The Dallas City Council voted to finalize an almost $5 billion dollar budget on Wednesday. And the process looked different than in past years: The council passed it with hardly any amendments.
The budget includes $1.9 billion in the city’s General Fund — which is $65.1 million more than last year’s adopted budget. And it includes an almost $80 million increase to the public safety budget.
Instead of having departments brief the council all at once about their needs, that work was done over the span of months to different council committees.
“I think we’re now going to call it budget Jenga versus the Hunger Games,” District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon said during Wednesday’s meeting. “It truly is a very intricate tower of things.”
The result seems to be a balanced budget — without the deficit city officials warned about previously.
“Not only did the city manager and staff listen to us…they did it with the budget shortfalls that we were facing,” District 1 Council Member Chad West said.
The budget includes funding to keep the Skillman Southwestern Library branch for another year. The facility had become the subject of controversy during a previous budget workshop.
Blackmon introduced an amendment at a previous budget workshop that would have moved almost half a million dollars from the city’s Infrastructure Investment Fund to be used to keep the Skillman Southwestern Library branch open.
During Wednesday’s council meeting, Blackmon reversed that motion and instead made another amendment to use district-specific American Rescue Plan Act funds as a one-time payment to keep the library branch open.
“This was a library that actually does fairly well, we have the fifth highest circulation,” Blackmon said. “What you’re actually seeing is a library used for a library, they come and check out books.”
Blackmon said the move to take her district’s ARPA funds is what her constituency wants.
“I applaud a community coming together and saying ‘we want this’,” Blackmon said.
Most council members said they were glad Blackmon used her own district’s funds to delay a possible closure for another year.
District 7 Council Member Adam Bazaldua said some of his constituents use the Skillman facility as well.
“I heard from District 7 residents specifically that because of their mass transit needs and the routes that they go too and from home, that this is their library,” Bazaldua said. “When I hear that, it really opened my eyes to dig further into who really is using the library.”
But not everyone agreed.
“I would bet that most of the people around this council…could probably come up with 50 items that we want to spend half a million dollars on, that would be lasting,” District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said. “Meaning it would fix a road…it would pay down debt.”
Mendelsohn pointed to the Vickery Park Library branch which is about a mild and a half away from the Skillman location.
Council Member Carolyn King Arnold, who represents parts of southern Dallas, said the money should have never been moved in the first place.
“I spoke against this initially because the funds were being taken from the economic development infrastructure fund that was identified for targeted areas in the southern sector,” Arnold said. “I believe we should have left it there and not touched it.”
City staff said the money in the infrastructure investment fund can be “spent with the majority vote of council in any census block group with a poverty rate of 20% or higher.”
“Those Census block group exist in every single council district across the city,” Robin Bentley, an interim assistant city manager, said. “They’re primarily in southern Dallas but they do exist across the city.”
Bentley said with a three-quarter vote of the council the funds can be spent anywhere in the city.
The budget also includes a decrease in the funds being used to service the city’s truck terminal and lease for pedestrian tunnel access under Thanks-Giving Square in downtown. The lease for the tunnels — which was signed in 1972 without a termination clause — became the topic of discussion when elected officials figured out the city pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the lease.
That money also essentially subsidizes the Thanks-Giving Foundation, a nonprofit that operates the private park and meeting space above the tunnels.
West’s amendment would ensure the foundation continues to operate — but reserves money until officials can figure out how to make the best use of the contract.
“This puts funding back in for six months, while we continue discussion at [the Government Performance and Financial Management Committee] on how were going to better leverage our relationship with the Thanks-Giving Square Foundation so that we see some taxpayer benefits,” West said.
Whether or not the action taken by the council Wednesday actually will result in a reduction in funds to the Thanks-Giving Foundation may still be an open question. On paper, the lease is in effect for more than two decades.
The council previously indicated its support for pulling the funding all together until more details emerged about the issue.
Now that the budget is approved, elected and city officials will have to navigate massive financial hurdles in the coming months. Officials have until early November to submit a plan to remedy billions in unfunded police and fire pension liabilities.
“This is a great step in the right direction,” West said. “Overall, we are on the right track and we are a city that puts our taxpayers dollars right up there with public safety, with infrastructure and everything else.”
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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