Some North Texans will head to the polls on Saturday, May 4 for special elections and bond elections. Several cities in Dallas, Denton, Collin, and Tarrant counties will elect a mayor, fill city council seats, or weigh in on public money.
In Dallas, for the fourth term in the last twenty years, the city is turning to residents to ask for some major money. City of Dallas voters will vote on ten propositions that if passed will allow the city to borrow a total of $1.25 billion for projects.
Early voting begins on April 22. It is not an all-or-nothing vote. Voters can vote and pass each of the ten propositions on an individual basis.
The city council recently finalized how the money would be divided up in order to cover hundreds of projects. Road repair, parks, and a new policy academy make up three-fourths of the money. The rest would pay for libraries, flood protection, economic development, and housing projects.
The Dallas City Council voted 14-1 to move forward with the plan. The lone dissenting vote opposed the item because he believed the bond wasn’t big enough to cover the needed maintenance in the city.
City staff told the council during the process there were a total of $24 billion worth of unmet needs in the city.
NBC 5’s Lone Star Politics spoke with Tim Powers, a Dallas attorney who chairs the 2024 Bond campaign.
The biggest challenge to the bond is overcoming the city’s notoriously low turnout.
“Everybody thinks, no brainer it’s going to get passed, but we’ve got to get the vote out and we’ve got to have it passed,” said Powers.
Why not a larger bond to meet more of the $24 billion needs? Powers said this is the largest bond the city can pass without raising local taxes to pay off the debt.
“It’s what can be done without raising any new taxes as part of our typical bond cycle,” said Powers.
NBC DFW’s investigative team has reported several times details about why Dallas has such dangerous roads. Powers said a big chunk of money – $550 million – will go to road projects. Some of those projects improve road safety.
“You drive in this city. I drive in this city. We want to attract new people to this city. We want our city to grow. We want it to be safe and it becomes incredibly important that we have great streets,” said Powers.
Maybe the largest project will be the new police academy at the Dallas campus of the University of North Texas.
“The city has been focused on that for thirty years, trying to get that done. So it’s a shining example of something that will be new,” said Powers.
If voters reject the bond propositions?
“It would be a huge disaster and I think everybody understands this. This is infrastructure that we need to have to keep our city moving forward and it would be a huge setback if it doesn’t pass,” said Powers.
