The Dallas Express hosted a forum on Tuesday to discuss proposed city amendments S, T, and U that voters will be tasked with considering on their ballots next week, featuring multiple guest speakers who were both in favor and in opposition of the amendments.
Amendments S, T, and U are also known as the “HERO” amendments due to over 170,000 city residents stepping up and signing a petition to get them included on the ballot.
If approved by voters next week, these amendments would create performance incentives for the City manager, increase pay for police officers, require the city to hire roughly 1,000 additional officers, improve the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, and enable citizens to file lawsuits against City officials who do not abide by the Dallas City Charter, Dallas City Code, or state laws.
The first speaker of the night at The Dallas Express forum was Art Martinez de Vara, a San Antonio-based attorney representing Dallas HERO who has continually spoken out about how vital these amendments would be to everyday citizens.
Martinez de Vara explained that the goal of these amendments was to “empower residents to ensure accountability from the city,” further stating that it would allow residents the “ability to quickly and inexpensively go to court.”
Martinez de Vara then discussed the importance of additional police officers throughout the city, noting that the amendments are meant to hold the city accountable for criteria that are already in place.
“There’s a city ordinance already in place that establishes a three officer to 1,000 resident criteria. This mirrors that. What we were trying to address is the ongoing failure to achieve what’s already set out as the goal by the city,” he stated.
Dallas HERO Executive Director Pete Marocco also spoke at the forum and pointed his attention to the additional police officers, stating that members of the city government “do not care about accountability” and “do not care about police” if they oppose these amendments.
Marocco addressed claims that these amendments would create issues with the city budget, explaining many of these statements are “nonsense” and should not be taken seriously.
“The cost of 900 police salaries is going to be about 65 million dollars. That’s at the current rate. It’s going to go up a little bit,” said Marocco.
“What is the current budget for Dallas right now? $5 billion. The amount of money we’re talking about is if I were to hold a $100 bill. We’re talking about additional salaries that would be a dollar and a quarter.”
Morocco said these amendments are meant to hold Dallas accountable for what has been promised to the residents and that it should be a minimum requirement for the city.
“The bottom line is we are talking about an absolutely minimal impact just to get back to the minimum required by the rule of law, which is three officers to every 1,000 citizens.”
Although Martinez de Vara and Marocco spoke in favor of the amendments, former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert took the stage to explain to those in attendance why he would not be supportive of these amendments.
Leppert kept his statements simple when discussing the HERO amendments, claiming that the “issue unfortunately with S, T, and U is they’re just not crafted very well,” adding that the “unintended consequences can be disastrous for our city.”
One example Leppert pointed to with these amendments is the performance incentives for the City manager, highlighting that these incentives would be based upon a survey of citizens who may be focusing on different parts of the manager’s impact.
“Under this scenario, I can tell you if I was mayor, I would no longer trust the city manager. Because that city manager is all of a sudden, instead of taking dollars that should go to repair your street or improve sanitation, they’ll put in marketing programs to push the survey results,” he said.
“They will also do short-term things. They’ll put money into nice flower landings in North Dallas. Maybe that money should go long-term into water that you’re not going to see any effect on. I can tell you that will make more difference to the economic future of our city than anything else. Those are the implications.”
At one point, Leppert got into a testy back-and-forth exchange with a citizen who shouted over the former mayor multiple times.
Although Leppert said he does not support the HERO amendments, he is glad that Dallas residents are taking the initiative and that the biggest step people can take is to elect the correct officials.
“You’ve got to start electing people that you can count on,” he said.
