Dallas, TX
Dallas police, fire pension lawyers tried to get plan approved without city’s OK
The law firm representing Dallas’ severely underfunded public safety pension fund said it doesn’t need city officials’ approval before submitting a plan to state regulators to fix the system.
After almost six months of meetings between city officials and pension executives trying to work together on the issue, the city only recently found out.
In a letter obtained by KERA sent earlier this year to the Texas Pension Review Board’s top executive, the fund’s lawyers said both the city and the board’s reading of legislation guiding the plan was “erroneous.”
“The System’s board has exclusive authority to adopt a pension plan,” the January letter said. “No City approval is contemplated or needed.”
KERA reached out to pension system officials on Saturday afternoon, but did not receive comment by the time of publication.
In another letter obtained by KERA sent to state regulators on May 10, Dallas City Attorney Tammy Palomino said she “only recently became aware” of the initial correspondence from the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System — and that its reading of the two state statues is “plainly incorrect.”
Palomino’s letter said ultimately the city council has to approve any plan that will be sent to state regulators.
Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, who chairs the city’s pension committee, has maintained that both parties need to come together to find a remedy. In a statement to KERA, he agreed with Palomino’s stance.
“The taxpayers of Dallas are being expected to fund the Dallas Police and Fire Pension’s gap and must have a say in this process,” Atkins’ office said. “It is affirmed by law, as well as the Texas Pension Review Board, who will ultimately be responsible for accepting the funding plan.”
District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon told KERA that while elected officials will be keeping their promise to remedy the issue, the city shouldn’t be just finding out about this after the fact.
“So much for working together, this was sent in January and we just found out about it a couple of weeks ago,” Blackmon said. “It kind of goes to the illusion of working together, or disillusion, right?”
Blackmon said she hoped this wouldn’t harm the process moving forward and that those involved would admit it was not the best approach. But she also said Dallas taxpayers are the ones who ultimately could get hurt during this process.
“This is a serious problem and we have to take it seriously,” Blackmon said. “Antics and letters and lack of transparency doesn’t help. We need the best and brightest minds to come to the table and really look at thoughtful solutions.”
Down payment
In the letter sent from Haynes and Boone attorneys to Amy Cardona, the state pension board’s executive director, the firm said the law is silent when it comes to giving power to the city for final approval.
“In the interest of fostering a collaborative dialogue about these issues with the [Pension Review Board], the [Dallas Police and Fire Pension System] provides the following statutory analysis,” the letter said.
The 91-page report details the two state statutes that guide how pension systems come up with funding plans with government entities — like the city of Dallas. The attorney argued that one of the laws “makes no provision for adopting or amending a pension plan. Nor does it address how a plan or amendment becomes effective.”
Instead, they said the other provision is what should govern the plan process and was why they concluded the fund could submit a plan on its own without city approval. The letter said the system “is confident that a court would agree.”
Palomino said that analysis isn’t correct and under either code the city council would need to approve the plan.
“If the two statutes are harmonized, the plan must be approved by city council under the provisions of Chapter 802.20,” Palomino’s letter said. “If the two statutes are irreconcilable, then a plan must still be approved by city council under the provisions of Chapter 802.”
The letter also said if state legislators had intended for one statute to take precedence over the other, “it could have said so in 2017, 2021, and 2023, but it did not.”
Blackmon said anyone can approach the state’s pension review board, but it’s the city that is ultimately on the hook for cutting the checks to fund the pension system. She equated it to her son asking for help in buying a new car or house.
“And he is like ‘I want this very expensive thing’ but I can’t afford with helping with that down payment,” Blackmon said. “So that’s what I’m equating this to…lets sit down and have this discussion about what can be done, because at the end of the day the city is going to have to write a check that has to clear.”
Two plans and a concern
Both the pension board and city staff’s recommendations are fairly close. The goal is to start building back the retirement fund that was on the brink of collapse in 2016 due to risky real estate investments.
The main difference is whether or not to increase police and fire retirees’ benefits. City officials call that a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA.
“No one is going to have it 100% their way or 100% our way,” Atkins said during a late April Ad Hoc Committee on Pensions meeting. “But we got to come to the conclusion that we are doing the best we can to make sure we are making the right decision.”
City staff say there are several issues standing in the way of increasing benefits — including paying more in annual contributions — and that it isn’t legal until the system is at least 70% funded.
At an April meeting, city officials said that may not happen until 2046 and it would add more than $120 million to the system’s unfunded liabilities.
As of that meeting, the pension’s unfunded liabilities have increased more than $160 million. That brings the total to $3.2 billion.
District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn, who has been outspoken about the need to increase retirees benefits, said the lack of a COLA could be hindering recruitment efforts.
“Everything we need to do on this plan has to be formed around that principal of how are we going to keep our officers, how are we going to attract new ones,” Mendelsohn said during the April meeting. “We are very close to having a public safety situation. I don’t want to say crisis, but we are very close.”
But city staff said at the time that while the police department may be falling short of hiring quotas, Dallas Fire Rescue doesn’t seem to be having that issue. City staff said not being able to hire officers is a nationwide issue — not just in Dallas.
That board is made up of 11 members — six of which are appointed by Dallas city officials. Some council members have also raised concerns over the system’s oversight.
“It’s really a false premise because they are absolutely obligated to the fiduciary duty to the [pension] fund,” District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis said during an April meeting. “But the taxpayer is really not represented there.”
A deadline
The plan to fix the system is due to state regulators in November. That leaves just around six months for both pension executives and Dallas city officials to get on the same page.
Earlier this year some officials questioned how the fund was going to rebuild and asked about active investments. As of February the fund still had about 25% of its assets tied up in private investments. Those include an energy fund, natural resources — and assets in real estate.
Pension officials said the target for private equity is set at 15% for the fund. And while the investment allocations had been around two-thirds of the system’s portfolio, and officials have managed to liquidate some of those real estate assets over time — they’re still hindering the fund.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gifttoday. Thank you.
A photography print of a man inside a minaret tower. A ceramic chalice. A tissue paper collage illustration from a children’s book. A short film about a trip to Europe with friends.
Each of these pieces of artwork was created by Asian American artists from North Texas and featured in the Dallas Asian American Art Collective’ first annual art show over the weekend.
The co-curators Leili Arai Tavallaei, Jackie Tao Law and Christina J. Hahn, who are all Dallas-based artists, partnered with The Cedars Union where they put on the show.
Tavallaei said the collective wanted to reflect the diversity of emerging and established AAPI artists in North Texas. The co-curator is a printmaker, mixed-media painter and animator whose work explores her mixed race identity as someone with parents who are Persian Iranian and Hāfu, mixed Japanese identity.
“A lot of people, when they hear of Asian artists, they usually think of international Asian artists that have made it big across the pond,” she said. “We here want to kind of make a statement that we are, in fact, here in the States. We are here in Texas.”
Law said that distinction of being an Asian American artist matters because being part of the diaspora is an entirely different experience from being Asian.
“You end up having this blend of maybe your home culture and then being from wherever you immigrated to,” said Law, who is a first-generation Hakka Chinese visual artist.
Here are some of the artists who displayed work at the show:
Growing up way out east in Tyler, Mallari said his family would travel two hours one-way to get groceries from the Hong Kong Market Place in Dallas. It was part of his family’s Sunday ritual: get a haircut, buy groceries and head home.
Mallari said there’s a “small but mighty” Filipino community in Tyler, but for a long time there wasn’t a space to pick up basic ingredients to make food from his culture.
“When I was a kid, I was annoyed that we would have to be there. But as I got older, I appreciated how important that was, how some of my favorite foods we wouldn’t have been able to make it or they wouldn’t have been my favorite foods had we not gone there.”
The second-generation Filipino American filmmaker describes “To Here and Back” as a visual tone poem that reflects the immigrant story.
“I think it’s about coming back to a place and seeing how time has changed it even though it’s kind of stayed the same in your head,” he said.
Berglund said this last year she focused on “trying to be more Chinese” and returning to her roots. A big part of that has been drawing scenes from everyday life in China, including sketches of three delivery drivers, a night market full of delicious snacks or people waiting in line with thick parkas.
“I was just there about a year ago during the winter when everyone was in the big, puffy jackets which is not something you see in Texas,” she said.
Originally from Beijing, the artist – who works as a web architect by day – now lives in Plano with her family. She sometimes makes sketches from photos and online reference art, which reminds her of how different the scenery is back in China.
“I remember the hutongs, which are the little alleys. I remember wearing my red scarf as a little kid and the yellow hats in elementary,” she said. “Seeing those things in drawings brings back a lot of memories.”
Choi is a medical student in North Texas by day and artist by night. His colorful, abstract paintings don’t immediately seem to reference language but that’s the inspiration for his work.
He said he incorporates Chinese typography into his pieces as a system that connects Korean and Japanese, the two languages that he speaks.
The artist said he wanted to explore questions like: “How do we represent the world through language? What are some ways that you can kind of twist or distort or play with the form of language to represent the world?”
Choi said language has been an important way to connect with loved ones.
“It’s how I feel connected to my family abroad. Whenever I go back to that language context, it feels like coming home in a way,” he said. I feel like so much of Korean culture is bound up in the way language is constructed, in the way you relate to people and honorifics.”
Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA.
This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, Communities Foundation of Texas, The University of Texas at Dallas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access’ journalism.
DALLAS – Authorities are investigating whether a vigilante is shooting coyotes in a Dallas neighborhood.
Dallas Animal Services says it’s investigating three coyote deaths since August. Two of them were shot.
Authorities don’t know who is doing it, but people who live in the area are rattled.
Emily Levin is still left disturbed by the dead coyote found in her front yard last week.
“Wednesday, this dead coyote appeared in our front yard on the border between our yard and our neighbor’s yard,” she recalled.
Levin says a city wildlife investigator immediately came out to her Lochwood neighborhood and revealed the coyote had been shot.
“And I asked her if she knew if it had been shot in our front yard or it had walked. And she said it was hard to tell, which is not reassuring,” Levin said.
DAS tells FOX 4 it’s been investigating a possible trend since August.
Three coyotes have been found dead in Lochwood. Two were shot. The third was disposed of before the city arrived on scene.
“Like, don’t go shooting a gun in a neighborhood!” Levin said.
The neighborhood has been shaken for weeks.
Just a few streets over from Levin, a homeowner sent FOX 4 surveillance video from late October where you can hear gunfire. You can hear glass shattering at the end.
One bullet went through a home’s front window near Easton Road and East Lake Highlands Drive. No one was hurt.
More recently, the same homeowner said he heard gunshots again Sunday afternoon. Dallas police say they responded, but no one was injured.
It’s unknown if these incidents are related to the coyote shootings.
However, the Dallas County game warden confirmed they are investigating and are asking for all surveillance video to be handed over.
Levin has a warning to anyone disrupting the peace in her neighborhood.
“Don’t bring that to our neighborhood. It’s too nice of a place for that,” she said.
The Dallas County game warden couldn’t reveal too much information on the investigation but wanted to remind people the coyotes in urban areas are being monitored.
At this point, no coyotes in the Lochwood area have posed a threat to humans.
Gather your family, grab some hot cocoa, and explore the best Christmas light displays across DFW. This list includes free attractions and festive events with admission fees:
Christmas Lights Show:
Dallas Zoo Lights
A holiday tradition is back: Dallas Zoo Lights returns
The Dallas Zoo is now exploding with lights, lanterns, and new immersive experiences. FOX 4’s Shannon Murray gives us an inside look at the festivities:
When: Nov. 22 – Jan. 5
Where: Dallas Zoo
What: Enjoy illuminated zoo animals, creative displays, and larger-than-life decorations. Perfect for kids and families.
Cost: Tickets start at $16.
Holiday at the Arboretum
12 Days of Christmas event returns to Dallas Arboretum
This year, Dallas Arboretum is celebrating ’10 years’ of it’s celebrated ’12 Days of Christmas’ event. The tradition for many North Texas families returns tonight.
When: Nov. 13 – Jan. 5
Where: Dallas Arboretum
What: Thousands of lights and elaborate decorations set the scene for this cherished Dallas holiday tradition. Activities and food add to the festive atmosphere.
Cost: Tickets range from $13 to $37, depending on age and time of visit.
Lightscape
When: Nov. 22 – Jan. 5
Where: Fort Worth Botanic Garden
What: Millions of lights transform the gardens into a magical, glowing winter wonderland. Seasonal treats and warm beverages are available for purchase.
Cost: Tickets range from $12 to $30.
Tianyu Lights Festival
Magical Forest Tianyu Lights Festival in Grand Prairie
Vibrant colors everywhere you look at the Tianyu Lights Festival… The spectacular festival has opened in North Texas and will close January 19th.
When: Nov. 8 – Jan. 19
Where: Grand Prairie, Texas
What: Stroll through a magical forest filled with vibrant, handcrafted light displays. Food and drinks are available for purchase.
Cost: Admission ranges from $16 to $33, depending on the day. Parking costs $10 online or $15 onsite.
https://tianyuculture.us/dallas/
Drive-thru Christmas lights:
Burkman Holiday Home (Featured on The Great Christmas Light Fight)
Where: 3809 Hazelhurst Drive, Frisco
Cost: Free.
Deerfield Christmas Lights
Where: West Plano, between Preston Road and Coit Road.
Cost: Free.
Highland Park
Where: Enter the neighborhood at Armstrong Parkway and Preston Road.
Cost: Free. Horse-drawn carriage rides are available for $175.
Karr Family Light Show
Where: 5901 Pacers Lane, Fort Worth (6–10 p.m.)
Cost: Free.
Lights on Trail Creek
Where: 4941 Trail Creek Drive, Fort Worth. Tune your radio to 99.9 FM for synchronized music.
Cost: Free.
Interlochen Christmas Lights
Where: Start at Randol Mill Road and Westwood Drive in North Arlington.
Cost: Free.
Southwestern Boulevard
Where: University Park, between Central Expressway and the Dallas North Tollway.
Cost: Free.
Timberhollow Circle
Where: A cul-de-sac in Lake Highlands with a “12 Days of Christmas” display. Surrounding homes are also decorated.
Cost: Free.
Vitruvian Park
Where: Vitruvian Park in Addison (Nov. 23 – Jan. 1)
Cost: Free.
https://visitaddison.com/events/vitruvian-park/
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