A local Dallas resident plans on challenging Eric Johnson in the upcoming mayoral race.
Kendel Richardson currently works at Emerald City Bar and Grill on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where The Dallas Express sat down with him to discuss his campaign for mayor.
“My vision is to make Dallas become the home of a second chance,” Richardson said, addressing a myriad of issues, including homelessness, crime, building permits, and a lack of accountability at City Hall.
Mayor Johnson has boasted about the $14 billion of new building development spending coming into Dallas, but Richardson questioned whether that so-called “investment” is truly helping the people.
“Who benefited from that $14 billion? Because from what I see, there’s a lot of areas that need improvement, and the people are not really benefiting from that $14 billion,” he claimed.
Richardson noted the City’s ongoing problems with the backlogged building permit approval process, which has been extensively covered by The Dallas Express, and the raise given to current City Manager T.C. Broadnax despite his performance. Broadnax now makes $423,000 per year.
“What confused me is that [the city council was] ready to fire him, then [they] decided to keep him on, then turned around and gave him a 3% raise. Something is not right with that picture to me,” he said. “What was he doing so much better that then you gave him a 3% raise? Something ain’t adding up.”
Richardson asked why the city manager deserves such a raise when the city’s building permit process is still backlogged, inefficient, and hurting businesses.
“A lot of businesses lost millions of dollars … because they’re still on the backlog for the permits,” he said. “But you (Broadnax) are making more than the president? And the [permits] in Dallas are still backlogged. Something is wrong with that [situation] to me.”
“I have someone to take a city manager position that will take less than $423,000 because this person feels like they can do it for this amount, and all that other money can be used to help and do something else,” Richardson said.
When discussing his reelection prospects, Mayor Johnson also addressed the ongoing issue of building permits, saying the City must acknowledge that the private sector knows best when it comes to housing construction and simply “get out of the way” by making it easier to obtain building permits.
“My big push has been and will continue to be to eliminate the barriers to permitting in our city,” he said. “We need to permit more efficiently the construction of new housing.”
Richardson argued that he has a better understanding of the problems faced by Dallas and its residents because he spends his days out among the people.
“I don’t just sit around at the desk. I go to different parts of the town,” he said. “This city is filthy. It is unclean, unsanitary, [and not] environmentally safe in a lot of areas.”
Polling shows that 76% of Dallas residents feel that homelessness is a significant issue. Richardson said he plans to fight this epidemic as soon as he takes office.
“I will declare war on homelessness [on] day one,” he said. “That is something that we’ve got to do better. The City is talking about opening up a new shelter. We don’t need another shelter. That’s not a solution.”
Richardson said the City needs to invest in “permanent supportive housing” that he believes will properly address the needs of the homeless better than simple shelters.
“We need to think smarter, not just trying to patch it up, but we need solutions,” he said. “I come with a lot of solutions.”
Homelessness and vagrancy have also been a focus of Mayor Johnson. In his State of the City address, he recognized the city’s “scourge of homelessness.”
“Like almost every major city in the nation, the ranks of our homeless population have swelled in recent years,” he said, claiming that Dallas has “made strides” in its response to the problem.
“We’re clearing and cleaning encampments — hundreds of them,” he said in a November speech. “We’ve partnered with numerous nonprofits and service providers to get people the help and the housing they need.”
He continued, “We’re buying up old hotels for supportive housing, and we’ve provided inclement weather shelters so we can keep vulnerable people safe when the weather becomes extreme.”
“Dallas is a city of love and empathy,” the mayor said. “But we’re also a city that cares about health and safety and respects our residents who simply want to walk to work or into one of our public libraries without being accosted and without fear.”
Richardson also addressed crime, emphasizing the importance of being a part of the community in order to respond effectively to the crime epidemic.
“I want to be able to deal with public safety,” he said. “So when you want to deal with the violence that’s going on in today’s society, you have to be a part of it. You have to know what’s going on in the community.”
Mayor Johnson has claimed that Dallas, as the ninth-largest city in America, has seen two consecutive years of declining violent crime.
“During my administration, Dallas has bucked national trends and seen violent crime decrease by double digits over the past two years,” he said in an October statement. “It is critical that we continue on this path and that we strive to make Dallas the safest major city in the United States.”
Richardson believes a significant contributor to violent crime is the lack of families with a father in the home, and he wants to fix that problem.
“I want to build back the family unit because … there needs to be a father in the home,” Richardson explained.
Furthermore, Richardson described that his campaign is driven by his faith.
“I don’t just come into anything without praying first and making sure that God is part of everything that I do so that I can better help people,” he said. “I don’t know everybody, but He does.”
“One time, my bishop said if you see a need and nobody else is doing it, that means God is calling you to do it,” Richardson continued. “I see that there is a need in Dallas, and nobody else is doing it, so God is calling me to do it.”
Dallas residents will vote for the next mayor of Dallas and the 14 city council members on May 6.
