennedy and a local political action group, Coalition For A New Dallas.
Proponents argue that 345 bifurcates Deep Ellum and downtown and encourages sprawl. Removing the highway could unlock billions of dollars of developable land, they say. Opponents, though, see the idea as potentially catastrophic for already heavy traffic around Dallas’ downtown loop.
Supporters of lowering Interstate 30 below grade likewise say doing so would reconnect East Dallas and long-beleaguered South Dallas. But the redo would be complicated and potentially costly.
Both issues will depend on state officials.
Choosing leaders
In Dallas’ system of government, execution of nearly every city priority — including development in southern Dallas, policing issues, code enforcement, street repairs, bond package implementation and addressing homelessness — ultimately falls to the city manager.
City Manager T.C. Broadnax now has had a little more than two years in the job. But an increasing number of council members had nothing to do with his hiring. And the next mayor and council will have to assess Broadnax’s performance and decide on the city’s direction.
The next mayor and council also will help determine who will be named the next city attorney. That position can be incredibly influential in key city decisions. As city attorney, Casto helped settle a major water dispute, was a key figure in the pension negotiations, helped settle decades-old police-and-fire back-pay lawsuits that threatened the city’s finances and wrote the memo that forced an open bid process for control of Fair Park.
Bland, the UNT professor, said choosing city leadership is “not an easy process” for politicians.
“The bottom line is this: My advice to the council would be to approach this with a great deal of humility,” he said. “That is, one, we as council members individually and collectively don’t have all the answers here.”
Whoever has the top jobs should be able “to inspire us to achieve what we want to achieve as a community,” Bland said.
Staff writers Corbett Smith and Cassandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.
