Meetings of Interest
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Meetings of Interest 24: June 23, 2024

Meetings of Interest 24: June 23, 2024

Meetings of Interest: City Council Pay Raise? 🤑

June 23, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Good evening:

The Dallas City Council is poised to ask voters this November to double their annual salaries, double their term lengths, weaken the powers of the mayor, and eliminate the requirement that members of four powerful City boards be qualified or registered voters or taxpaying citizens.

Voters may also be asked to sign off on a 667-word preamble to the City Charter that is similar in some sections to the New York City Charter preamble.

Those are among the 15 proposed Charter amendments up for a final City Council vote this Wednesday. City Council members may still vote to make changes to the proposed amendments, including removing some of the 15 or adding new ones.

Under the current proposal, City Council members will be asking voters to increase their salaries from $60,000 to $125,000 and to increase the mayor’s pay from $80,000 to $140,000. The salaries would also then be increased annually in an amount equal to the year-over-year percentage increase in the local consumer price index. That would be the first time in Dallas history that council member salaries would increase over time without voter approval.

The change from two- to four-year terms would take effect upon the June 2027 inauguration. The current term limits of four consecutive two-year terms would change to two consecutive four-year terms. A proposal to bar City Council members from ever running again after serving the maximum consecutive terms failed earlier this month.

This week’s vote comes eight months after the volunteer Charter Review Commission began its work compiling recommendations based in part on dozens of hours of public input. The Charter Review Commission recommended 30 Charter amendments be put on the ballot.

Read on for more on:

How Dallas residents rank City services in the latest community survey.
A scheduled City Council vote to ban horse-drawn carriages from Dallas streets.
An anonymous “soccer federation” that could be planning to use the Downtown convention center for key operations for nine months in 2026.

⚡ Highlights From Last Week's Meetings of Interest:

— The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Board approved a new contract for President & CEO Nadine Lee, a DDI Board of Governors member. DDI President & CEO Jennifer Scripps was there to speak in support of Lee, saying she is “so impressed with the way that Nadine came into this market from out of state and so quickly established herself as a transportation thought leader.”

— The City Plan Commission voted not to recommend that multiplex developments be termed a “primary use” in single-family neighborhoods as part of the contentious ForwardDallas land-use plan update, The Dallas Morning News reports. The City Council will have the final word on the plan update later this year.

— The DART Board also approved the sale of DART property at or near 552 Second Avenue and 3021 Oak Lane to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for the Interstate 30 Canyon Project on the south side of Downtown.

— The Dallas Park & Recreation Board (on which I represent District 10) on Thursday approved two historical markers memorializing victims of racial violence that were unveiled at Downtown’s Martyrs Park yesterday. The Dallas Morning News reports on the unveiling ceremony.

— City Plan Commissioners voted to recommend creation of a new sign subdistrict in the West End to allow for supergraphic advertising signage on the Katy Building at 701 Commerce Street. Read more.

Thanks to DDI's Nikia Summerlin, Urban Planning Manager, for monitoring hours of meetings every week and contributing to these summaries.Questions? Nikia can be reached at [email protected].

📝 Memos of Interest:

— Residents’ satisfaction with City services is generally higher in Dallas than other large U.S. cities, but ratings on police services and infrastructure maintenance are among potential areas for concern, according to the latest City of Dallas community survey results.

As noted in the above graphic, just 22% of respondents said City Hall does an “excellent” or “good” job on infrastructure maintenance and 38% said the same of police services. On the question of value received from property tax dollars and fees, 77% of respondents chose “poor” or “fair.”

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— Andrew Espinoza, the City’s head of the beleaguered permitting department, is out as part of a restructuring that combines the Planning and Urban Design and Development Services departments into one Planning and Development Department, according to this memo. D Magazine has more on what it all means.

— Dallas police, firefighters and paramedics are now allowed to have “limited” visible tattoos and “groomed, natural beards,” part of an effort to to boost recruitment and retention as promised by Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert. Read more in this memo. — Check out all the latest City Hall memos here and here.

Meetings of Interest: June 24 - 28

Watch City of Dallas Meetings Live

Monday, June 24

🏡 City Council Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

— The Dallas Public Library will share the history and focus of its Homeless Engagement Initiative in Downtown.

— This agenda includes a quarterly update from Housing Forward and the All Neighbors Coalition on homelessness, including the recently announced “effective end” to veteran homelessness.

— Here’s a look at the City’s preliminary state and federal legislative priorities tied to housing and homelessness.

💴 City Council Government Performance and Financial Management Committee, 1:30 p.m., Council Briefing Room, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

— Here’s the latest on the potential sale or redevelopment of a variety of City-owned properties, including three in Downtown. Property appraisals are underway and some drafts have been submitted.

🤫 Special Called Meeting of the City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention, 3:30 p.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

— The latest “Project X” will be discussed in closed session, as noted above.

Tuesday, June 25

🎭 Special Called Meeting of the City Council Quality of Life, Arts, and Culture Committee, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

— Preliminary state and federal legislative priorities tied to this committee’s purview include support for legalized gambling to help fund pension liabilities and support for legalized marijuana, according to this memo.

Wednesday, June 26

💸 Dallas City Council, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

— Item 2 is a contract for emergency repairs on elevators at the City-owned Hall Arts Garage, which serves the Meyerson Symphony Center and other Arts District venues. As I noted last week, repair attempts on the 37-year-old elevators “have failed to prove beneficial, with entrapments occurring on a frequent basis,” according to this memo. Three of the elevators are inoperable and the fourth has been experiencing mechanical issues since December.

— Item 6 is for approval of an underwriting syndicate of 10 firms for the issuance of bonds for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas redevelopment and Fair Park upgrades approved by voters in 2022. Read more in this memo.

— Item 12 would appoint City of Dallas Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland as President of the Dallas Convention Center Hotel Development Corporation, the body that oversees the City-owned Omni Dallas Hotel in Downtown. Ireland would replace Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, who served as president since 2018. Read more in this memo.

— Item 32 is amendments to the City of Dallas Economic Development Corporation (EDC) Bylaws, as recommended by the EDC Board of Directors. The changes were summarized in this memo from a few weeks ago. They are detailed here.

— Item 62 would ban horse-drawn carriages from public streets in Dallas, where only one company is currently permitted to operate and offers rides in Downtown most of the year, according to a City briefing. Downtown Council members Jesse Moreno and Paul E. Ridley both oppose the ban. So does The Dallas Morning News editorial board, writing earlier this year, “It strikes us as heavy-handed to pass a regulation that would quash a single small business without evidence that it is doing something egregious.” Read more in this memo.

— Item 70 is the aforementioned City Charter ordinance to call for a November election.

— Item 72 is a user agreement for “a soccer federation” to use the Downtown Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for nine months in 2026, which happens to be the same year as the FIFA World Cup. Fun fact: Fair Park hosted the World Cup International Broadcast Center in 1994. 🤔

Did we miss anything? Do you have any questions? Just want to talk about meetings? Let me know.