Councilman Jaime Resendez Faces Two Challengers in District 5 Where Crime Is a Key Issue

City Council member Jaime Resendez has represented District 5 since 2019. He’s running for a third term against two opponents: Terrance L. Perkins, a pastor, and Yolanda Faye Williams, a paralegal and substitute teacher.

Resendez, who works as a criminal defense and personal injury attorney, served in the Army for seven years as an engineer and is a former Dallas Independent School District trustee.

His opponents say he hasn’t done enough for public safety in the district, which covers a majority of Pleasant Grove and parts of southeast and South Dallas, and he isn’t the best at engaging with the community. Resendez disagrees.

Before he was elected to the DISD school board, Resendez said he felt as though the district was being neglected. “We haven’t had the same type of attention and resources put into our area as other parts of the city,” he said. “That’s always been at the forefront of my mind as an elected official.”

During his time with DISD, he advocated for the first talented and gifted school in southeast Dallas County. He said the school has been open for a few years now and has some of the best educational outcomes in the district. While working with DISD, he said he noticed a lot of obstacles that got in the way of students’ learning. “Things like housing, things like transportation, economic development and public safety,” he said. “That’s why I ended up running for City Council back in 2019.” 

When he got elected, southeast Dallas was the epicenter of street racing and street takeovers in the city, but he said it isn’t any longer. While there’s still progress to be made, Resendez said public safety in the district has improved since he was elected. “We have a long way to go, but District 5, in terms of overall crime, has been the second-safest district in the city,” he said.

He said working in local government has shown him the importance of infrastructure and housing, but he’s been working to resist additional low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) projects in the district. He thinks the district has its fair share of projects built with the help of federal tax credits.

“When I got on the council, the only developers that would reach out to me were people that wanted to utilize low-income tax credits to build more multi-family developments,” he said. “There’s a place for LIHTC projects. I’ve just been pushing back because I think that what we need in southeast Dallas is a focus on single-family homes on the higher end of the affordability spectrum because when businesses look at an area where they potentially want to invest, they look at the disposable income in the area.

“They look at the median income in the area. So in terms of trying to overcome some of the perceptions and overcome some of the realities, I think that needs to be a big focus in southeast Dallas: infrastructure and housing.”

There are a few housing and infrastructure projects in the pipeline that he’d like the opportunity to see through if reelected. For example, there’s potential for transit-oriented development in the district. He’s also started the acquisition of a couple large tracts of land that could increase the amount of green space in the district and make room for more housing.

He’s also looking for more ways that the district could take advantage of the city’s upcoming LOOP Trail project, 50-mile citywide urban trail. “I think that creates a huge opportunity for southeast Dallas,” he said.

Resendez also wants to work on implementing traffic calming measures in the district to address speeding drivers, something he thinks has become a big issue for his residents. All of these things could likely help increase job growth and economic development in the district. “Businesses want to be where people want to live,” he said. “It creates the opportunity for additional jobs. It creates the opportunity for additional retail and the types of things that the people in District 5 want to see. I don’t think that that vision was in place prior to my election, and so I want to continue to focus on those projects, see them through, and hopefully put the district in a much better position moving forward.”

Yolanda Faye Williams is a lifelong resident of District 5. Public safety is her first priority, she said. To her, improving public safety in the district means increasing salaries for first responders, purchasing them new equipment and providing them with better training. That’s what she would work to do if elected. She also said she would work on stirring up more economic development and job growth and reducing homelessness in the district. 

She thinks people don’t feel as comfortable or safe in the district as they used to. “This is what District 5 is saying: The crime is up, and they want something done about it,” Williams said. DPD isn’t doing anything wrong and is facing its own challenges like staffing shortages, in her view. Williams believes public safety just hasn’t been prioritized at City Hall. If elected, Williams would like to offer more support to DPD, like better pay and better equipment. “We need to give DPD … what they need to do their jobs, and they’re handcuffed,” she said.

Williams said that If public safety improves, more people and businesses will come to the district.

Both Williams and Terrance L. Perkins noted that some in District 5 feel as though they’re left out of the discussion on decisions that Resendez makes. “If God opens this door for me and I’m elected, everything has to be community-driven because right now we don’t have input on anything,” Williams said. “If a new development is coming, we don’t have input. The council member had already made the decision. So I don’t believe in leaving the community out because the community is our eyes and ears.”

Perkins had a similar criticism for Resendez. “The current council person is not accessible to the constituents in southeast Dallas,” he said. “A lot of people in the community feel left out, feel abandoned by the current councilman. The response time from his office is just not there, and it’s not cutting the mustard.”

Perkins grew up in housing projects in Pleasant Grove, washing cars and making UPS deliveries for money through his teenage years. He bought his first house in Pleasant Grove after he graduated from Spruce High School. In 2005, he formed a nonprofit organization called Passage of Youth, which provides services for orphans and foster parents. Perkins is also a pastor who started his own church in Pleasant Grove called Abundant Grace Church.

He said that with the church he’s been able to start hundreds of projects to help provide food, clothes and other resources to the community. He has represented the district on the city’s Park Board, the monument task force, the board of adjustments and the cultural affairs commission. Perkins thinks his experience at City Hall makes him a good candidate for the District 5 seat on City Council.

When it comes to Williams, Perkins said she has passion but not the ability to perform. “You can have passion, but you have to have passion with purpose,” he said. “She can’t bring us together because she focuses more on African-Americans,” Perkins said. “I don’t think she’s the person to bring our community together.”

Williams disputed this, saying she has no problem bringing people together. If elected, Perkins said he’d do a better job of getting the community involved by attending local crimewatch and homeowners’ association meetings.

“Even though you go to each one for their weekly meetings, or monthly meetings, you also bring a collaborative group together of those individuals along with other constituents, and let their voice be heard and let their concerns be known so you know how to advocate for them down at the horseshoe,” Perkins said. That’s something he thinks Resendez isn’t doing.

On top of not engaging with residents enough, Perkins thinks Resendez is too focused on the district’s Latino population, and that Perkins would do a better job of representing the district as a whole. He also criticized Resendez for spending time on his work as an attorney, saying he needs to focus more on City Council.

Resendez dismissed these criticisms as absurd, saying that he’s never hard to reach and that he offers to give out his mobile phone number to residents and to visit their homes to discuss their issues. “I feel like they’re just reaching for straws at this point,” Resendez said.

Early voting for the Dallas City Council begins on April 24, and election day is May 6.