Dallas’ big three problems

In coming months, the Dallas City Council has a monumental decision to make: the selection of Dallas’ next city manager.

This has led many to reasonably ask “Who is the best person for this job?” But a more fundamental framing of the question is, “What are our city’s challenges and who is best positioned to address them?” Dallas faces several challenges, distinct yet interrelated in ways that necessitate a holistic, comprehensive response.

Perception

The first challenge is how city government is perceived by our community.

The American statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan popularized the saying: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” While many boast of the greatness of our city, our residents’ sense of the way things are going provides a more realistic depiction.

Each year, City Hall gauges perceptions of Dallas and its city services. In the most recent survey, just 30% of residents indicated they are pleased with the overall direction of the city, and only 22.4% of residents said they get good value for their tax money, both of which mark a significantly different response from surveys a decade ago. An overwhelming majority also indicated a dire need for improvement in maintenance of infrastructure (like roads and sidewalks), police services, traffic management and social services.

Along with these sentiments, residents have had a front-row seat to the most fractured city manager-mayor relationship in recent Dallas history. Former City Manager T.C. Broadnax and Mayor Eric Johnson did too little to provide a unified strategy to move the city forward. In part that was because the men had very different views on how the city should function. Broadnax wanted the city to lean into equity issues, while Johnson has a more traditional public safety/basic maintenance view. But the deeper trouble was really their inability to sit across from each other and work through differences in a meaningful way. And that’s the first job of leadership.

Their relationship fiasco not only led to unnecessary leadership turnover, it reinforced the perception of a city struggling to unite to address its challenges.

The next city manager has to be the sort of person who understands that leadership requires collaboration and compromise. And for the city manager role, it involves putting one’s own priorities aside in favor of the policy priorities of the City Council. It means accepting that the council is your boss, and that the mayor is the public face of the council.

Dallas can’t afford another round of management that doesn’t understand that perception often leads to reality in the public eye. Taking steps to project unity and collaboration is a key to success.

Policy

If perception wasn’t daunting enough, the challenge of policy awaits.

Take housing affordability. I’m focusing on this policy issue because it might be the most important signal of Dallas’ future success. Our ability to make sure people at every income level can afford to live within the city limits is absolutely essential to making sure we have the workforce we need to grow and prosper.

Dallas can’t be a city of haves and have-nots. But the way housing prices are going, that’s what we are in danger of becoming.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments predicts Dallas will grow by more than 330,000 people between now and 2045. Dallas home prices have soared 175% in the last decade while our rental unit supply gap is expected to grow to 83,500 by 2030. As a result, housing market experts suggest “Dallas has a ‘generational need’ for more housing if it aims to keep up with growth.”

More homes mean more housing permits. Yet significant delays in obtaining approval for commercial and residential development permits from City Hall haven’t matched the speed of growth. And even after leaders improve this process, it’s crucial that housing and corollary development be planned and executed in ways that make the city more livable while also softening the negative effects of gentrification.

Getting permitting right is a basic management function. City Hall has seen some improvement in this area, but as we look for a new manager, we need to ensure that we are getting someone who has the managerial ability to recognize a central part of the organization is broken and then move with speed to correct the failure. That’s been lacking at City Hall for too long.

The city’s role in permitting is a relatively small part of the broader housing-price struggle in our city. But it’s an indication of how poor management can exacerbate, rather than ease, a bigger issue.

And we know that housing is just one of many pressing issues that requires a strong management hand.

Aging infrastructure also hinders our prospects. Even after an upcoming injection of $500 million of bond funding into improving street quality, Dallas needs an additional $100 million to fix its streets.

Or how about crime and public safety? While violent crimes dropped in 2023, Dallas was one of the few major U.S. cities to experience an increase in killings last year at a rate of nearly 19 per 100,000 residents. We also can’t seem to recruit the police officers we need to patrol or respond to residents’ calls at a reasonable rate.

Our fiscal health? Dallas owes $3.4 billion to its police and fire pensions, $1 billion to the city’s Employees’ Retirement Fund and currently faces a $38 million funding gap in its 2024-25 budget.

Past

The list of policy challenges is endless, but it pales in comparison to the final and most difficult challenge: our history and its malign influence on our present and future.

Plato wrote in The Republic that “Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich.” Dallas’ most persistent problem is how to stitch together a city divided by race and class, in part as a direct result of historically discriminatory decisions.

Of American cities with populations of at least 200,000 residents, Dallas is the 12th most racially segregated city by residence. The most recent American Community Survey indicated 17.8% of Dallas residents live in poverty, with 25.9% of those being children. Two-thirds of Dallas County’s 25-to-34 year olds are unable to earn a living wage. All these numbers are worse for residents of color and those experiencing economic disadvantage. Each aspect directly correlates to past City Hall decisions.

Some suggest that city government should have nothing to do with ameliorating these conditions, but city decisions, the political decisions of our past, engineered these results, and as such, city leaders must play a role in reversing the effects.

It is not only appropriate, it is wholly necessary that our next city manager understand our history and its effects. And that manager must be prepared to use the resources of the city to address the struggles of those who have less, not because of their talents or their efforts, but because the history of our city acts as a weight on their futures.

We need city manager aspirants who can create compelling plans for addressing each of these interwoven challenges. We can be a “world class city,” but we must start by better serving our own citizens. We can significantly improve quality of life, but only if we clearly outline the policies that will help us reach our goals. We can create a better future for our entire city, but only by fully reckoning with the impact of our past.

Dallas is a can-do city, and we expect nothing less from the next leader of City Hall.

Miguel Solis is a former president of the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees and current president of The Commit Partnership.

Part of our Leading Dallas opinion series, this essay identifies three top issues facing the next city manager.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com