Street and drainage projects aren’t sexy, Dallas leaders can agree, but they’re prepared to give the people what they need in the $1 billion 2024 bond election next May.
The Dallas City Council heard from a small sample of residents (about 100 per each of the 14 council districts) in a community survey that infrastructure and public safety are their top priorities.
A different survey is being circulated to determine how residents want the city to spend $1 billion in bond funds. Town hall meetings are underway, as are task force and committee meetings to determine which projects make the cut.
Interim Director of Bond and Construction Management Jennifer Nicewander briefed the City Council on June 21.
City leaders have said they expect the Citizens Bond Task Force to recommend a finalized list of bond projects in November, with another council briefing in December, and an election to be held in May 2024.
Is Gentrification Tipping The Scales?
Council members are drilling down the data and hyping the projects in their respective districts. The bigger picture is a story of equity versus equality and whether it makes sense to evenly distribute funds among districts or focus dollars in historically underserved areas where the needs amount to basic human rights.
District 13 Councilmember Gay Donnell Willis said in the June 21 briefing that several neighborhoods in her area have to pack up when heavy rains hit North Texas.
“They’re having to move out of their homes once a year,” she said. “Talk about disrupting your quality of life when you go through a flood and you have to move out. I don’t want to overlook the neighborhoods in this. While our commercial centers, schools, and hospitals are kind of marquee on this sort of thing, I don’t want to trade residents and their homes in for that.”
District 2 Councilman Jesse Moreno said he wants to get a better understanding of communities that have been excluded because of recent development.
“What I keep going back to is gentrification that we’ve seen in communities that have previously been meeting that criteria for census tracts for the past three bonds but now they’re left out because now you have a million-dollar house next to a home that’s $200,000,” he said. “Those areas no longer qualify. I want to make sure we drill down deeper than ZIP codes and census tracts.”
City Manager T.C. Broadnax said the federal government uses U.S. Census tracts when allocating funds but the city doesn’t do that when funding projects.
“I understand the undercurrent and the purpose of that, particularly given the recent escalations and how there is some spottiness in neighborhoods when it comes to values around property,” he said. “Please understand that I don’t think those decisions, particularly at the census tract level, are about the property values in the area. They’re about the incomes of the individuals in the area. I think we’re mixing apples and oranges.”
District 9 Councilmember Paula Blackmon suggested incentivizing homeowners by prioritizing repaving a street if the homeowners agree to, for example, have “front trash service” rather than in a service alley.
Housing And Homeless Projects
Technical criteria were not presented for housing and homelessness projects in the 2024 bond as it was for other council priorities.
“For housing and economic development, there’s a pot of money so those projects become available,” Nicewander, the city Bond and Construction Management Director, said. “The City is there to bridge the gap for financing the project to get that to completion.”
The council has said it expects at least $100 million of housing and homelessness projects to be on the ballot in May, but some housing advocates say that’s not enough.
“The gap between ‘average of council feedback’ and the ‘possible scenario’ in terms of dollars is wider for housing than any other category in the bond,” said Adam Lamont, a founding member of Dallas Neighbors for Housing. “That’s unacceptable. Our advocacy on the bond can create thousands more affordable units.”
The Dallas Housing Coalition launched Monday, advocating for a $200 million housing allocation in the upcoming bond. The coalition describes itself as a group of builders, developers, trade associations, corporate partners, nonprofits, and residents focused on the city’s housing crisis.
Willis said 30,000 people in her district are in multifamily units.
“There’s no homeownership there,” she said. “That’s 30,000 people who may suffer because they’re being thrown into a ZIP code with nice, single-family homes. I don’t think any of us want to see that, to Councilmember Moreno’s point.”
Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn pointed out that Denton and Collin counties — portions of which are in Dallas City Council District 12 — include thousands of affordable housing units and people who have been underserved and neglected for years.
“They don’t vote. They have not had representation for a long time,” Mendelsohn said. “I know I talk about Denton and Collin County a lot, but I need to because sometimes even here at City Hall, people forget that it’s actually part of our city. While District 12 is very small … It’s still part of Dallas. There are not a lot of people thinking about District 12, but they sure are paying a lot of taxes, directly or indirectly. They definitely need services.”
