The Dallas City Council strongly supports the billion-dollar plan to repair city street, parks and buildings.
Council members approved a resolution to put a bond referendum of about $1.025 billion before voters in November last year.
The discussion pegged more than half the money for street and transportation improvements.
Councilman Philip Kingston said: “It will actually make a difference.” He added that “People will be able to tell the difference in the quality of the streets.”
But Kingston voted against the resolution. He objected the way of the process has been handled and presented.
“This feels like we’re hiding projects inside the propositions that not all of us want,” Kingston said.
Another Councilman who voted against the propositions, Lee Kleinman said that the borrowing plan will saddle the city with too much debt.
“People just need to be cognizant of the burden you’re putting on our citizens when you do this,” Kleinman said.
Mayor Mike Rawlings also had the same concern but voted in favor of letting voters decide whether to borrow so much repair money.
”Do we have the capacity? Yes. Should we use all the capacity? That’s the question we’re talking about,” Rawlings said.
City leaders earlier planned on limiting the bond referendum to $800 million but the pressure to spend more grew as a proposed May referendum was delayed until a Police and Fire Pension crisis was settled. The city’s pension contribution will be $41 million more next year.
The City Council now plans to include $50 million in the borrowing plan for Dallas Fair Park improvements that were strongly supported by new Fair Park area Councilman Kevin Felder.
“You’ve got decades of deferred maintenance and this is a start,” Felder said. “It’s not what I wanted in terms of the dollar amount but it’s a start. So, we can work from there. It will attract investors. It will attract developers.”
Police stations will get additional security upgrades that were promised since an attack on Police headquarters in 2015 and the fatal downtown ambush on police last year.
Councilman Rickey Callahan said early City Council promises for a borrowing plan that is mostly street improvement has changed.
“We felt like the predominate amount of money was going to be towards streets,” Callahan said. “But we continue to add these special things, special interest things.”
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