Dallas News Blog

I've got something to say about the city's budget: We're all screwed.

We could erase this $190 million deficit in one fell swoop by raising the tax rate by 27 cents per $100 of valuation. Spread the increase over three years, and that would come to $135 a year for a house valued at $150,000.
I'd gladly pay an extra $135 a year for three years so they don't close the rec centers and libraries on weekends and make all the other draconian cuts in service and maintenance they're talking about.
It'll never happen, though. There are simply too many "house poor", heavy-voting, gray haired conservatives in North Dallas for there to ever be a successful move toward actually PAYING for what we get in city services.
Funny, though, how so many "don't raise my taxes" North Dallasites are more than willing to shell out $300 a year for their exclusive-to-their-neighborhood City of Dallas Rent-A-Cop "Extended Neighborhood Patrol" programs!

Randy, we decided your homeowners' association was eating up the police time with complaints about code instead of crime; they respond just wonderfully to my part of East Dallas, including Chief Golbeck. Now we just leave a dead PD car in your block or 7-11 parking lot.
I've tried unsuccessfully to get East Dallas HOAs to help with the planning: here's a thought, if we can't give up one day of the 2x/wk garbage pickup to clean a park, maybe we could just bring the park's garbage to our own cans.
Participate.