There is a lot to like in Mayor Eric Johnson’s memo about the upcoming Dallas city budget.
The mayor laid out his priorities last month: maintaining public safety, focusing on core services, generating new revenue opportunities and lowering people’s tax bills.
Johnson suggested a handful of reasonable measures the city could take to reduce spending: offloading city-run lactation services to the county and privatizing Southern Skates, for example.
These ideas are a start, but we hope to see the mayor carry the discussion further in the coming debate. Johnson also suggested leasing space in libraries for coffee shops and cafes as a way to bring in more money — an idea with mixed results in other cities. Dallas struggles to operate like a complex business. It should stick to the basics.
Budget season should include a good-faith conversation about the fire department. Johnson talks about increasing recruiting for both police and firefighters. The fire department’s budget rose by nearly 80% between 2016 and 2025 while the city’s population barely grew. This warrants further scrutiny. About two-thirds of general fund expenses go to police and fire.
The council also needs to talk about its real estate inventory and how much it spends managing property that doesn’t add any cash to the city coffers. In October, editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky reported that the empty building at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway cost the city about $73,000 each month. The city is looking to sell the building.
There are also the smaller items council members are often too reluctant to let go of. Some council members resisted the idea of shuttering aging and expensive community pools and an older library situated near a newer one.
In November, the council voted to put more than $7 million toward arts subsidies. Some of that money is spent on important cultural assets, but surely there was room to trim back some of it.
Dallas has also added hundreds of non-uniformed employees over the last decade or so. Reassessing how many people the city actually needs should be part of this exercise, too.
The size of Dallas’ bureaucracy, and how much it spends on operations, has grown much faster over roughly the last decade than the city’s population has. For years, it has been apparent that the city was approaching major financial challenges. Today, Dallas is facing a $51 million shortfall.
Council members should heed Johnson’s advice and find ways to reduce spending. Some have already expressed openness to his ideas.
That said, Johnson’s often antagonistic stance toward council colleagues has prevented him from building consensus around all sorts of issues, even when his ideas have merit.
This budget cycle promises to be the toughest this council has seen. We hope Johnson will rise to the occasion.
The City Council is going to have to show some grit. Many cuts will be unpopular. Small but vocal interest groups will be unhappy. But the path of least resistance is the wrong one.
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