A new Dallas City Council will be sworn in Tuesday, bringing two new members to the horseshoe while returning 13 veterans who have figured out how things work at 1500 Marilla St.
Our hope for them is a productive term that sees the city prosper through new opportunities, and better health and safety for our residents and those who move here over the next two years.
The best way to ensure that is for the council to get the basics right first. Taxpayers rightly expect the streets to be paved, the traffic lights to work, the garbage to be picked up, the permits to get issued, and the police to arrive in a reasonable time when they are called.
Dallas has gotten to the point where it isn’t very good at the basics. The resources the city has are stretched as it is. We just don’t have the money to address the growing needs of an aging city.
There aren’t enough police officers. There are too many potholes. The traffic lights go on the blink when it rains. The public safety pension is in trouble. Even the garbage has been left sitting.
The new council needs to put its energy and focus into addressing basic services before it signs off on massive social programs that the city has proved it isn’t very good at in the first place.
City Hall has been creeping into social engineering through guaranteed income plans, house down-payment giveaways and a host of other efforts that are well outside of the scope of what taxpayers have charged the city to accomplish.
The City Council will provide the greatest opportunities to all of our residents, at every income level, by making sure neighborhoods are safe, that kids can play outside wherever they live, that the parks are well-maintained and the recreation centers and libraries are open. They need to make sure that the permitting and code inspections offices function as well as those in the best suburbs. They need to make sure our pension systems are sound and we are recruiting as many good officers as we can.
That’s what the people of this city need from City Hall. And that’s where the focus should be.
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