It would be historic if voters approved three charter amendment proposals backed by Dallas Hero and touted as a way to address public safety and government transparency.
None of the charters in Texas’ largest cities set minimums for police staffing, mandate a public survey that could earn the city manager a bonus or terminated, or waive governmental immunity. Dallas would be the first if Proposition S, T, or U is approved.
“We believe our message is a strong one,” said Pete Marocco, executive director of Dallas Hero. “We continue to hear from the community that recognizes that we need more police, and we’re going to continue getting the message out that this is the clearest plan to do so.”
The uncertainty of the real impacts has led to uproar from the City Council, with all 15 Dallas City Council members urging voters to vote no on all three proposals.
“If propositions S, T and U pass, their cost would force cuts to things residents tell me they want more of, like street repair, (increased) library locations and hours, park upkeep, and it could even affect pay for our tenured police officers,” said council member Gay Donnell Willis. “That’s nothing but bad.”
The City Council initially approved three counter-proposals, Propositions K, M and N, to cancel out the Dallas Hero propositions. The Texas Supreme Court in September ordered the council to remove the three amendments because they didn’t clearly tell voters their approval would nullify Dallas Hero’s three proposals.
Experts say while the reasons behind why some people support the Dallas Hero propositions may make sense, the proposals could have unintended consequences.
“If any of them do pass, it’s likely they won’t be felt immediately,” said Brian Owsley, an associate professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas’ College of Law. “But there is probably going to be some sort of inadvertent impacts down the road.”
The cost of public safety
Proposition U requires the City Council to approve setting aside at least 50% of any excess yearly revenue for the police and fire pension system and other public safety-related initiatives.
The proposition describes excess revenue as when a higher revenue amount is obtained during a fiscal year than the previous year. Documents show the city estimated receiving $3.5 billion in all city operating revenue last fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, and around $143 million more this fiscal year.
According to the proposal, the State Pension Review Board or the City Council would set how much of the 50 percent goes to the police and fire pension.
If any money is left of that 50%, it should go to public safety objectives like increasing police officers’ starting salaries and non-pension benefits within the top five city police departments in North Texas with populations over 50,000, the proposal said.
“It would tie the hands of future government bodies who may not have the same issues that need to be prioritized as today,” said Rita Kirk, a Southern Methodist University professor of communication studies and director of the Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility. "
The police and fire pension system has a funding gap of around $3 billion. In September, the City Council approved a plan for Dallas to contribute $11 billion to the system over 30 years to address the shortfall.
Dallas Hero’s Proposition U also mandates the city maintain at least 4,000 police officers.
The Dallas Police Department is the highest-funded city agency, making up 38% of Dallas’ $1.9 billion general fund and 14% of the city’s overall $4.97 billion budget.
DPD’s $719 million budget covers nearly 3,100 officers and more than 600 civilian employees in a city with 1.3 million residents.
Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert estimated during an Aug. 7 council meeting it would cost the city at least $175 million to hire, train and equip 900 new officers.
“Overall, you would be looking at drastic, very extreme cuts that we would have to make across the board,” Tolbert told council members.
“And that’s not just from a day to day, but that’s a drastic cut in every single service that we provide at the city.”
Police Chief Eddie García noted in the same meeting more academy space, trainers, patrol cars and supervisors would be needed to accommodate 900 recruits and it’d be difficult to absorb in one year.
He said he believed growth should happen over time and retention is as important as recruitment.
“I’ve never had an argument with any of you or our community that we definitely need to grow, but we need to grow slowly,” García said, who is leaving Dallas to become an assistant city manager in Austin overseeing public safety starting Nov. 4. “We didn’t get into this mess overnight, we’re not going to get out of it overnight.”
The lack of clarity on where the money would come from is a concern, said Ted Benavides, an associate professor of practice of public and nonprofit management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He also is a former Dallas city manager.
“If the citizens vote for it, the city would have to figure out how to get there,” Benavides said. “But I haven’t seen any analysis of what kind of difference having 4,000 officers would make.”
Officials said the force peaked at 3,600 around 2016. A failing pension plan caused the police department to lose hundreds of officers to retirement, attrition and higher-paying jobs.
“I’d like to get back to that. I think that should be our goal and then reassess where we’re at as a city,” García told the council in August.
The city plans to hire 250 new officers this fiscal year, though it has missed the mark in recent years and lost nearly as many cops due to attrition.
Dallas projects hitting 3,600 officers by 2033.
García hasn’t publicly said his position on the Dallas Hero proposals. Dallas Police Association President Jaime Castro hosted a news conference Wednesday to announce the organization’s opposition to them.
“Budgeting for this level of hiring would not make the city safer, and it would spell doomsday for the city budget,” Castro from the Dallas Police Association’s headquarters near City Hall. “Parks, streets, libraries and other city services improve our quality of life and contribute to a safer city.”
The Dallas Fire Fighters Association also opposed all three amendments.
DFA President Lt. Jeff Patterson noted the city’s contract with the police and fire associations has a mechanism to keep pay competitive and reflective of the market. The starting pay for a Dallas police officer and firefighter is currently $70,314. Starting Jan. 1, the starting pay for both positions will be $75,397.
He described Proposition U as the “most damaging for fire and police,” fearing it could jeopardize the city’s contract with the public safety associations.
“There is no plan on how to pay for the increases or how they would be implemented, which could lead to cuts from firefighter pay to afford the police pay,” Patterson said.
The 4,000-officer goal borrows from the police department’s past goals. City officials in 2015 said an analysis showed effective staffing levels were about three officers per 1,000 residents.
Marocco pointed to the police department’s response times as a key reason the proposal is needed.
Dallas police data as of Oct. 24 show the department takes around 13 minutes to respond to priority 1 calls, which include shootings, stabbings and major crashes. That’s up from around 11 minutes at the same time last year. The department’s goal is to respond to those calls within eight minutes.
Response times are higher this year than last year for priority 2, 3 and 4 calls as well. On average, it takes police four hours and twenty-five minutes to respond to priority 4 calls, the lowest category of calls like motor vehicle burglaries and criminal mischief. The department’s goal is an hour or less.
Last year, the department mandated residents report low-priority calls — like car burglaries, identity theft and graffiti — online instead of through 911 so officers could devote their time to more serious crimes.
Even the lowest priority calls are crimes that impact the quality of life of residents and their perception of whether they feel safe, Marocco said.
“To tell citizens to wait until 2033 for police officers to fully be staffed to adequately respond to calls is completely unrealistic, unacceptable and unprioritized planning,” he said, noting he believes the faster the city can boost officers’ pay and benefits to among the top in North Texas and improve recruitment, the easier it will be to ease concerns about public safety.
City manager survey
Proposition T would require Dallas to conduct an annual survey of at least 1,400 residents, rating the city manager’s performance on five topics: crime, homelessness, litter, panhandling and street condition. The consequences range from a bonus equal to the city manager’s base salary to termination.
The survey must be conducted and published between Jan. 1 and March 15 each year and poll at least 100 residents from all 14 council districts. Each topic would be rated on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being “a major problem” and 4 being “not a problem.”
Dallas has around 1.3 million residents, with roughly 90,000 people in each council district.
If less than 30% of the responses on all five topics are a 1 or 2, then the city manager would be paid a performance bonus equal to their annual base salary. The bonus amount decreases if the threshold isn’t met for all five issues.
Tolbert’s base salary as of September was $319,725.
If no more than two topics yield less than 30% of the responses as a 1 or 2, then the city manager would be fired by the City Council within 30 days and disqualified from being reappointed for 10 years.
The proposal says the impact of the survey results only applies if the city manager has been on the job for at least 18 months as of Jan. 1 in the year the poll results are published.
It could deter many candidates from considering the job, Owsley said.
“If someone takes that job and gets fired because of a survey given to a fraction of the residents, they become the poster child for, ‘Why you don’t want to work for Dallas,’ " he said.
Benavides declined to say whether, as a former city manager, he thought any of the three Dallas Hero proposals were good or bad ideas, but he said the survey could cause some candidates to “think twice,” knowing that was the standard.
“If they’re worried about deterring candidates, I say good,” Morocco said. “We’re glad they won’t consider the job because we don’t want a city manager that does not care about accountability.”
He noted Dallas already has an annual community survey polling a portion of residents on their satisfaction with the city on a series of topics.
Owsley asked how aware residents are of what the city is doing beyond their neighborhoods because that becomes more important with the survey’s increased stakes. He wanted to know what safeguards would be put into place to ensure a selection of polled residents is truly random and what would stop people from giving all positive or all negative reviews without explanation. What if you have no idea who the city manager is, Owsley asked.
“I think I’m a reasonably informed person, and I don’t know that I would trust myself if I was on that survey,” he said. “The level of engagement to fairly evaluate the job of a city manager is asking a lot, and I don’t know that most people really are that engaged on a citywide level.”
Benavides said systems are already in place to evaluate the city’s top municipal executive.
The City Council hires, fires and approves pay raises for the city manager. It can also set performance goals and objectives; failure to meet those targets could result in the city manager’s firing.
“We vote for people that supervise the city manager, and they’re representatives of the people,” said Benavides, who was Dallas city manager from 1998 to 2004. “I and other city managers — we serve at the will of the council, and that can end at any time because we don’t have term contracts.”
Governmental immunity
Proposition S would require the city to waive its governmental immunity to allow any resident to file a lawsuit alleging the municipal government isn’t complying with the charter, local ordinances or state law.
A “resident” is defined as a person who lives within the city limits or any firm, corporation, limited liability company, joint venture, trust, estate, nonprofit, or association either physically located in Dallas or conducting business in the city, the proposal states.
Texas provides governmental immunity to cities, protecting them from lawsuits and liability. The law does allow people to sue the state and cities for damages in some cases of negligence.
The proposed charter amendment language states the person suing the city must give the municipal government at least 60 days’ notice before filing legal action and “reasonably describe” the part of the charter, city ordinance or state law they believe has been violated.
“We have to establish a redress for citizens and that is exactly why this pressure relief valve is there — for direct democracy,” Marocco said. “This is exactly the accountability that the Constitution of Texas had planned for citizens when their city leaders are being abusive and not adhering to the law.”
Removing governmental immunity would likely open up all municipal government employees to more lawsuits, including police officers, Owsley said.
“Even if the claims are later dismissed,” he said, “the litigation would likely go further than it would otherwise and all of that can get expensive.”
Even if there are legitimate lapses in government decision-making, removing governmental immunity could amplify the consequences, Kirk said. She pointed to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde‚ where 19 children and two teachers were killed. Law enforcement’s delayed response to confronting the shooter has been among criticisms of how it was handled.
“You’d open the floodgates, and at some point, the money has to come from other places,” she said. “We all want somebody to pay for bad decisions. But the question is always going to be how much, and should all of us pay for those bad decisions.”
