In our council-manager form of government — often affectionately referred to as a “weak mayor” system — the City Charter grants the Dallas mayor few powers to guide policymaking.
Appointing City Council committee chairs and members is one of the only such powers. In theory, at least, the committee meetings are where the sausage gets processed. By the time complex policy matters come to the full City Council for a vote, it is generally the hope that the assigned committee has vetted them and will deliver a recommendation to the full council that carries weight.
When Mayor Eric Johnson appointed Cara Mendelsohn last year as chair of three key committees — Public Safety, Housing and Homelessness Solutions, and Ad Hoc Legislative Affairs — it signaled his long-held trust in her, despite her known tendency to butt heads with many of her colleagues.
That political alliance is now over.
In a Friday afternoon memo, Johnson stripped Mendelsohn of all three gavels, handing the housing and homelessness committee to southern Dallas Council Member Lorie Blair, public safety to North Dallas Council Member Gay Donnell Willis, and legislative affairs to Downtown Council Member Jesse Moreno.
Only Johnson knows everything behind the decision, made with a little over 15 months left in his second and final term. But he did not have to look far for reasons on the two subjects that matter most here: homelessness and public safety.
It is well documented that the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee has had its challenges over the past year.
In September of 2025, Mendelsohn and other members of the committee were accused of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act by holding a private meeting at City Hall with an outside group of business leaders who were pitching an idea for homelessness services.
In the ensuing months, Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee meetings were repeatedly marked by infighting and were cut short or canceled for lack of a quorum. On one of the city’s most urgent issues, the committee generated friction rather than policy.
Then there is public safety. Mendelsohn has long positioned herself as a fierce advocate for police officers and firefighters. But she opposes the November bond package that carries $82 million for the long-planned Dallas Police Law Enforcement Training Center at the University of North Texas at Dallas. She says her objection is that the single proposition also funds the relocation of the City’s 911 center and Emergency Operations Center from City Hall, which she believes would help clear the way for a full relocation she opposes.
On Thursday afternoon, Mendelsohn was among numerous elected officials who attended a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new police academy at the UNT Dallas campus. Wearing a City of Dallas hard hat, she granted a TV interview on-site in which she cast doubt on whether the bond money would be used to complete the police academy.
“You’re essentially writing a blank check,” she said of the $443 million bond package.
That is the chair of the Public Safety Committee and the chair of the committee that manages the City’s legislative agenda, undercutting the City’s own ask, in a City hard hat, at the City’s own event.
Less than 24 hours later, she was no longer chair of any committee.
Mendelsohn will likely frame the removals as punishment for dissent. But the record she built over the past year forced the mayor’s hand.
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 officials estimate the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention will cost the City at least $2 million, mostly for Dallas police and fire response, according to this memo. The event is being held at the City-owned American Airlines Center on Wednesday and Thursday.
Dallas businessman Ray Washburne, co-chair of the Dallas Host Committee, said this weekend that he does not expect City Hall to be on the hook for such costs, The Dallas Morning News reports.
Dallas City Council members rejected a proposed budget amendment to defund Flock cameras, heeding calls from Dallas police officials who say the controversial technology has been key to solving violent crimes. Another discussion on the cameras is expected tomorrow afternoon. More on that below.
🔢 Number of Interest
0.06%
Share of the proposed $2.04 billion general fund budget that Dallas City Council members moved around during last Wednesday’s hours-long budget deliberations. Every approved change was proposed by City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert in response to council member feedback on her fiscal 2027 budget. Council members submitted five amendments of their own. One was withdrawn. The other four failed. Read about the budget changes here.
🤝 Meetings of Interest: September 8 - 11, 2026
Tuesday, September 8
✄ Dallas City Council Committee on Government Efficiency, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
This overview of the Dallas Municipal Courts does not explain why the court budgets for 175,000 cases annually but docketed only 93,002 in fiscal year 2024-25, as attorney David Payma wrote in a recent Dallas Morning News op-ed. Maybe a curious committee member will inquire.
The City has identified nearly 100 programs or services provided in collaboration with area public schools. They are listed in this memo, with estimated costs when available.
Some council members believe Dallas County — not the City — should manage a federal program that provides free healthy foods, nutrition counseling, and breastfeeding support to low-income families. This memo answers some questions about how a transition of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program could work.
🗽 Dallas Landmark Commission, 9:30 a.m. Briefing, 1 p.m. Public Hearing, 6ES Briefing Room, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
A rendering of a planned sculpture for Reverchon Park, “Ballpark,” by StudioKCA.
The City’s Office of Arts and Culture is seeking permission to install a sculpture along a trail inside Reverchon Park, according to agenda documents. The project has gone through extensive public input, and the selected design, “Ballpark,” is a sculpture that resembles a large bouquet of wildflowers and grasses from a distance. “As one gets closer, they can see that each of the flowers that make up the bouquet has been created using the familiar gear from a baseball game,” a nod to the historic park’s baseball field. The flowers are modeled on species that the park's namesake, Julien Reverchon, originally found in the area.
🚓 Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee, 1 p.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
Briefing: Dallas Police Flock Cameras Update
Dallas Police officials credit Flock cameras as the primary factor in solving dozens of murder cases dating to 2023, according to this briefing on the controversial technology that police agencies use to track vehicles across the country. More than 1,900 Dallas police personnel are specially trained and authorized to tap into the department’s network of 684 Flock cameras. About half of those cameras will be shut off this month to comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to pause all state funding for them.
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A $443 million public safety bond package on this November’s ballot includes critical funding for the Dallas Police Department Law Enforcement Training Center at the University of North Texas at Dallas. City and state officials participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new facility last week, but the project faces a funding gap that must be closed in part with $82 million in 2026 bond dollars. Read more.
Violent crime across Dallas is down nearly 9% through August compared with the same period last year, according to this briefing. Murders are up slightly.
🚌 Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Committee-of-the-Whole, 1:30 p.m., Board Room, DART HQ, 1401 Pacific Ave., Dallas, TX 75202
DART Light Rail Security Initiative
DART Police are planning to pilot increased enforcement to reduce fare evasion and other criminal incidents, with an initial focus on trains serving Downtown stations. “Operation Access” includes enforcement teams and barriers to manage passenger flow and train access, with on-board fare inspections and “Code of Conduct enforcement to and from [Central Business District]” and designated locations, according to the briefing. The pilot initiative is expected to launch some time after this year’s State Fair of Texas, which ends on October 18.
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Board members will discuss a proposed $3 million contract with Parkland Health to continue the DART Cares program, which teams clinicians with DART police to assist people experiencing mental health crises. Read more.
Proposed state legislative priorities are also up for discussion ahead of a critical session for DART to finalize governance changes that service-area cities agreed to earlier this year. Read more (DART is a GoldHam Group client).
Wednesday, September 9
🗣️ Dallas City Council Meeting, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.
Item 5 authorizes the Dallas Housing Finance Corporation to acquire The Hartford, a 14-story historic office building at 400 North St. Paul Street in Downtown, for conversion into 217 affordable apartments. Hartford Living LLC would act as project administrator, with office-to-residential specialist Bluelofts, Inc. as co-developer. Because DHFC ownership exempts the property from ad valorem taxes, the city estimates it would forgo $584,861 in General Fund revenue over 15 years.
Item 9 authorizes a four-year agreement with Grambling State University, Prairie View A&M University, and the State Fair of Texas to keep the State Fair Classic at the Cotton Bowl through 2029.
Item 32 asks Dallas, as one of DFW Airport’s two owner cities, to approve the airport’s Public Facility Improvement Corporation buying the 811-room Hyatt Regency next to Terminal C for no more than $193.65 million.
Item 36 would rewrite the City’s Living Wage Policy for the first time since 2015. The current policy ties wages on covered service contracts to the MIT Living Wage Calculator for Dallas County. The change would set the floor at the lower of that figure and the 50th-percentile market wage for the occupation in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area, meaning the wage could fall below the MIT number wherever the local median pays less. It also raises the threshold for contracts covered by the policy from $100,000 to $300,000, narrows coverage to labor-intensive general service contracts in seven categories, including janitorial, security guard, landscaping, and temporary staffing, and requires a council review every two years. The biggest driver for the changes is rising costs. City Council members delayed a previously planned vote last month for further discussion, which The Dallas Morning News covered last week.
Item 37 is a closed-door discussion of the lawsuit filed against the City by the coalition seeking to stop demolition of City Hall.
PH 1 is a public hearing and an ordinance to rename the Houston Street Viaduct, between Zang Boulevard and Young Street, the “Pettis Norman Bridge,” in honor of the former Cowboys tight end, civil rights advocate, and businessman who died in July 2025. Three council members requested the change in March, with the backing of numerous civic and business leaders. It needs three waivers of the development code, which require a three-fourths vote of the council: the name exceeds the 14-character limit, Norman has been dead for less than the required two years, and the viaduct is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which the code says bars a name change outright. A vote is likely to be delayed because the City failed to post required signage about the proposal, per Dallas Morning News columnist Robert Wilonsky’s latest.
Z3 is the controversial Preston-Royal rezoning at the southwest corner of Preston Road and Royal Lane, but it was removed from this agenda after a property owner within 200 feet of the site paid the $150 fee that allows qualifying neighbors to force a postponement. The hearing is now planned for the October 14 agenda.
Z4 allows Oak Lawn’s former Resource Center health campus to be converted into a padel club. If approved, Tyler Fan’s Aventura Asset Management can redevelop the 26,249-square-foot site at the north corner of Reagan and Brown with an indoor game court center and a restaurant of no more than 2,000 square feet.
Z12 carves a new subdistrict out of the Downtown Special Provision Sign District, so the Texas Stock Exchange can add a ticker to the skyline. If approved, TXSE could wrap up to 2,470 square feet of digital display around the under-construction Bank of America Tower on the Uptown side of Klyde Warren Park. The ticker would run along the southeast corner of the tower, with static messages changing every eight seconds instead of the 20 seconds the code otherwise requires.
🗣️ Quote of Interest
Committees — and committee leadership — are vitally important to our work on behalf of our residents. We must not work in silos or be hindered by individual agendas and interpersonal disagreements. We must focus on a unified vision for Dallas.
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.
