Dallas is currently in the middle of crafting its budget for the next year. The City Council has until the end of September to nail all of that down. You can see the budget that City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert sent to the Council here.
There will continue to be a lot of workshops and briefings as the Council talks out its priorities and how to pay for them. Obviously, cuts will need to be made: the city is under a voter mandate to spend more money on policing, for instance, and needs to help shore up the police and fire pension funds. There is also an untold amount of deferred maintenance on city properties that needs to happen, as we wrote about here.
As I posted on Bluesky last night, Councilmember Bill Roth, who represents District 11 (parts of North Dallas, including Preston Hollow), sent a memo to his colleagues, Mayor Eric Johnson, Tolbert, and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland. In it, he lays out a litany of cuts he feels the city should make in the name of “fiscal prudence.” Those cuts include the Office of Community Police Oversight, the Ethics and Compliance office, public art, cultural service contracts, climate action planning, community care services, affordable housing, economic mobility programs, Southern Skates, and Vision Zero, among other initiatives…