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Good morning:
I was in Detroit on Friday learning how that city climbed out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history when the City of Dallas announced it is in an estimated $34 million hole out of a roughly $5.2 billion budget in the current fiscal year, with five more months to go.
City officials here identified three main causes for our shortfall: declining sales tax collections ($3.8 million below budget), police and fire overtime expenses ($16.4 million over budget), and employee health benefits ($13.8 million over budget). City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has instituted a civilian hiring freeze, non-essential travel suspension, and overtime and spending restrictions.
Back on that Detroit trip — organized for members of the nonprofit leadership group The Dallas Assembly — we were learning about that city’s “Grand Bargain,” a coalition of philanthropic foundations, private investors, and civic institutions that stepped in when the city was in its darkest moment.
Detroit had filed for bankruptcy in 2013 with $18 billion in debt and a population that had collapsed from 1.8 million to under 700,000. It was a great American city whose tax base had been hollowed out over decades as the American auto industry contracted, taking manufacturing jobs, residents, and property values with it. Detroit’s collapse was the accumulated weight of an economy that had been built around one industry, and then wasn't. And a local government that became known for mismanagement, dysfunction, and corruption.
The Grand Bargain was the deal that kept Detroit’s pensioners whole and saved the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection from being liquidated to pay creditors. It was funded largely by foundations and state funds.
Billionaire businessman Dan Gilbert moved his company to downtown Detroit and began buying up the skyline. Ford Motor Company sank nearly a billion dollars into restoring the long-derelict Michigan Central Station — turning a building that had become Detroit's most recognizable symbol of collapse into a thriving innovation campus, which we toured. New sports venues and revitalized public spaces helped stitch the downtown core back together: Comerica Park and Ford Field stabilized the urban core in the early 2000s, and Little Caesars Arena continued that work. The lessons that kept coming up in our conversations were about what happens when a city's relationship with its private sector deepens — and what gets lost when it fractures.
Dallas should know how this model works.
The Zoo. Klyde Warren Park. Our public improvement districts. The nonprofit Economic Development Corporation. These are just a few examples of institutions proving private management and private discipline consistently extract more from public resources than city government could manage on its own.
They work — but they require a city that treats its private partners as essential civic infrastructure, not vendors it can pressure or take for granted. Right now, that relationship is being tested.
AT&T, synonymous with Downtown Dallas for 20 years, is headed to Plano. The Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars are each working through their arena futures, which is to say they’re each weighing how much they want to stay in Dallas, and whether Dallas truly wants them to. These aren’t done deals in either direction. But the window for the city to make the case for itself is rapidly closing. We need to take our best shot now, not after a bankruptcy filing, not after arenas break ground in suburbs, not after the budget hole is $340 million instead of $34 million.
Right now Dallas has a luxury Detroit didn’t have: the chance to act from a position of relative strength, before the looming crisis truly forces anyone’s hand. The question is who among the elected officials at City Hall is thinking about it that way right now.
📖 Table of Contents
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🗞️ Highlights From Last Week: Meetings, Memos, and Media of Interest
Dallas City Council members on Wednesday, April 22, voted to:
Approve technical changes on how the City regulates unsanctioned street feedings to align with state law, but punted more substantive proposals to a City Council committee for further review. Massive street feedings have long been a public health and safety challenge in Downtown Dallas. The City mostly does not enforce existing laws to stem the issue. Some City Council members have downplayed the challenges and expressed support for the groups conducting feedings.
Approve Item 20, an amendment to the decades-long use agreement between the City and the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) to facilitate design, construction, and improvements to the museum using more than $20 million in 2024 voter-approved bond funds.
Appoint Bertram Vandenberg as interim city attorney until City Council members hire a permanent replacement for retiring City Attorney Tammy Palomino.
Approve Z3, zoning changes to clear the way for a long-promised Central Market at Lemmon and McKinney avenues in Uptown. Read more from the Dallas Business Journal.
Tesla’s Robotaxi autonomous ride service launched in Dallas last week with an initial service area that stretches from Downtown north (but not yet south), according to this memo. The company plans to host training sessions for emergency responders and to eventually expand its service area to cover all of Dallas. Read more from KERA News.
Here’s the latest on funding requests that area members of Congress are carrying for the City of Dallas. Eighteen of the City’s 25 requests have advanced to the House Appropriations Committee for further review.
Mayor Eric L. Johnson arrives in Madrid, Spain, today, the start of a three-day trip to participate in Bloomberg CityLab, “a premier global gathering of mayors and urban leaders focused on advancing innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges facing cities today.”
Check out the complete city manager memo packet for Friday, April 24, 2026.
🔢 Number of Interest
$34 Million
Projected City of Dallas budget hole for the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30. The City must balance the budget.
🤝 Meetings of Interest: April 27 - May 1, 2026
Tuesday, April 28
🚊 Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Committee-of-the-Whole, 3 p.m., Board of Directors, 6 p.m., DART HQ Board Room, 1401 Pacific Ave., Dallas, TX 75202; Watch Live Here
Briefing: Potential Service Changes for Addison, University Park, Highland Park
If voters in Addison, Highland Park, and University Park choose to leave DART in the May 2 election, all DART services—including bus, rail, GoLink, and paratransit—would immediately cease in those cities, resulting in the closure of stations, bus stops, and the discontinuation of special transit partnerships. This would disrupt daily commutes for thousands of riders, eliminate ADA paratransit options, and reduce DART’s sales tax revenue by approximately 3.7%, impacting both short- and long-term financial planning for the agency. Meanwhile, residents in those cities would continue paying into the system for years to cover debt obligations. This briefing is scheduled for the 3 p.m. committee-of-the-whole only.
2.85 MB • PDF File
This briefing for the committee-of-the-whole provides an overview of budget planning, sales tax projections, inflation estimates, and key financial standards for DART, highlighting a total budget of $1.81 billion and sales tax revenues forecasted at $937.5 million. It emphasizes stable sales tax growth, prudent expense management, and the introduction of the new regional Silver Line.
Board members are expected to consider pausing the agency’s Minority and Woman-Owned Business Enterprise Program and amending the board policy which governs its business enterprise programs. The move comes as DART responds to recent executive orders, federal rule changes, and court decisions by shifting toward race- and gender‑neutral contracting policies while trying to preserve eligibility for federal funding. Read more.
DART Police officials are seeking approval to continue contracting for another year with an outside company for supplemental security officers at a cost of about $8.5 million. Read more.
DART staff are asking the board to extend its agreement with Parkland Health for five more months, adding up to about $260,000 to keep mental health clinicians assigned to the DART Cares/MDRT teams. The extension is meant to maintain outreach to people on the system experiencing homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues while DART runs a competitive process for a longer-term version of the program. Read more.
Thursday, April 30
🚋 Regional Transportation Council Special Called Meeting, 1 p.m., Transportation Council Room, North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), 616 Six Flags Drive, Arlington, TX 76011
RTC officials are seeking authorization for up to $5 million in emergency local funding to cover “unforeseen needs resulting from recent legal action” that have disrupted how the region’s transportation planning organization operates, according to agenda documents. RTC is part of an ongoing dispute with the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ 17-member executive board, which is seeking to replace longtime transportation director Michael Morris. The request is framed as a contingency to keep programs moving while the MPO’s status and fiscal arrangements are in flux, and the agenda notes the money is not intended to pay legal expenses. Read more on the latest in this dispute from the Fort Worth Report.
🗣️ Quote of Interest
What these charitable organizations do not see is what happens after they leave — the food waste, the trash, the discarded containers. They don’t disappear when the event ends, they migrate into our parks, onto our doorsteps, and into our neighborhood streets. They become public health hazards, they attract pests, they compromise the sanitation of spaces that residents, workers and visitors share.
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.
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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.
