The next three elections — this November, next May, and November 2027 — could be among the most consequential for Dallas in at least a generation, with lasting implications for public safety, homelessness response, and how we are governed and who leads us.
First, this November, the City of Dallas Proposition A seeks permission to issue up to $443 million in bonds to fund urgent police and fire infrastructure. More than half of those dollars would be allocated to two police academy facilities to replace a deteriorating 36-year-old academy that was supposed to be temporary. The rest of the money would go toward a new emergency operations center and 911 facility, a new police property room and crime lab, and a replacement for a Downtown fire station that opened in 1953 and tops the list of stations needing replacement.
A separate Dallas County Proposition A would unlock new funding to scale strategies countywide that have sharply reduced homelessness in Downtown Dallas and other areas in recent years. The measure would enable nonprofits and government agencies to close encampments and move thousands more people off the streets, connecting them with jobs, mental health treatment, shelter, and housing. (GoldHam Group is working on the campaign supporting the county proposition).
May 2027 could see multiple measures to reform our system of government.
Former mayors Ron Kirk, Tom Leppert, and Mike Rawlings announced in recent days that they are launching a push to give the next Dallas mayor more power, as The Dallas Morning News first reported. Framing the effort as ensuring clear accountability at City Hall, the X-Mayors — not to be confused with the X-Presidents — want to give the mayor the authority to hire and fire the city manager and city attorney and to present a proposed annual budget, subject to City Council approval. Dallas is one of the biggest cities in the country with a council-manager form of government, in which the mayor has few powers beyond running City Council meetings and appointing committees that oversee major policy decisions.
The X-Mayors plan to gather the thousands of voter signatures necessary to place proposed City Charter amendments on the May ballot.
Meanwhile, the Save Dallas City Hall coalition, which is fighting a push to relocate the seat of Dallas government, is promising a major announcement this Thursday at 10 a.m. on City Hall Plaza. They are also expected to gather signatures for a measure that could block — or at least complicate — the effort to abandon the I.M. Pei-designed building.
Finally, November 2027 will be the first time in more than eight years that Dallas elects a new mayor. Five council members are also term-limited and will be replaced. The other nine council members will also be up for re-election, assuming they all opt to run again.
Taken together, these elections will force answers to questions Dallas has spent years punting: what public safety infrastructure is worth, whether homelessness gets addressed or merely moved around, who is held accountable at City Hall (and potentially where City Hall is located), and who will be in charge as those answers become clear.
For more on this and other hot topics, join me over on the new Meetings of Interest Community Page. I’ll be posting updates, videos, GIFs, and more throughout the week. It’s like a Facebook page, but (hopefully) without all the personal attacks and misinformation.
📖 Table of Contents
🗞️ ICYMI: Highlights From Last Week
City Council members finalized a $5.66 billion budget on Wednesday with an eleventh straight property tax rate cut, from 69.88¢ to 69.78¢. Late amendments squeezed more than $2.8 million for increased library hours, funded partly by shaving office supplies, furniture, and conference fees across city departments. Read more.
Dallas Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland plans to retire, effective January 5, 2027, following more than 30 years with the city. The announcement was expected, with several council members hinting at it in public remarks during last week’s City Council meeting. His departure will leave a big hole for City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to fill in the coming months. Read more.
🔢 Number of Interest
95
Number of years the City of Dallas has been run under a council-manager form of government without substantially increasing mayoral powers.
🤝 Meetings of Interest: September 21 - 25, 2026
Monday, September 21
📑 Dallas City Auditor Nominating Commission, 10 a.m., 6ES, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
This City Council-appointed commission is led by EY Dallas Managing Partner Michelle S. Vopni. Commissioners are expected to interview, discuss, and recommend candidates for City Auditor, one of five positions that report directly to the mayor and city council members. Interviews and deliberations are expected to be held in closed session.
Tuesday, September 22
🏘️ Dallas City Council Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
Briefing: "Dallas is Home" Framework
Housing staffers return with another “Dallas is Home” policy update, built around a proposed five-year goal of improving housing stability for 55,000 households by 2031 through seven pillars covering production, preservation, neighborhood investment, housing stability, fair housing, infrastructure, and community engagement. The framework remains, in staff’s own words, “under development.” Pillar-by-pillar briefings run October through December, with a possible January 2027 Council item for adoption.
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🤑 Dallas Economic Development Corporation, 9 a.m., Duane Morris LLP, 200 Crescent Court, Suite 900, Dallas, TX 75201
The nonprofit’s board members are scheduled to review and vote on a proposed fiscal 2027 budget, which includes no new funding from the City of Dallas.
💳 Dallas City Council Committee on Finance, 1 p.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
Facing a third straight year of flat-to-shrinking budgets, Parks and Rec leaders will tell committee members they need money that doesn’t come from the general fund: real estate development on parkland, a Fair Park call for concepts, a CBRE advisory contract, and billboards on Dallas parks. Staff says the controversial billboards concept could pull in $10 million a year and $300 million over a 30-year lease, with the structures “architecturally interesting,” pushed to park edges, and facing outward. Sure, but it’s still massive billboards in parks, a concept Dallas Morning News Architecture Critic Mark Lamster calls “so preposterous, so obscene, so self-evidently and maddeningly wrong-headed that it requires no great argument to be unspooled against it.”
Next year’s inauguration of a new mayor and city council will be held on December 20, 2027, according to this draft calendar, which is subject to City Council approval. The change follows last year’s City Council vote to move all future municipal elections to November of odd-numbered years, a change aimed at increasing voter turnout.
🚌 Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Committee-of-the-Whole (4:30 p.m.) and Board of Directors’ Meeting (6 p.m.), Board Room, DART HQ, 1401 Pacific Ave., Dallas, TX 75202
Board members will discuss and vote on state legislative priorities for the session beginning January 12, 2027. The proposed plan includes formalizing governance changes that lower the City of Dallas’ hold on the agency’s governing board to 45%, down from the current 53%.
Board members will also vote on the agency’s proposed $1.84 billion fiscal 2027 budget, including a $798 million operating budget, and 20-year financial plan. Read all the details here.
The DART Cares program teams mental health clinicians with transit police to help people experiencing mental health challenges. The initiative, which launched in 2022, would continue for at least two more years in partnership with Parkland Health, under a proposed $3 million contract up for a vote. Read more. (DART is a GoldHam Group client).
Wednesday, September 23
🗣️ Dallas City Council Meeting, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
Item 7: DPD wants another year on a deal with Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School to keep building virtual reality de-escalation training scenarios for officers, at no additional cost to the City. The extension is needed because the department still hasn’t spent through the nearly $800,000 federal grant it accepted in January 2024, due to “delays in commencing the project” that ran past the original contract term.
Item 17: A big step forward in a long-planned transformational public-private partnership for the Dallas Zoo. The item would authorize $28 million for Linbeck Group to build Phase One of the Dallas Zoo’s Safari Trail, the “African Shorelines” stretch with penguins, flamingos, and a café. The funding includes $18.4 million in zoo donation match dollars and $9.6 million from the voter-approved 2024 bond. Construction is slated to start next month and wrap in March 2028, with the full three-phase trail (rhinos, cheetahs, okapi) finished by 2030.
Item 20: A 1976 Lake Highlands car wash would be demolished and replaced with a two-story, 7,220-square-foot retail and office building under a $1.2 million Tax Increment Financing (TIF) subsidy from the Skillman Corridor district. City staff and an outside underwriter call the subsidy gap funding on a roughly $4.7 million project, with construction running March 2027 to December 2029.
Item 21: Dallas would sign the interlocal agreement letting DART kick in future sales tax revenue to city TIF districts. This vote authorizes no money, but any future request for DART dollars must include an identified city match.
Item 22: Wei Wei Jeang and Brian Bernknopf are up for approval to fill two vacancies on the City of Dallas Economic Development Corporation (EDC) board, replacing Jeanne Phillips and Deborah Hunter Johnson. Terms expire June 30, 2027, and June 30, 2028, respectively.
Item 49: Council members are being asked to formally adopt an updated version of the Dallas Cultural Plan. This is a cleaned-up version of the plan the council amended last December after directing the city manager to review and revise programs in response to a series of presidential executive orders intended to wipe out any hint of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Item 51: Cara Mia Theatre Co. and Teatro Dallas would each get resident company status at the Latino Cultural Center, with 12 to 20 weeks a year in the multi-form theater and Oak Farms Dairy Performance Hall at $1,500 per week, on a five-year term with three five-year renewals running to 2046. The deal brings the city an estimated $36,000 a year, plus signage on the building reading “Home of Cara Mia Theatre and Teatro Dallas.”
Item 52: The city manager wants authority to sign an agreement with an unnamed “international sports organization” for an unnamed “future major international sporting event initiative,” with the item noting participating cities must keep quiet until the organizer makes an official announcement. No cost estimates yet, but the item notes future public safety, transportation, facilities, and sanitation costs will come back to council members later.
Z7: Hillwood wants to put an office tower on a vacant lot at Carlisle and Bowen, right across the Katy Trail from its own corporate campus, and needs council sign-off to build a bit bigger and closer to the property lines than current rules allow. In exchange, it’s promising a pedestrian connection to the trail. Staff and City Plan Commissioners recommend approval.
Z10: Winners Assembly Church is asking to rezone roughly 33,000 square feet at MLK Jr. Boulevard and Colonial for a 25-story hotel, apartment, and retail tower in South Dallas/Fair Park, a request the City Plan Commission unanimously recommended denying. Staff instead recommends zoning that allows a taller building than current zoning, but far short of 25 stories.
PH1: A public hearing on renaming North Harwood Street between Woodall Rodgers and Harry Hines to “Exchange Place,” requested by Mayor Eric Johnson and Council Members Jesse Moreno and Gay Donnell Willis to mark the Texas Stock Exchange’s move to 1919 Woodall Rodgers, which would become One Exchange Place. Harwood has carried the name of early civic leader Alexander Harwood since 1872, so removing it from this stretch requires a three-quarters council vote to waive the code’s ban on changing historic street names.
🗣️ Quote of Interest
This is all about citizens. Forget the politicians. They don’t believe anybody’s accountable in this city. Whose throat do I choke when I’m mad? They can’t figure it out.
A note to readers: Meetings of Interest is an independent newsletter curated and authored by The GoldHam Group Managing Partner Scott Goldstein and edited by GoldHam Managing Partners Sam Goldstein and Vana Hammond. The content, perspectives, or commentary presented herein reflect the views of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of any other organization, institution, or individual, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Any affiliations are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement.
Thanks for reading.
Have a great week.
Best,
Scott Goldstein
Managing Partner
The GoldHam Group
Sam Goldstein, Scott Goldstein, and Vana Hammond are co-founders of The GoldHam Group, a southern Dallas-based boutique communications, events, and public affairs firm.
