Cothrum: Dallas City Council should stop taking July off

A vacation is a reward for hard work, so I’m not sure why the Dallas City Council gets one.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, private industry workers with five years of experience receive 15 days per year, on average. State and local government employees with the same work experience receive 16 days per year. In the city of Dallas, employees with between five and nine years of experience receive 15 vacation days.

Yet somehow, the Dallas City Council takes more than a month off every summer while still being paid. None of the elected officials currently on the council have more than eight years as council members. This summer, they will go 48 days without a meeting. That’s more than three times the vacation leave their employees receive. 

They’ll get another break at year’s end — 34 consecutive days off from the last meeting of the year and the first in 2027. 

Pretty good work if you can find it.

In many ways, July is my favorite month at City Hall. You can get something done with staff. The employees are present, working on the budget and running the city. 

I’ve heard city staff derisively refer to council members as the “summer help.” I first learned the term from my father, who was a council member during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Councils of that era met more often, taking only a short break around Independence Day.

The summer recess became a custom at City Hall during the term of Mayor Annette Strauss, who served from 1987 to 1991. According to former city employees from that era, Strauss enjoyed spending part of her summer in Palm Springs, and the council adopted her schedule. 

Council members also only received a small stipend in those days. Today, they are paid $60,000 a year. The mayor is paid $80,000. The average employee salary in the city is about $71,000. A proposition to raise council pay to $110,000 was soundly defeated by voters in 2024.

I guess a recess is an all-right thing to do when you have a high-performing mayor. Strauss didn’t leave meetings at halftime, like our current mayor. She provided leadership during the Texas oil crisis and navigated the city through the single-member district transition, while enlarging the Art District, including opening the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center.  

Dallas has much work to do, including solving the year’s budget crisis and preparing for tough years to come. Yet numerous members of the council left a recent budget discussion early, choosing to attend a World Cup game. 

I know some members of the current council are around this month. A hearty few even take some meetings. For the most part, however, the elected officials take July off. How very European of them.

It’s really simple: The city does not hold enough meetings. They do this on purpose. It’s one of the many reasons it takes so long to get anything done. A zoning case in Dallas takes eight months or more.

The staff has started juking the stats by creating an initial filing category before it becomes a “real” case. This shortens the duration reported to council; it does not change the reality that development takes much longer in the city of Dallas than any other city.  

When applicants first go to the city and make an initial filing, it is still taking almost a year (or in some cases more). Fort Worth takes three, maybe four, months. Plano is about the same. This is the norm in North Texas — except in Dallas.

I know many people have little sympathy for the big, bad developers, and therefore little patience for complaints like mine. Unfortunately, many of these businesses simply do not do projects in Dallas. They take their money and taxes elsewhere. It’s also schools, day care centers and many small businesses that have zoning cases. There are real costs involved in the city’s inefficiency.

This year there will only be one meeting in the months of January, November and December, and none in July.  The end of year is when I have clients go crazy. With only two voting agendas at the end of the year, cases often drag on additional months, causing complications for executed real estate contracts. This costs people real money. 

The council will have one voting meeting in the final 51 days of the year. That’s pretty light work. After all, it took only 23 days to draft, debate and pass the Declaration of Independence. I promise the Dallas council is not considering anything as lofty or long-lasting.  

The solution to all this is simple: If you want to get more work done, you have to work more. The summer recess should be a thing of the past. The council should resume meetings by the third week of the month. It would show voters and employees that the council is serious, and it would demonstrate servant-leadership. “Do as I say, not as I do” is not the most productive leadership style. 

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