Dallas City Council backs down on budget cuts again

The Dallas City Council is nearly finished nickel-and-diming its way through the budget, and anyone could have predicted the results. In the main, the council declined to check scope creep and walked back cuts that should have gone forward. At Wednesday's meeting, council members spent hours discussing amendments to the proposed budget. Decisions aren't final yet; members took nonbinding votes on the amendments at this meeting. A final vote is set for Sept. 16. The most baffling move for which the council signaled support was keeping six community pools open for another year, to the tune of $700,000. Some residents are understandably attached to their neighborhood pools. But as the pools aged, they became more expensive to maintain, and attendance has fallen. We previously reported that six pools council members want to keep open saw attendance of about 15,700 during the 2023 aquatic season. In the most recent season, attendance at these six totaled about 12,000, according to city staff. The worst part is that the city plans to pay for this by dipping into the aquatics multi-year fund, which has historically been a reserve fund used for maintenance. There's currently about a million dollars in it. In no universe is it wise to burn through reserve savings for a single year of operations. The council supported another questionable decision Wednesday: redirecting half a million dollars away from homelessness outreach and putting it into eviction advocacy. Keeping streets and neighborhoods clean and orderly is a top public safety concern. But providing legal representation to people in eviction proceedings, while a well-meaning program, is not a core city service that should be subsidized by taxpayers. Such funding makes the city take sides in disputes to which it isn't a party. Dallas began funding this program during the pandemic, when extensive layoffs left a lot of people in precarious situations. But we are no longer in a pandemic, and federal COVID-19 funds are gone. The council also supported funding adult learning programs at the city's libraries for one year using $125,000 from a legal judgement. The plan is to fund the program for 12 months so that the city can transition to a partner-led model. These classes can have a profoundly positive impact on the lives of those with the least opportunity. But is it wise to use that money for these classes when the city struggles to maintain basic infrastructure like roads, streetlights and its own public buildings? The City Council deserves credit for supporting a tax rate reduction, even if it's so small it's symbolic. Dallas didn't try to tackle its spending problems by asking taxpayers for more, and that's a good thing. But still, the majority of the council refuses to prioritize needs and say 'we can't afford that' to the nice-to-haves. Despite its financial issues, Dallas is still trying to be everything to everyone, and that's a disservice to taxpayers whose growing property values are also inflating their tax bills.