Dallas City Council will decide later this month whether to approve several changes to how financial decisions are made. One of those changes includes how real estate decisions are approved.
City staff proposed potential changes to the city's Financial Management and Performance Criteria during Monday's Finance Committee meeting. The Financial Management Performance Criteria, or FMPC, sets the standards and guidelines for the city's financial managerial decision making with 55 numbered criteria.
The Save Dallas City Hall Coalition worry proposed revisions to one criteria, FMPC No. 20, could change how the city will proceed with whether to stay or leave its current City Hall building.
The proposed changes to FMPC No. 20 specifies that City Council would authorize the addition, replacement, or reopening of facilities and buildings by majority vote.
That would change the current vote threshold from a supermajority — 11 council members including the mayor — to a majority, which would be eight.
If approved by the full council on August 25, the changes could go into effect ahead of a decision on whether to stay at the current City Hall building or relocate elsewhere. So far the vote on moving forward with options to leave City Hall has faced a consistent 9-6 vote.
The most recent vote gave staff approval to look at leasing options for a new location. All seven council members on the Finance Committee approved that vote, along with Council Member Lorie Blair and Mayor Eric Johnson.
While City Hall was not on the agenda, the pending decision of what to do with the site was in the background of Monday's discussion.
The Save Dallas City Hall Coalition issued a legal notice to the city in May regarding FMPC No. 20, which falls under the city's budgeting and planning category.
An amendment made in 2021 revised FMPC No. 20 to authorize each new building by super-majority council vote.
"The cost to the City of identifying, renting, modifying, and moving to one or more replacement buildings will be enormous," Save Dallas City Hall Coalition said in its legal notice. "FMPC No. 20 was amended precisely to ensure that the City Council would not make a momentous decision like abandoning City Hall for one or more new or replacement buildings unless a super-majority of all Council members voted in favor of doing so."
Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland told the Finance Committee on Monday that the proposed changes were meant to clarify whether a replacement building counts as an added building and to set the same voting threshold for all authorizations.
Council Member Jaime Resendez said accusations that changing the FMPC would be illegal or dishonest were "serious accusations."
"If there isn't a legal basis for those claims, then I think people should stop using those words so casually," Resendez said. "I think it does profound damage to your credibility and ultimately weakens your cause."
A majority threshold made sense to Council Member Zarin Gracey, who said that standard has been used in other city decisions. He said he was in support of the item moving forward for a full council discussion.
But Council Member Chad West, who chairs the Finance Committee, was skeptical of changing the rules in the middle of the City Hall process.
"This financial decision should be made under the rules we have already set to protect taxpayers from bad real estate decisions," West said. "I don't believe the rules should change before the city decision on City Hall, just so we can have a rushed result."
The proposed changes will go before the full council for a presentation and briefing on Aug. 19 and placed on a voting agenda for Aug. 25.
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