While some on Dallas City Council want to move past the public debate between Mayor Eric Johnson and the city manager on the issue surrounding how to spend the $1.1 billion bond proposal, others were nonresponsive when The Dallas Morning News sought comment.
A day ahead of Wednesday’s City Council meeting, The News spoke with a few council members who said they just want to focus on investments their constituents would approve of, rather than Johnson’s Friday memo rebuking City Manager T.C. Broadnax for his recommendations on the bond proposal.
“I’m trying to keep the politics out of it, because I believe at the end of the day, people just want their water to turn on,” council member Paula Blackmon told The News. “They want their trash to be picked up. They want the roads fixed and they want the parks clean.”
Blackmon said it’s not Johnson, Broadnax, staff or the committee who will vote on a bond proposal, but the collective council.
Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, Deputy Mayor Carolyn King Arnold and council members Jesse Moreno, Zarin Gracey, Jaime Resendez, Omar Narvaez, Kathy Stewart, Jaynie Schultz, Cara Mendelsohn, Gay Donnell Willis and Paul Ridley did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dallas is slated to put the bond proposal on streets, transportation, parks and housing before voters next year, and discussions are ongoing, but Johnson and Broadnax have thus far disagreed on how to allocate the $1.1 billion.
City staff recommended $532 million for street and transportation projects and $225 million for parks and recreation.
Meanwhile, the council-appointed community bond task force members last month recommended allocating fewer taxpayer dollars for street and transportation — $375 million — and more for parks and recreation — $350 million.
Broadnax said in a council briefing last week he wanted to get the levels of opposition from council members and use the staff recommendations as a “baseline.” He said staff would go back and discuss “through entirely different lenses” to base a proposal on projects.
“But we will walk away today, unless we hear otherwise, with the numbers we laid out in our recommendation at least to where we’ll be working from and not the initial recommendation from the full task force,” the city manager said.
Johnson, who did not attend the meeting for a medical reason, he said, wrote a memo Friday that he was “very surprised” Broadnax said the council would “disregard” the task force recommendations.
“To throw out the Community Bond Task Force’s work at this point would be a grave mistake, and it would be incredibly disrespectful to the volunteers who gave their time and to the members of the public who took part in this process,” Johnson said in the memo.
Council members told The News on Tuesday they were ready to move the discussion forward.
Council member Adam Bazaldua said Johnson miscategorized the meeting. He said he and colleagues directed Broadnax to use the allocations provided by staff as a starting point.
“That wasn’t reflected in the mayor’s memo,” he said.
He is frustrated that the conversation surrounding bonds is about “drama.”
“It is outside noise, and I think it’s important for us to stay focused on prioritizing now on these once-in-a-lifetime investments,” Bazaldua said. “When we take these bonds out, it will help shape us and put us in a better position as we move forward.”
Council member Chad West said council members chimed in that they did not agree with the task force’s recommendations, even perhaps a bit too harshly.
“I didn’t agree with the task force recommendation wholeheartedly by any means. However, I thought I was disappointed in how the body treated the whole task force,” West said.
At the end of the day, Blackmon said this internal fighting between the mayor and the city manager isn’t helpful, because this bond is supposed to help constituents.
“How I’m approaching this bond is I’m understanding what the needs are of my district, what the concerns are (of) the people that surround it, and then how to allocate money in the most efficient, effective way to meet those needs,” she said.
What the final bond proposal looks like remains to be seen. West wants to see more funds allocated to housing, and Gracey agreed in last week’s council briefing. Mendelsohn said in the briefing she wants to see more funding focused on addressing city police and fire pension plans and delay this bond proposal.
Moreno questioned at the briefing why some council initiatives were not funded in the task force’s bond proposal.
Bazaldua told The News he wants to increase the bond amount to $1.25 billion and add separate funding devoted exclusively to homelessness.
Cal Jillson, a Southern Methodist University political science professor, said this tension between the mayor and city manager is a symptom of a larger problem.
Because Johnson has struggled to develop a stable majority on City Council, Jillson said the mayor cannot go to the city manager with a directive and expect it to be followed. The tenuous relationship boiled over last year when Johnson and other council members tried to fire Broadnax.
“If you’ve got a mayor that is not able to do that, then the city government pretty much grinds to a halt,” Jillson said. “And you have this type of finger pointing and sniping that we’ve gotten over the last couple of months.”
