Dallas City Council members displayed an embarrassing lack of understanding of a number of proposed charter amendments, according to a local activist.
The nonprofit Dallas HERO has three proposed charter amendments set to be added to the November ballot on Wednesday. If approved by voters, they would bolster the Dallas Police Department, allow citizens to sue City leaders for failing to abide by the Dallas City Charter or state law, and establish performance incentives in accordance with the results of a community survey for the city manager. Several council members expressed their opposition to the proposals in a meeting last week.
Pete Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO, claimed such criticisms were rooted in a lack of proper research on the part of the council members.
Council Member Paul Ridley (District 14), for instance, claimed the charter proposition on city manager incentives would hurt the City’s current search for a new city manager. The measure contains a provision that would require the city manager’s termination if certain metrics are not reached.
“I wonder how many candidates would be interested in this job if they knew that they were going to have a gun to their head based upon an anonymous city survey, that they might be terminated at the drop of a hat,” he said during last week’s meeting.
Marocco countered that the amendment does not impact the baseline salary of the city manager and is intended to hold whoever has the post accountable.
“Mr. Ridley’s hyperbole is disappointing,” he told The Dallas Express. “Our proposal does not dictate what the base pay or performance compensation will be, but rather, only holds the City Manager accountable for impact and results for the people of Dallas.”
“The City Council still decides the hiring, pay, and performance compensation,” he continued. “If the City Manager is a total failure in all of the five most important issues to residents, then they should be terminated, not make $450,000, more than the President of the United States, year after year of failure with no accountability.”
Council Member Carolyn King Arnold (District 4) claimed tying the city manager’s bonus pay to a citizen survey would be “dangerous.”
“The recommendation of being able to evaluate a city manager based on popular feeling is dangerous,” she said during the meeting. “I have seen a city manager’s reputation decimated on social media. These are folks on the outside. They don’t even work here on a day to day. I’m like, what do you know about that city manager?”
Marocco said this pressure is essential to ensure the city manager is effective.
“A city manager for a $4.65 billion budget should be held to a transparent standard of measurement and results. I can think of nothing worse than a professional lazy bureaucrat peddling failed status quo deterioration and hook-ups to give new revenue to their buddies,” he told DX.
DX reached out for comment to each member of the Dallas City Council. None responded.
Dallas HERO rallied the necessary signatures for its charter amendments to be added to the November ballot. However, City Attorney Tammy Palomino’s office distorted the language that will be before the Dallas City Council to approve on Wednesday.
City council attempts to spike citizen-driven charter amendments are not a new phenomenon. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that the Austin City Council needed to edit its ballot language, which the court deemed misleading, as previously reported by DX.
Marocco said Dallas HERO will sue the Dallas City Council if it approves Palomino’s misleading ballot language at its Wednesday meeting.
“The city council made a terribly foolish mistake of announcing their intent to deliberately mislead at the last city council meeting,” he previously told DX. “If they were smart, they would have kept their mouths shut. But now their intent is public record.”
“They were deliberately deceptive and misleading, and now when the language comes out, if they don’t fix it, there’s no way out,” he continued. “They will be held liable.”