Cruel Summer 🥵

Dallas City Council members’ out-of-office replies are activated.

City employees are suddenly breathing easier.

The City Council summer recess is underway, with no meetings scheduled until Wednesday, August 6th.

But the calm of July at Dallas City Hall is often met with a storm of activity from early August through the final City Council meeting of the year on December 10th.

Here are three big policy issues the City Council will be expected tackle in the last four months of 2025:

1. APPROVE A BALANCED BUDGET: Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert will deliver her proposed budget no later than Saturday, August 9th. Tolbert earlier this year warned of a potentially “painful summer” as she and her team take a new “priority based” approach and work to close a projected $36.5 million shortfall. Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief dollars are drying up and there are unprecedented threats on longstanding federal funding streams for key initiatives. City Council members will not consider increasing the property tax rate, as the clear direction for years has been to lower tax rates.

2. MOVE CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS TO NOVEMBER: Dallas voters last November approved a City Charter amendment to allow our poor-turnout May elections to be moved to November. That was only step one of a three-step process. Gov. Greg Abbott completed step two earlier this month. He signed off on legislation to allow Dallas and other local governing bodies that currently hold May elections to move those elections to November of odd-numbered years so that the non-partisan elections would not be on the same ballots with partisan races. The final step is for the Dallas City Council to formalize the new November election date. The state law sets a deadline of Dec. 31, 2025, to do so. The first November City Council and mayoral election would be held in 2027.

3. THE FUTURE OF FAIR PARK: Unlike the first two items on this list, there is technically no hard deadline for City Council and Park Board (on which I serve) to determine the future management structure for our most important park. But with nonprofit manager Fair Park First and its partner Oak View Group now formally notified they’re being terminated, the pressure is on for the policy makers to determine what comes next for a treasured asset we have failed too many times over.

With City Council on break, I too will take a newsletter break for the next few weeks. Look for our next edition to land in your inbox on Monday, August 4th.

📖 Table of Contents

• 📰 Highlights From Last Week's Meetings

• 📝 Memos of Interest

• 🤝 Meetings of Interest: July 2025

  • Tuesday, July 8

    • Dallas Area Rapid Transit Public Hearing, 6 p.m.

📰 Highlights From Last Week’s Meetings of Interest

Dallas City Council members on Wednesday:

• Approved Item 3 to expand the potential candidate pool for new Dallas police officers by allowing for applicants without college credits or law enforcement experience who are “at least 21 years of age with a minimum of a high school diploma or general education development (GED) and 36 months of full-time, consecutive employment experience.” Read more from The Dallas Morning News.

• Approved Item 4 to accept donations of structures and cash for a new Dallas Police Academy Reality Based Training (RBT) Village near the current police academy in southern Dallas. The training structures “provide hands-on, stress-inoculation training for recruits and officers.” The donations are being made by QuikTrip Corporation and the Assist The Officer Foundation, according to this memo. Thanks, QuikTrip, writes The Dallas Morning News editorial board.

• Approved Item 6, a resolution to rename three West Dallas lakes along the Trinity River in honor of Native American tribes historically associated with the region. Read more from KERA.

• Approved Item 19, a three-year renewal contract with Visit Dallas “for convention and public event facility promotion, advertising and tourism development services” through Sept. 30, 2028. Downtown Dallas, Inc. (DDI) Chief Operations Officer Amy Tharp, a Visit Dallas board member, spoke in favor of the contract renewal. Read more.

• Approved Item 20, a construction manager at risk agreement with HJ Russell - Phillips May - STSW, a Joint Venture, for pre-construction and construction services for the redo of The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, a component of the Downtown convention center redo. Read more.

• Approved Item 42 to accept a $150,000 grant from the Downtown Dallas, Inc. Foundation for creation of a garden and patio space at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library across the street from City Hall.

• Approved an amended version of Item 69, a resolution directing City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to review and potentially pause any city programs or policies that violate recent presidential executive orders, including those targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. City Council members asked the city manager to report back on her actions and recommendations in a briefing no later than August 20. Read more from The Dallas Morning News.

• Delayed to August Public Hearing 1, a proposed Dallas Development Code amendment to kill a tool zoning case opponents occasionally use to delay cases by paying a $150 fee. City Council members asked for a briefing on the proposal on August 6th, with a vote to follow as soon as the following week. I highlighted this proposal at the top of last week’s newsletter. Read more on what’s driving the proposal.

📝 Memos of Interest

• Dallas could surpass the City Charter-mandated 4,000 police officers in fiscal year 2029, according to current projections. The City has never had that many officers.

• Here’s a fun/confusing fact: The City of Dallas requires itself to pay its own employees less (currently $19.25/hour) than what is required of general services contractors (currently $22.05/hour), according to this follow-up memo on outstanding questions from City Council members. That’s because the City Council implemented a “living wage policy” for contracts in 2015, but still has no policy regarding minimum wage for City employees.

• Dallas area U.S. Representatives are requesting $41 million in budget earmarks for City of Dallas projects, detailed here.

• City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s newly hired chief of staff, Ahmad Goree, officially joins the team tomorrow. In his new role, Goree, a former assistant director in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) local office, “will provide direct support to the City Manager in advancing City Council priorities and working closely with the Executive Leadership Team,” according to this memo.

• High marks for Dallas Love Field from Moody’s Ratings and S&P Global Ratings, according to this memo.

• Another round of virtual and in-person budget town hall meetings starts on Thursday, August 14, and runs through Thursday, August 28, according to this memo. City Council members are asked to finalize meeting dates by July 7. I will of course share the schedule when it is published so that you have the chance to tell City officials how you think they should spend your money.

• All external financial audits for the prior fiscal year came back clean, according to City of Dallas Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland. Read them all here.

• Here’s the complete City Manager memo packet for Friday, June 27, 2025.

🤝 Meetings of Interest: July 2025

Tuesday, July 8

Dallas Area Rapid Transit Public Hearing, 6 p.m., DART HQ, 1401 Pacific Avenue, Dallas, TX 75202

• The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Board of Directors has called a Public Hearing to engage and receive comments from the community on potential service and fare changes for possible implementation in January 2026. Learn more.

🗣️ Quote of Interest

Did I miss anything? Do you have any questions? Just want to talk about meetings and memos and other fun stuff? Hit me up.