As council debates Broadnax’s future, skyrocketing crime and homelessness must take center stage.
On Wednesday, June 15th, the Dallas City Council is meeting to decide the fate of City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Mayor Eric Johnson and three members of council have signaled that they are ready to take action against Broadnax, including termination, while others are prepared to fight for him to stay in his current role managing the day-to-day operations of America’s ninth largest city.
The issue that seemingly brought us to this point is the absolutely unacceptable state of our city’s building permitting process under his watch, which includes a backlog of nearly two years in some instances.
This is a significant issue and for our city to continue to prosper we must have a far more responsive, nimble, and reasonable system for greenlighting new projects. But for those of us like Keep Dallas Safe (KDS) who care deeply about the safety and character of Dallas, Broadnax’s failure to protect residents from exploding crime rates and the rapidly escalating homeless crisis in our city are more than sufficient reasons for making a change at the City Manager position.
The truth is during Broadnax’s tenure Dallas has become a less safe, less welcoming, and less desirable place to live. And it is not for lack of resources. When Broadnax took the job in 2017 he was operating with a budget just north of $3 billion and today that budget is nearly $4.5 billion.
Where has all that money gone?
Crime is skyrocketing. Iconic neighborhoods in our city like Deep Ellum are in the midst of being destroyed by a spike in violent, deadly crime, chasing away patrons and businesses—possibly for good. Every day more of our streets are blighted with new homeless camps, creating a glaring safety and public health crisis right before our eyes. One cannot go out for an office lunch or for dinner with your family without being aggressively accosted by the homeless which are laying claim to more and more of our streets.
And what has been the response from Broadnax? The proverbial head-in-the-sand.
In fact, under his management, the City of Dallas has seemingly taken no action to implement and enforce a new state law designed to protect Texans in urban areas from the exploding homeless crisis.
When KDS inquired about the enforcement of this new law, Broadnax refused to provide any details on how our city was implementing it and what our residents could expect from their local government. This is a total abdication of his responsibility to both enforce state law and protect Dallas residents, but sadly this is what we have come to expect from Broadnax.
Dallas deserves a strong City Manager whose priorities will materially improve the lives of everyone who lives and works here. We deserve a City Manager who will get up every day and demand better for the quality of life of each and every one of us. Frankly, we deserve better than T.C. Broadnax. He has shown us his priorities and they do not align with our values and will not sustain a prosperous future for Dallas.
Currently, the mayor and three council members are publicly ready to make this change, but it will take eight votes total. KDS encourages all members of our city council to not just view this question through the lens of the ongoing fight over permitting, which is valid and definitely needs to be addressed, but also through the lens of “Is Dallas safer and a better place to live than when Broadnax took the job?”
The answer is obvious. The answer is no.
Dallas is heading down the wrong path and it is time for major change in the chief administrator’s office. Simply put, it is time for T.C. Broadnax to find a new job.