Dallas city manager’s shift on homeless, focus on cops a welcome change

Regular readers of this page know we are tough critics of Dallas City Hall.

There have been plenty of reasons for us to persistently raise concerns: policies we think hamper the city’s success, managerial failures that gummed up the city’s permitting department, an ever-rising cost of government, and ongoing decline in resident satisfaction with everything from their sense of safety to a belief that the city is heading in the wrong direction.

So let us take a moment here to say that there is a good reason for renewed hope in how City Hall is handling its business. It came in the form of interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

What we saw in both an executive overview and in an interview with Tolbert and her top staff was a disciplined budget focused on the right priorities for a city that leads a growing region.

Here are the highlights that stood out as indicators Tolbert is properly aligning her budget with residents’ desire that Dallas be safer and cleaner and that City Hall better manage its spending:

• A 3.1-cent tax rate reduction to 70.47 cents per $100 in valuation that would save the average homeowner more than $94 a year.
• A consolidation of several city departments and a meaningful reduction in the number of non-public safety positions.
• A serious commitment to meeting actuarial obligations in the city’s police and fire pension fund.
• An increase in public safety starting salaries to attract more recruits to our police force.
• A proposed $3 monthly “clean sweep” utility bill fee to answer resident concerns about homeless encampments and persistent messes around intersections and in public spaces.

Those are just a few bullets of a complex $5 billion total proposed budget, with $1.9 billion of that devoted to the general fund budget that pays for day-to-day operations.

Tolbert told us that she felt she had clear direction on where residents want her to go with this budget, and that was to focus on public safety and quality-of-life issues.

The general fund budget is set to grow by $65.1 million under Tolbert’s proposal. But let us offer some valuable context to that figure.

Under prior City Manager T.C. Broadnax, the general fund grew at a pace of more than $100 million each cycle. With each new budget came an unnecessary expansion of the city’s reach, and with it new jobs that grew the bureaucracy even as residents complained services were getting worse. We supported Broadnax’s most recent budget, but reluctantly and with every sort of caveat.

We are more enthusiastic about the direction Tolbert is taking the city. The growth she has added to the general fund is focused on new public safety positions, mainly in the police department. She’s backing that up with the proposed salary increase that we think can make Dallas more competitive in getting recruits.

Meanwhile, she is proposing cutting back on positions outside of public safety. Her budget includes an additional $78.6 million in public safety spending. That means there is a net $13.5 million reduction in all other general fund expenditures. That comes in part from targeting “ghost jobs,” positions that lard the budget but aren’t filled. But it also comes from reducing some headcount, a fiscally necessary move.

We also heard Tolbert describe a subtle but important shift in the approach to homelessness. Like many cities, Dallas has followed a very light enforcement regimen when it comes to encampments, loitering, panhandling, open-air drug use and other actions often (and sometimes unfairly) associated with homelessness. The city has instead adopted a humane “housing first” philosophy. It has proved ineffective, however, in addressing the massive growth in encampments and visible homelessness that have become a major concern for residents. Leaving people to live in desperate circumstances until an apartment is available is unintentionally cruel in itself.

Tolbert described an approach that acknowledges, in her words, that the city’s progress on getting people housed is “not enough.” Greater intervention is required, she said. We are eager to see what plans she has to back that up.

Meanwhile, her proposed $3 monthly fee to help address unsanitary conditions that have taken root all over the city sounds like something residents would gladly pay. The explosion in homelessness has created challenges that cities didn’t budget for. Underpasses, medians, vacant lots and other spaces have become debris fields that make living in Dallas less pleasant. Devoting funds to keeping the city cleaner would make Dallas more livable and lead to a greater feeling of safety. We support that.

That isn’t the only fee that needs attention here. Other than the tax rate, you can expect to pay City Hall more for every service from water to trash pickup. We want to grumble about these costs. Their annual increase is as certain as the rising sun.

But we also have to acknowledge a few things. Dallas is the biggest municipal water waster in the state. Why? The pipes are old and broken. Fixing them is massively expensive. Trash pickup has gotten pricier, especially as more frequent and stronger storms create enormous bulk trash costs that the city hasn’t had to bear historically.

Is Tolbert’s budget perfect? It is not. There are many areas that we could nitpick, and we are going to have more to say before all is said and done.

But the direction here is good and, importantly, different from what her predecessor offered. This is a budget that feels like it reflects what people in this city consistently say they want.

That means Tolbert has been listening. And that’s a huge step forward.

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