Nathan Hunsinger
Audio By Carbonatix
A trio of Dallas City Council members filed a lawsuit against the city on Monday to stop a special-called council meeting that will decide the fate of City Hall.
Council members Adam Bazaldua, Paula Blackmon and Cara Mendelsohn signed on to the suit, which alleges that city leaders have failed to give “adequate notice” regarding the state of City Hall and what its future may entail. Last week, an agenda was posted for a specially called meeting on June 10 that would include votes on either repairing or abandoning the building.
The emergency petition, which names the City of Dallas, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and City Secretary Bilierae Johnson as defendants, asks a Dallas County District Court to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent the City Hall vote from taking place at Wednesday’s council meeting. It would also bar the horseshoe from voting on the future of City Hall at any other meeting until otherwise decided by the court.
The filing claims that Wednesday’s agenda language is too vague to meet requirements outlined in the Texas Open Meetings Act, and argues that a deferment requested by Bazaldua was denied on “dubious grounds.”
“This is not about whether City Hall should be redeveloped,” said Bazaldua in a statement Monday. “This is about whether the City of Dallas must follow its own rules. The agenda language gives the public no meaningful notice of what is actually being authorized. And the City has not complied with its own Financial Management Performance Criteria, requirements that exist specifically to protect Dallas taxpayers from rushed, ill-informed decisions.”
In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, Blackmon added that the lawsuit was filed because “the process has been completely flawed from the start.” Mendelsohn could not be immediately reached for comment.
For months, Blackmon, Bazaldua and Mendelsohn have been staunch opponents of the possibility of Dallas’ municipal footprint moving out of the brutalist building on Marilla Street. The trio has advocated for the complex’s architectural significance, called for alternative opinions on assessing the building’s needs, and argued that abandoning City Hall would be an irresponsible step for Dallas. The lawsuit argues that if Wednesday’s vote opens the City Hall site up to redevelopment, it will be a near-impossible decision to reverse.
Their coalition of council members has been in the minority at the horseshoe, even as a strong contingent of community members has rallied to save City Hall. The Save City Hall group has threatened the city with their own lawsuits, warning that officials could be held liable for attempting to allow the facility to reach a “demolition by neglect” state.
Still, Mayor Eric Johnson gave a rare interview to Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT last week in which he advocated that the city council leave the “obsolete building.”
“In case people are trying to keep track: Yes, to moving out of this building and into another building and yes, to redeveloping this site,” Johnson said.
