We are deep into budget season at Dallas City Hall, and you know what that means. Special interests are lining up to protect and expand every dollar that gets spent on their projects.

So it seems like a good time to get a quick reset on how Dallas stacks up when it comes to cost to taxpayers. Houston’s tax rate is 51.9 cents per $100 in valuation. Austin’s is 57.4 cents. San Antonio’s is 54.15. Fort Worth’s is 67.25.

And Dallas? Dallas’ current tax rate is 70.47 cents. We won’t even get into the rates of suburbs the city competes with.

So please, council members, resist the urge to add costs back into City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s proposed budget.

Sadly, we aren’t confident that is going to happen. The council already looks like it will buckle under, once again, on the closure of the Skillman Southwestern Branch Library. The story of this branch is an anecdote of why it is so hard to cut costs at City Hall, and why taxpayers continue to get saddled with ever-higher costs.

The branch is underutilized and doesn’t conform with a necessary consolidation strategy that reflects the reality of how libraries are used today. But it’s been all but impossible to close because council members won’t do it. Instead the branch will limp along another year on reduced hours. Next year, we are promised.

The council needs to recognize that special constituencies are not the voice of most Dallasites. People who choose to live in our city are paying a premium for the privilege. Tolbert has weighted her budget to add funds for public safety while reducing head count in other areas. That’s what most Dallasites want right now.

We were disappointed that more council members did not focus proposed budget amendments on savings. Council member Bill Roth, from North Dallas, did recommend $13 million in savings. He framed it in a politically unpalatable way by singling out programs that might run afoul of the Trump administration.

But Roth’s effort is the right one, combing the budget for costs that serve very small constituencies at the expense of all taxpayers. His proposal didn’t make it to the budget amendment process. It’s too bad since the discussion could have been fruitful. Whatever one thinks of some of the programs he highlighted, he is likely right that they could draw federal scrutiny.

Instead, if one looks at the council amendments listed on last week’s meeting agenda, the words “add” and “increase” most commonly precede “funding.”

Mission creep has been the standard of business at City Hall for generations. The costs of that creep are creating burdens that make Dallas less competitive.

It needs to stop. It will take a willingness to say enough is enough to get us there.

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Embrace density, efficiency

Re: “Promise or Peril? Initiative tracks key indicators as area transforms,” Sunday news story.

Metrics tell us a lot about what North Texas must do to thrive in the future. But culture drives a lot of those numbers. Sufficient energy, water and transportation resources are critical.

The predominant culture in North Texas embraces a 1950s aesthetic: single-family houses with lawns and cars as the primary mode of transportation.

When we moved from North Dallas to Uptown, we adopted a more energy- and water-efficient lifestyle. Because I walk and take public transit, I drive many fewer miles than I used to.

The quality of life in this densely populated neighborhood is fantastic. Density can be added without damaging existing neighborhoods, but it must be served by transit and have ground-level retail and services that encourage walking.

Too many people resist that type of change. Low-density, car-centric Plano is trying to cripple, if not destroy, our public transit system. Planning for the future should mean more resources for DART, not fewer.

Resource supply is only half of the story. A culture change that embraces density and its efficiencies to conserve limited resources, including the money needed for infrastructure, would be the truly conservative pro-growth strategy.

Ann Drumm, Dallas/Uptown

Stop wasting water

Texas needs to conserve water. I can’t imagine how many thousands of gallons of water are wasted in restaurants. All restaurants should be forced to ask customers if they want water. The only reason a glass of water should be on a table is if the patron requested it.

Many people over-water their yards. They don’t pay attention to the rainfall or if it is going to rain within a few days. Most people who have sprinkler systems think that their yard will not get watered if it has rained. This is not true. The only time a system won’t water (unless the system is turned off) is if it is raining while the system is watering. The system doesn’t know if it rained 15 minutes ago or is going to rain in a half hour.

Building reservoirs is not necessarily the answer if we don’t conserve.

Deborah Greenlee, Arlington

One reason jail is full

Re: “Jail hits capacity again — Tech issues in urgent need of addressing in crisis, DA says,” Thursday news story.

One of the reasons that the Dallas County jail is full is the Texas law that makes it a felony when a person in a mental hospital or any hospital intentionally or knowingly causes physical contact with another when the person knows or should reasonably believe that the other will regard the contact as offensive or provocative. The hospital staff does not have to be injured at all. They just have to say that the patient touched them.

When people with a mental illness are a danger to self or others, where do they go? They usually go to a hospital to be safe. If the hospital changes or reduces their medication that they need to be stable, an unstable person may touch a staff member while walking away or if the staff member is blocking them in and yelling.

One hospital in the Dallas area is known for charging people who are very unstable in a behavioral health hospital with a crime. Some spend a year or more in Dallas County jail since the jail may not give medication for a week or more after arrival. Then, the inmate can be declared incompetent to stand trial. It is a long process to be declared competent again. It is hard to get medical help in jail.

Joy Bergmann, Plano

Are troops coming?

Considering the high occupancy of Dallas jails, will we see National Guard troops being stationed in Dallas?

James J. Horn, Carrollton

Turn to clean energy

My home insurance premium has skyrocketed partially due to the rising cost of natural disasters. We have in recent years also personally suffered from severe storms, flooding and tornadoes.

Many types of natural disasters are made worse by climate change. People and governments around the world understand this, and therefore the world is decarbonizing and moving toward clean energy.

Now is not the time for us to roll back funding for research on clean energy, weather prediction and adaptation. We need to preserve critical science and research around our changing climate.

Robust funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Department of Energy is essential to strengthen U.S. energy leadership and competitiveness. We do not want to lose our energy dominance to, for example, China.

I am asking my U.S. representative, Beth Van Duyne, and Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to reject the recently proposed cuts to these agencies.

Thomas Wikman, Dallas

Evaluate mental health

Every time another mass shooting makes the headlines, we hear the same tired refrain: “thoughts and prayers,” followed by little to no action.

One commonsense step we continue to ignore is implementing mental health screenings and social media checks as part of the gun purchasing process. We require vision tests to drive a car, background checks to work with children and even credit checks for renting an apartment. Yet, purchasing a firearm often involves less scrutiny than getting a driver’s license.

Mental health evaluations could help identify individuals who are struggling and should not have access to lethal weapons. Social media checks could reveal red flags — violent threats, extremist ideologies or signs of radicalization — that too often are ignored until it’s too late.

This isn’t about taking away rights. It’s about using the tools we already have to keep our communities safe. Responsible gun owners should support measures that prevent firearms from falling into dangerous hands.

If we can agree that not everyone should own a gun, then we must be willing to identify who shouldn’t, and act accordingly.

Eric Stengel, Richardson

Next year, as you drive around Dallas, you might turn to look at the car next to you and notice empty space where the driver should be. Cue the spit take. Waymo, formally Google’s self-driving car project, plans to launch its self-driving ride-hailing service in Dallas in 2026.

This isn’t the first self-driving ride service to come to Dallas. General Motors’ Cruise began testing robo-taxis in 2023, but the program was halted due to safety concerns flagged by federal regulators.

Two years later, Texas roads are still dangerous — mainly because of human drivers. This newspaper recently reported that road deaths in Texas are 18% higher than they were 10 years ago.

Traditional rideshare services might help reduce drunken driving, but these services come with their own risks, like troubling allegations about sexual assault, as recently reported by The New York Times.

We need to find a way to make our roadways and interstates safer. Driverless cars are here to stay, and state and federal policymakers are right to embrace them, but they should also ensure that there are rules in place to protect the public.

While the future of this technology and potential for safety improvements is promising, that doesn’t mean we should just hand over the keys.

Initially, the testing fleets will be manned by human drivers to help train the Waymo cars, according to a Waymo news release.

This gives us a little more peace of mind. However, as the technology evolves, the laws and protections surrounding it should, too.

In the last legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that requires autonomous vehicle companies to get state approval before operating without a driver and also requires companies to provide methods of dealing with self-driving cars in emergencies.

If you do get into a fender bender with a Waymo car, you can call the company or scan a QR code on the car’s door. That’s assuming the QR code is still readable after the crash. That offers some level of accountability, but questions linger about who is liable when a self-driving car causes an accident.

Continued state-level regulation is both smart and necessary. We need a system of ongoing oversight and to consider how these vehicles will interact with our existing traffic laws, infrastructure and human drivers on the road.

Waymo cars are expanding their reach throughout Texas. Since March 2024, Waymo has been testing in Austin. During that time, Waymo cars have been involved in 79 incidents in the city, according to the city’s dashboard. Most incidents were reports of safety concerns or blocking traffic. Only three collisions were reported.

This isn’t a bad track record. But even with an otherwise smooth performance, self-driving cars are still in their infancy, and we should be cautious.

As this technology evolves and we start to see more of these vehicles on our roadways, guardrails at the state and federal level will be essential to protect Waymo passengers and other drivers and ensure that companies remain responsible for their vehicles’ behavior on the road.