If you wanted to weigh in on the fate of City Hall, it looks like you may be running out of time. In a memo yesterday, Mayor Eric Johnson requested a special-called Dallas City Council meeting to vote on recommendations from the Council’s Finance Committee regarding the city’s direction on City Hall.
The Finance Committee was the first to be briefed on the Dallas Economic Development Corp.’s report on the condition of City Hall. After that briefing and a closed-session discussion, the committee recommended that the full council vote to direct City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to seek new sites for Dallas’s emergency operations and its 311 and 911 operations, and to begin exploring the redevelopment of City Hall and what that would entail. It isn’t a vote to sell, it’s a vote to continue working on the matter.
Judging from the discussion at that meeting, the Mayor likely sees a scenario where he can count to eight—the number needed to get a vote through the uprights. Council members Paul Ridley, Cara Mendelsohn, and Adam Bazaldua all questioned the veracity of the nearly $1 billion price tag to repair and modernize the nearly 50-year-old I.M. Pei building, while the other seven in attendance seemed to trust the findings…