An interview with Mayor Eric Johnson just before Saturday’s election brought me back to Dallas City Hall for the first time in more than a year. The building was eerily silent, as it has been since COVID-19 turned the world upside down and sent staff and elected officials home to do the city’s work.
But not even a pandemic can cut into the noise that emanates from 1500 Marilla St. and from the many people connected to it in one way or another. While loud, provocative and often juicy to insiders, the drama du jour of petty politics and thoughtless texts and tweets almost never matters to Dallas residents.
Results, not palace intrigue, are what folks care about. They’re interested in whether the city works for them — Is my neighborhood safe? Are my streets repaired? — and whether elected leaders can work well enough together to get things done effectively.
When the next City Council is sworn in June 14, Johnson will be the only leader among the 15 who didn’t have to face voters this spring. Win, lose or draw as far as whom the mayor endorsed against two incumbents to join him at the horseshoe, Johnson faces a pivotal post-pandemic year when the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money await decisions. Violent crime in Dallas remains on an upward trend.. City management too often falls short on what should be no-brainer basic services like construction permitting, infrastructure repairs and code compliance.
How Johnson sets his upcoming agenda and how he uses the mayor’s “soft powers” under Dallas’ manager-council government — agenda-setting, coalition-building, appointing people and cheerleading for causes — are the measuring sticks by which his constituents will judge him.
Johnson told me Thursday morning that he’s eager to get moving again after the pandemic largely derailed his first full year in office. He’s confident he can win buy-in from his City Council colleagues, some of whom have often been at odds with him these past two years.
Throughout our hour-plus interview, I was struck by what sounded like a genuine desire for collaboration and healing. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to advance this agenda on behalf of the city of Dallas,” Johnson told me.
Johnson believes his vision for the mayor’s office is different from those who have held the job before him. “I’m not looking to throw up another bridge or a stadium or something like that,” he said. His agenda is addressing cracks in Dallas’ foundation and “building for the future.”
“If you mess that basic foundation up, it doesn’t matter what else you do … you’ll have problems forever,” Johnson said.
The biggest of those, he said, is public safety, especially the continued rise in violent crime numbers.
Johnson likes where Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia is heading, and he is eager to implement the new leader’s soon-to-be-released blueprint to reduce violent crime. “This is a real and detailed plan put together with the help of criminologists at the University of Texas at San Antonio,” Johnson said.
Johnson also is intent on ensuring that City Hall fixes staffing shortages at its 911 call center and wants to get more funding in the next budget for improvements recommended by the Mayor’s Task Force on Safe Communities., such as lighting improvements in high-crime areas.
Another piece of Johnson’s “fix the foundation” agenda is reducing the city’s property tax rate, which he said is still the highest among any major Texas cities as well as neighboring suburbs. “We like to talk on council about how we’ve lowered the rate a little bit,” Johnson said, “but we’ve got to get serious about this so we can compete with these other cities.”
Similarly, Dallas’ woeful construction permitting department is sending developers to the suburbs, Johnson said. “We are losing out in terms of development and economic growth because people are just tired of dealing with the City of Dallas on the permitting side.”
The mayor also believes the time is right to hit the gas on his “building for the future” initiatives. “That is the exciting stuff, the stuff I ran for mayor to be able to do before we got hit by the pandemic,” he said.
Johnson wants to win the City Council’s support for an economic development corporation that works exclusively on behalf of Dallas — and lessens reliance on the Dallas Regional Chamber for marketing.
It’s not true that everything that is good for the region is good for Dallas, Johnson said. “If a corporate headquarters that could be here contributing to our tax base is in Frisco, there’s a real lost opportunity there.
“We’ve got to stand on our own two feet in that regard,” he said.
Johnson’s other “future-build plans” include a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies to figure out the best possible workforce development model, stimulating more entrepreneurial activity and startups, and attracting more foreign investment and trade to Dallas.
The mayor can make a detailed case for each of these, but he acknowledged it’s a struggle to get traction for items that aren’t as “politically sexy” as a neighborhood-specific issue and that can’t be accomplished with a single agenda item.
“They aren’t necessarily great issues to campaign on either, but they are critical,” he said.
So what about a second mayoral term? Johnson is not ready to show his hand for 2023 and good-naturedly deflected my questions about his political future with some version of “I just can’t think that far ahead anymore.”
The Eric Johnson I’ve known since way before he was elected to the Texas House has always had his next career steps planned well in advance. But he swore to me Thursday that the mayor’s job — and doing it through an unprecedented string of tornadoes, pandemic and winter storm — “has changed me.”
Taking things day by day “is a theme now of my life,” Johnson said. His first two children — planned. The family’s third child, whom wife Nikki is about to give birth to — not planned.
“The only thought I have given to a second term is that I don’t have time to think about that right now,” Johnson said.
What the mayor does seem to be giving thought to is how he might improve his relationships at City Hall. “I’m open to trying different things … to tailoring how I approach the city manager, the police chief, the council members,” he told me.
Johnson said he’s still looking for the best way to effectively address what he feels are City Hall’s operational shortcomings as well as his sometimes-rocky relationship with City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Too often when dealing with city bureaucracy, Johnson said, “You get acknowledgement of a problem, but no urgency” to do something concrete. It’s the proverbial ‘I hear you’ as opposed to ‘I’ll do it.’”
As far as relationships with council members, Johnson pointed out a very important fact: The vast majority of the time, those around the horseshoe come together in unanimous or near-unanimous votes.
His sense is that the relations aren’t as strained as they’ve been portrayed in various media reports. As for endorsing the opponents of two incumbents, Adam Bazaldua and Jaime Resendez, the mayor has chosen to let those actions speak for themselves — and say no more.
Johnson said his long-held formula for dealing with everyone at City Hall is what he’d want himself judged on: “How well you are doing your job and thus how well-placed my trust in you is.”
“But I am willing to do whatever I need to do to meet individual members of the council wherever they are,” he said. “I want them to feel they can always talk to me.”
Johnson also wants his colleagues to understand where he’s coming from. He’s not looking for personal friends or socializing at City Hall; his family is the top priority when the day’s work is done.
When I asked if he likes the job of mayor, his face lit up as he shared a recent interaction with constituents. As he walked through the new AT&T Discovery District, not far from City Hall, several kids recognized him and asked for a photo with the mayor.
“I’ll do you one better,” Johnson told them. “I’ll play you a game of corn hole.”
“The parents were excited, I was excited. We had a great time,” he recalled. (For the record, the kids won. “One of those girls was clearly a ringer,” Johnson said.)
Johnson hates that the pandemic has cut off those kinds of interactions between him and Dallas residents, whom he describes as “my bosses.” That’s why he communicates directly with them through his widely circulated newsletters, emails and phone calls to provide his perspective on City Hall and council action.
“I have yet to take a vote or make a statement that I’m not relishing the public evaluating what I did and why,” he said. “I want it out there. Then I let the people decide who is right.”
If Johnson does what he says he’s going to do and effectively moves Dallas forward these next two years, his popularity will only grow among regular folks — and nobody outside of City Hall insiders will care a bit about the accompanying white noise.
