Nathan Hunsinger
Audio By Carbonatix
Dallas City Council members jostled over a handful of proposed budget revisions to City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s proposed $5.66 billion budget Wednesday.
It’s budget season in Dallas, and money is tight as revenue has fallen short of expectations and expenses have soared. Cuts suggested in Tolbert’s budget are wide-reaching and affect everything from park mowing to employee healthcare. Of course, council members have their own ideas about what to prioritize, especially within their districts. The revisions — seven in total — were based on feedback submitted by the council Monday.
Tolbert called it an “initial conversation,” with future discussions planned to address further amendments. A budget workshop is scheduled next Wednesday.
Before getting into the council-proposed revisions, staff began the meeting with a presentation on the city’s transportation budget. The transportation budget includes $142.8 million for street improvements across roughly 800 lane miles, up from 759 in the current budget, according to the presentation. Street improvements were identified as residents’ top budget priority in the city’s annual community survey.
Nobody wants to stay till 2 a.m.— shocking
The city’s budgeting process may look a little different to onlookers this year. Instead of heading straight into protracted back-and-forths over floor amendments proposed by council members in meetings, Tolbert asked council members to submit feedback and revisions earlier this week via email. Staff weighed those requests, and Wednesday’s briefing explained how those proposals could be funded or — in one case — why staff disagreed with a revision.
Even so, it took the council more than three hours to wade through multiple rounds of inquiries and comments on the seven amendments, the funding for which would total roughly $1.74 million — less than 0.1% of the proposed $2.034 billion general fund. Let’s hope the time council members need for the rest of the budget doesn’t multiply proportionally.
No votes were taken at the briefing, although council members made it clear how they felt about the revisions.
Council member Cara Mendelsohn criticized the change, saying it diminished the council’s ability to manage the process.
“We were supposed to have three chances, and instead we got a memo instructing us on a process that we own,” Mendelsohn said. “That process was usurped from our responsibility, where we were told we would only be able to put in what the use of funds would be, and I don’t appreciate that at all.”
Tolbert said the decision came at the suggestion of several council members to avoid the late-night slugfests that have marked recent budget processes.
“That was the purpose of it,” Tolbert said. “And so I don’t want to make council believe that we were trying to take away any of your authority. It was really to kind of try it out. We know that other cities have similar processes, and so we talked about trying to streamline and better use your time.”
There will be more opportunities for feedback, she added, and a traditional amendment process will take place later before a budget is adopted in mid-September.
Money is tight
Underperforming sales tax revenue, state-imposed caps, police overtime and employee medical costs all helped drive a $51 million shortfall in the city’s current budget. To close the gap, Tolbert’s proposed budget includes cutting the employee healthcare plan, eliminating adult learning programs, laying off library employees and cutting the park department budget.
As presented Wednesday, Tolbert’s budget still sits at $5.66 billion, and council voted yesterday to approve a recommendation for a 0.1-cent decrease in the city’s property tax rate, a policy city leaders have pursued for 11 years straight. All that’s to say, staff had to look for more cuts to the general fund to fund council’s priorities.
For example, council members asked for $500,000 in additional funding toward Dallas Animal Services cruelty response. Unfortunately for the critters at the Dallas Zoo, staff identified the funding source as an equivalent cut to the zoo’s partner stipend, bringing the total recommended city cuts in the zoo’s budget to nearly $1.2 million. Staff’s original recommended budget decreased the animal cruelty response budget by over $20,000, although DPD is set to receive an approximately $46,000 bump for cruelty investigations. Staff told the council the extra funding would support forensics, medical care and increased capacity to meet rising need.
Most council members pushed back on the proposal, with some arguing that they supported more funding for DAS, but didn’t support taking money from the zoo. Council member Kathy Stewart said the zoo is the second-largest employer in Oak Cliff, while Jesse Moreno said he was not keen on taking funding from those particular animals.
“The zoo is an economic engine as well,” Moreno said. “It brings people to our city, so I would like to see possibly another source for animal cruelty.”
Paul Ridley, who represents much of downtown Dallas and Uptown, said that with the DAS budget set to increase while other departments make cuts, it did not make sense to target the zoo.
“There has been no indication of what the $500,000 would be needed for, or any metrics to support the need for it,” Ridley said. “We’ve already exempted this department from all of the other cuts that the other departments are suffering.”
Other revisions followed a similar pattern. Restoring partner funding for southern Dallas nature preserves, as the Trinity River Audubon would come at the expense of the park department’s security budget. Funding for a legislative consultant — the council eliminated funding for lobbyists in 2025 — ahead of the January session would come from a vacant police administration position and by eliminating a contract with the company that administered a controversial city hall survey earlier this year.
Council members, who have repeatedly said the state legislature’s attempts to restrict cities’ ability to grow revenue exacerbate growing fiscal issues, were mostly supportive of an “on the ground” presence in Austin, as Tolbert framed it. Gay Donnell Willis said she was worried about the city being left behind as other major Texas cities invest in legislative advocacy ahead of the session.
“I’m worried about Dallas being flat-footed,” Willis said. “And when it comes to water and some other categories, I just think we need to have people on the ground all the time there who can get that intel. This is really about intelligence.”
Staff have other thoughts
Staff identified potential revenue sources for six of the seven revisions, including how to restore funding for adult literacy programs at the Dallas Public Library. The last revision, an attempt to restore funding for an eviction legal defense program that was cut in the proposed budget, was the exception, as staff said it was not a core function of the city government. Council members first voted to fund the program when they adopted the current budget, but that funding never materialized as shortfalls grew earlier this year. Tolbert’s proposed budget eliminates future funding for the program entirely.
The city manager explained that the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center already receives over $1 million in funding from the county, although Executive Director Mark Melton told the Observer this week that he’s now been left with a “hole in my budget” after city funding for the program fell through.
Council appeared split on the proposal, with council members like Bill Roth, Stewart and Mendelsohn agreeing with staff’s recommendation that it is not the city’s responsibility, especially given budgetary constraints. Other council members said they had seen the impact of similar programs in the districts and called for funding to be restored. Mayor Pro Tem Jaime Resendez pointed out that staff had identified housing stability and homelessness prevention as core city priorities, which didn’t make sense given the preventative role of eviction advocacy.
“Identifying something as a core service has to mean something when the budget gets difficult,” Resendez said. “If the first response to a budget challenge is to eliminate the programs that prevent residents from falling into crisis, then we have to ask ourselves whether spending decisions actually reflect the priorities we say we have.”
Pool trouble leads to wider questions
The city’s embattled community pools, as they frequently have in previous budget seasons, quickly became a point of contention on Wednesday during discussion of a revision to keep the Pleasant Oaks pool open by allocating $60,000 toward its operation. Staff explained that, as planned since last year, the city will stop operating nine pools entirely in 2027.
The city is already closing three pools after the summer, and staff warned that many of the remaining pools are past their effective lifespan, despite having received bond funding as recently as 2024. Park and Recreation Director John Jenkins said they “just aren’t reliable” due to their age.
“I just want to make sure the public as well as any council member understands that if they stay open, they can shut down at any given time,” Jenkins told the council.
Some council members backed the existing plan to eliminate funding for all nine pools by next year, with Mendelsohn saying she was “triggered” that the discussion was even happening, as the city has long planned to shutter the aging pools. Others highlighted the need in communities where “they don’t have private pools at their homes,” Chad West said. Resendez noted that the Pleasant Oaks Pool currently has the highest attendance of the nine.
“What I want to avoid is an unnecessary gap in service, where we close a heavily used pool, leave the community without that amenity for an indefinite amount of time, and then eventually come back and build its replacement,” Resendez said.
Perhaps the most pointed moments came when council member Adam Bazaldua questioned why funding needed to be cut from other areas to fund park needs, even as the department’s multiyear balance had grown exponentially. Jenkins said the department has $15 million in multiyear program funds, mostly coming from fees and appropriations, and explained that those funds are needed for unplanned maintenance. For example, he said the funding could offset the cost of a $500,000 HVAC unit that the department would otherwise be unable to fund.
Still, Bazaldua pressed department leadership on how the funding had been allocated and said he has not been “able to find a policy on the books that has given the authority” to the department to allocate money from its own funds.
“We’ve got things that fall under your jurisdiction that we’re trying to find $60,000 for to prevent a pool from closing for the community,” Bazaldua said. “That shouldn’t be our job, and if we are the purse strings, there’s no one at a director level in this organization that should have the unilateral authority to decide where millions of dollars are going to be spent without talking to this council.”
When asked whether or not policy had been followed by the department in allocating money toward the multiyear fund by Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Maxie Johnson, Rory Gaulter, interim city auditor, said, “No, it was not followed.”
“It is simply unfair to the city manager and to this council that we’re needing money for parks. Councilman West talking about money for the pool,” Johnson said. “Yet we got funds that exist, and the auditor said that policy has not been followed. You can’t ignore that. You absolutely can’t ignore that.”
City CFO Jack Ireland said the council approves the fund balances each year during the budget process as part of the appropriation process, while council member Paula Blackmon said the discrepancies generally stemmed from a lack of policy.
“Maybe we should create a policy,” Blackmon said. “And I understand where you’re coming from, but I also don’t want to not use a fund that is intended for its purpose and use the general fund.”
What’s next
A budget is expected to be adopted by the council on Sept. 16. The council will submit amendments by noon Friday before next week’s workshop, where non-binding straw votes are expected.
Straw votes were initially expected at Wednesday’s meeting, but council members ultimately chose to postpone voting on those and additional amendments until the next workshop.
