Let's Talk Local Podcast | Let’s Talk Midterms with Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

00:12

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Cara, no one has ever brought a sign, much less a sign larger than myself, to anything before.

00:23

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And

00:23

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

: so this is a first. You being here with me, and having a lovely sign. But thank you.

00:33

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Thank you Well, is for a first. I actually haven't done any podcast since I was elected. And even before I was elected, I had done two. One to promote the homeless shelter I was working at homeless services. The other, I was working as an executive director for a nonprofit, and we were sharing our story about how we were helping people with free home repair.

00:52

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And it's incredible. Your work has been bold and quite brilliant, in my opinion. Again, I'm not a Dallas resident, from what I've observed, and you've served since 2019. And then you served on some bond council or board before that, right? Right.

01:11

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, actually, it's great lead in for the whole segment. Yeah. I was. I was on the twenty seventeen Bond Committee for Homelessness, given my experience. And it was a great process.

01:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

There were commissions put together for actually every proposition. I was proposition J. So you can imagine there's a lot of different groups. And then we went out into the community. So there was a big what we call the Big Bond Commission, which was trying to balance all the different propositions.

01:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And then each proposition had its own group. Mine included Diane Ragsdale. There was somebody from DISD really looking at this issue of homelessness and what was it going to take to try to address some of the facility needs and longer term issues that a bond would be appropriate for, which is not actual services, right? But what's happening, since you're pointing out the four by four here, is that now we have a bond that's on the ballot for November 3, and there's been no commission at all. We skipped that entire step.

02:20

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So 2017 had it. The 2024 bond was done exactly the same way, where there are committees and a commission for the entire thing. There were months, maybe even a full year, of meetings. And then it went out into the community to get feedback. We haven't had a commission.

02:38

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

We haven't had community meetings. This was just brought forward and sort of crammed down.

02:43

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yep. And yes, as I've kind of studied and come up to speed on this, and then forgive me because I've been dealing with a lot on the state side with Islamification or Islam in general. But in studying this, and again, I've asked you to be on the show, you and the mayor, for years, but this has to be a really important issue to you for you to be able to sit here with me. But can you give me just first and foremost, for viewers and listeners, the overall picture of what is happening at City Hall right now with respect to City Hall itself, the bond, reelection, anything to provide color for people watching?

03:30

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, gosh, since I'm on, maybe the mayor will join you to rebuff with Maybe. What I Maybe. Could happen.

03:37

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Or not.

03:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It doesn't matter. It would be so, so much easier for me to have just sat back and said nothing, Right? Just go along, let it go through. We haven't had an organized opposition to a city bond since 1978. Yeah.

03:52

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So in general, people think, well, whatever gets put on the bond is going to pass. And maybe that'll happen. But what I'm hearing is maybe it won't. And in fact, Ron Kirk told a council member yesterday he doesn't think the bond's going to pass. I think we're in a new age where the residents of Dallas have woken up to some of the crazy things happening.

04:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And they said, enough. And I think there's a lack of trust in city management, in city council, and the mayor. And they said, look, two years ago, we gave you $1,250,000,000 Over $750,000,000 hasn't even been spent. It's authorized for us to spend it. Hasn't been spent.

04:35

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Why would we give you close to 500,000,000 more plus pay it back $629,000,000 in interest? So why don't we take care of what we said we would first? There are some important needs. Not going to deny that at all. But what we have is a big lump sum where the council can redirect with just a majority vote what the projects are.

05:01

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And in fact, Sarah, just last Wednesday, we redirected money from two different bonds to projects never considered in those bonds. All it takes is eight votes. And we did it twice. And as council members started asking questions, the assistant city attorney said, oh, well, that happened because the council redirected the bond funds. And that's how it works.

05:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So do I think that Dallas residents should say, hey, here's another $443,000,000 in a big pot, and we hope that you might possibly do the projects that you're telling us about? No, I don't think they should. There's something I really care about that's in there that I hope we're going to talk about. I'm sure we will. But what should have happened is I brought forward an amendment to the motion for this bond that broke out the items so that people could vote yes or no on different items based on the things they believe in.

05:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And an eight to seven vote, it didn't pass. Because the people who want to tear down city hall want to have that as a lump sum. And I think that money's going to get redirected. And,

06:13

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

yes, kind of leading off from that, there was a recent vote where it was eight to seven. And can you give us details about what that specific conversation was entailing?

06:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Sure. So the city manager has brought forward a number of projects. I think we're going to end up talking about them individually. And some of them have support. And I think across the board, everybody realizes we need to finish funding the police academy.

06:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

The police academy this will be in November, the fifth time we will ask Dallas residents to vote on a police academy. Can you believe that? So the first time well, we'll go to that in a minute. So when it came forward, there were people who say, look, like me, I'm very pro public safety. I think sometimes I've actually criticized for being too pro public safety.

07:08

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And I want to make sure we have the most professional staff doing the best job that they can in Dallas. I want us to be the safest city in America. I do. We're not anywhere close to that. We have a police academy that is really bad.

07:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It needs to be addressed. Absolutely. So there's no disagreement on that. The question is, is this the thing, right? Is this going to make it happen?

07:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

In 2024, we asked the residents to vote for $50,000,000 for the police academy, and I was supportive of that. But I also had a lot of clashes with the then city manager, TC Broadnax. And the clashes were, that's not nearly enough money. How are you going to build a police academy for $50,000,000 And he says, no problems. We're going to privately raise the rest of the money.

07:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And I'm like, that's a lot of money to raise. In Plano, following year, they actually had a bond proposition for their police academy for 51,000,000 or $52,000,000 So think about that. A city with just 300,000 people is issuing enough debt that equals $1,300,000 in Dallas. We underspent on that. So I'm not surprised we have had to come back and do it again.

08:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But the thing that residents should be really concerned about is, well, wait a minute. What happened to those first three? The first one, we were asked to pay for a police academy, and it's land that's now at I-twenty and I-forty 5 that DWU, the water department, manages. Then the next two bonds so obviously, it's not a police academy. Let me just say that.

08:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

The next two bonds, 2003 and 2006, the voters were asked to approve the purchase of land at Cadillac Heights, which is in Southern Dallas, to build the new academy. And they were told, this is not going to build the academy, but this will buy the land. Now, we don't even talk about that possibly being the police academy, right? It's a whole different location.

09:11

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yep.

09:11

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But we're still buying land there with those bond dollars. And now we're being told it's going to be a new municipal center. That Oh,

09:19

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I wasn't aware of that.

09:20

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Oh, yeah. So the one that's over in Dee Bellum, it's 10 or 11 buildings that they now want to move to a new location. How much is that going to cost the taxpayers to rebuild 10 or 11 buildings on a site that, frankly, is in part of a floodplain? We have no plan. We've had no briefing on how that's even going to work.

09:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And part of the land is now a park. So there's a lot of questions about, well, wait, what are you even doing with that? And as we talk about these propositions, you're going to hear there's a lot of, well, we don't even have a plan for it. And every time we've purchased property and we don't have a plan, it doesn't go well. And so I'll just say there's the Stemmons property.

10:04

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I think they're calling it the lemon on Stemmons, right? There's the Hampton Hotel properties we bought, never has opened. There's property down in Independence. It's a hotel we bought. We actually kicked people who were living week to week out, paid them a settlement because some of them were becoming homeless because of our actions.

10:21

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Nobody has ever stayed in that property. And now they're saying, oh, we didn't take care of it, and we might have to demolish it. We have a property in District 1 called it was the Miramar Hotel. It was purchased in 2020. Still doesn't have people in it.

10:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It was meant for homeless. They have no idea when it will even open. So I think we have a really strong track record of not delivering projects. Even at the groundbreaking for the new police academy at UNT, the city manager boldly said, we will deliver this project on time and on budget. But you know what we were told the budget would be?

11:01

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Is $130,000,000 The budget's now over $300,000,000 Is that due to the inflation and increase in was just construction costs? Two years ago. I haven't seen that kind of inflation. Have you?

11:16

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Well, we're renovating my home, and I can tell you it's a catastrophe, the inflation costs. But we're doing international importing, so it's disgusting.

11:29

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I'm hoping that we're not doing international importing. I I understand.

11:32

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Police academy.

11:33

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So for me,

11:35

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

it's not that hard

11:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

to solve, You deserve the finest you can afford and you desire. But what I'm talking about for a police academy isn't really the Four Seasons. I'm looking for something that provides a professional environment that has all the resources they need to be prepared for anything they encounter. So if they're going to breach an apartment complex, they need to be able to look at all the things around them and know how are they going to work together as a team to eliminate that threat and safely get in, take care of whatever the threat is, and make sure they make it out as well. And so there's a lot of complicated things that happen in our police academy.

12:13

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

We really do have one of the best academies in the country not the physical location, but that curriculum is so advanced because we have real threats here in Dallas. And we are known as an international city. And when people think of, where am I going to go? Dallas is on the list. And that's for good and for bad.

12:34

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yep.

12:35

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And it's $82,000,000 of a shortfall, right, that they're stating?

12:40

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I think that's just for the UNT side, but that doesn't include the other property, which would be at the Executive Airport. Is that the Public Safety Training Complex? Well, these have terrible names. Like, one's public safety training, and one's like law enforcement. Emergency office center.

12:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Together, they are the academy. Because you can't have an academy without the, what we call EVOC, which is evasive driving training. You can't have it without a gun range. So we could keep our current gun range and fix it. I think we ought to do that, frankly.

13:16

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got you.

13:17

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But that then means there's a third location that we're sending officers for training. It's not terrible, but it's also not the best. And there's also a reality based training village. So this is literally where they simulate what would the city look like, how would they enter if it was a pharmacy, how would they enter if it was a convenience store, like all the different kinds of properties. And they can practice.

13:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Okay.

13:45

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Help me understand this. So I'm sitting here looking at project by project, and can you tell me right now where each of these respective areas exist? Because I don't know. Just told you beforehand that I'm about to go shoot with the chief, which I'm really excited to do, just because I want to actually experience these places as much as I can myself. The

14:07

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Long long before force you go to the gun range, you might be one of the only people that does it, meaning I don't think most council members have actually been there. So good for you for going to take a look at it. I'm excited about it. First time I

14:22

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

we're doing it. Yeah.

14:23

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

The first time I went, I was pretty surprised. I have been to a lot of gun ranges. As a young girl, I learned to shoot. And I never owned a gun, actually, before I was on council.

14:35

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Wow, I believe that.

14:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

DPD asked me to make sure I had that in my home. And I do. But I have always known how to shoot, and pretty accurate. I believe it. But I went to the gun range, and all of my sons, my three sons, are all Eagle Scouts.

14:56

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Wow, that's wonderful accomplishment. I

14:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

agree. I will say so. My husband was a scout master as And so I've been to a lot of gun ranges with And this looks like a Boy Scout gun range. And it looks like the dads and the scouts put it together. And in this case, what I was told was that a lot of the recruits are doing the repairs on the building.

15:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And it kind of looks homemade, to tell you the truth

15:27

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Wow, Okay.

15:27

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

In a lot of instances. Okay. I'm concerned that there have been any number of service requests put in over the years that have been ignored. And like the story of so many of Dallas assets, we have not taken care of it as we It's not very expensive to build an outdoor gun range. So even if we rebuilt what was there on the land that we have, the cost would be so much smaller than what they're proposing for the airport.

15:55

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Sure. Yeah. And see, I'm not even aware of. But maybe you can share that for me. So $82,000,000 for the law enforcement training center at UNT Dallas.

16:05

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And then there's the Public Safety Training Complex for $149,000,000

16:09

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So together, I think it's $233,000,000 for the two of them.

16:13

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

For the

16:13

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

two, that's right. Which I just want to contrast with the council was told the entire Police Academy project was going to cost $130,000,000 Oh, I see. And now we're asking for an additional $233,000,000 So the project's well over $300,000,000 at this point.

16:30

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, because I see that there's $40,000,000 earmarked for the emergency ops center, 150,000,000 for the property room, vehicle storage, crime lab, and then 22,000,000 for fire station number four. So where do those exist right now, and where is this Proposition A, assuming that they will be relocated to?

16:54

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah, the Police Academy, as I think most people have heard, is moving to co locate on the UNT campus. And I think that's really neat. I Me think there's a great opportunity for the students who are there to come take criminal justice classes, for our officers to if they haven't already begun to take college classes towards a degree, they can add to that. They're going to graduate when they complete the academy. I think it's forty four credit hours.

17:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So there's been a great relationship with that. There are some limitations, meaning they don't want to have a gun range, and they don't want to have a car track. And there's very limited space

17:35

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Sure, that they're going yeah. I can understand that.

17:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I will say I also have a little bit of a concern that if there's going to be a protest against the police, it might actually start up at a college campus. So there's some hesitation there. I think security has been thoughtfully considered. Good. But I'm excited for the project.

17:55

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I think it's necessary. I think it is the most important project in the entire city.

18:01

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I do, too.

18:02

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's not the convention center. It's not anything else that we're doing. It's that project.

18:06

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

18:06

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I can honestly sit here and say that to you, but also say, please vote no in November.

18:12

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yep. And we'll Because get to

18:14

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

there's another way to take care of this and make sure it gets the funding it needs. That we have to have a second campus brought up a lot of division on the council, a lot of questions, because we were never told that.

18:25

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

18:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

We were never told the limitations for the UNT property. And that's the prior city manager that brought that forward. And frankly, there was a different president at university at the time.

18:40

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

18:40

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So a lot of changes have happened, but this is costing our taxpayers a lot of money. And I'm not sure how perfect it is for our operations of both locations. What's envisioned at the airport property, though, is an indoor gun range. And the problem with an indoor gun range is, number one, most of our officers, when they are taking a shot which nobody loves to do, but if they have to, we also want them to be accurate, because that means there's a very real threat. But that's mostly outside.

19:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So now they're proposing an indoor gun range. So all of the elements that they need to practice with, whether that's the heat, which we're obviously experiencing now, but rain, wind, very cold weather, and how your hands shake and how you need to accommodate for all these different factors, they're practicing in real life right now at the current gun range. They won't be able to do that at an indoor gun range. The second issue is a health related issue. If you've been to an indoor gun range, you know there's a very real lead issue.

19:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And so right now, even at the outdoor range, instructors have to be tested for lead in their blood. And sometimes they're taken out of location for a period of time till they can get back to a regular level of lead in their blood. It's real health concern. So inside an indoor gun range, there's a ventilation system that is trying to remove all of this.

20:16

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

20:16

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah. It's very expensive. So my understanding is Fort Worth is struggling with these costs because they have to, of course, dispose of the bullets, the casings, and then also deal with this air filtration system. So one solution brings other consequences. And I'm not sure that we shouldn't keep our current property and fix it up.

20:40

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got you. Okay, so then where is the Emergency Operations Center right now, and where are they proposing?

20:48

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah, you're calling Emergency Operations Center. I

20:51

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

don't know what to call these things. That's what a lot of the notes have

20:55

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So been

20:55

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know.

20:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So like the room we're in now, the Emergency Operations Center is about this room, the size. It's very small. It's got a small staff. It really only goes into effect when there is an emergency or some very high profile event. Got it.

21:12

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Right? So we just had the Republican convention. It's activated. When we have severe weather, the tornado, civil unrest, These are times that it is activated. It might not even be activated in an entire year.

21:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I mean, that's a possibility. I think it probably is activated two or three times a year. But what it really has are tables where maybe there's a little tent and it says transportation, and maybe Dard, and Our City Transportation, and TxDOT all come together. There's a representative, and they figure out whatever problem is there, right? Okay, there's some trees that fell down on TxDOT.

21:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I can help you with this. I can help you with that. And how do we solve this problem? Or we've got a utilities table. The water, electric, and gas are all there.

21:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Okay, we have these gas leaks. We have these electrical lines down. Water's stable. No, we've got a water break here. And how can we marshal together to deal with a true emergency?

22:12

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And it's a great thing, the emergency operations center. Right now, it's one level below. And it's a bunker. I mean, that's the thing about City Hall. Whether you like it or you don't like it and I can see both perspectives.

22:27

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Sure. I actually think it's a pretty cool building. But it doesn't matter if you do or you don't. Yeah. Because it is really the biggest bomb shelter in America.

22:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Wow. I mean, God forbid, there's missiles coming into Dallas. That's where you should go. I don't know how they would even be able to take it down, to tell you the truth. But this is a safe place.

22:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And so when you think about tornadoes, you're safe in that building. If you think about civil unrest, there's a reason it's so set back from the streets. God forbid there's an Oklahoma City terrible bombing like that. I know it. There's no truck that is going to be able to penetrate based on the way it's set up.

23:10

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I think that as I'm Pei was designing it, he had all of those ideas in mind of how would I prevent or how could I support the operations that will happen. What this is really about, though, is the nine eleven center. So we have one of the busiest nine eleven centers in Texas. We're the backup for a lot of the surrounding cities. And the call log is just incredible.

23:38

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I've heard, yeah. So we have regularly provided for the nine eleven agents who are TCOL certified. They know the law. They interact so beautifully with police and fire. But they often are asked to stay on for longer shifts.

23:55

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They're paid to stay at the Omni, and the city pays for that. You can get to the Omni from City Hall without ever going outside. There's a secure route. But we do that because we've got to have someone answering that call. I mean, as much as you want a police officer or a firefighter to show up, they're not showing up if you don't talk to 911.

24:19

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And in fact, if there's a staffing hiccup, guess what? Sworn officers are going down there, and they're actually answering that front line call. So what we have are probably 100 call takers, and they're answering that phone. Wow. It's huge.

24:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah. And then it goes to dispatch. And there's two kinds of dispatch. There's the police dispatch, and there's the fire dispatch.

24:43

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

24:44

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yep. Fire dispatch, about 80. Those are medical emergencies. Yeah. The way it's set up right now is a little bit weird.

24:52

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Like, you walk down this hall, and it's kind of like a respite center. There's like foosball and little tables. You can have lunch. There's some quiet areas where people can decompress from the very stressful calls that come in. If you go to the left, you get the 911 right, that first answering.

25:10

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And then beyond that is the police dispatch with a whole another call center of people. If you go to the right, it's the fire dispatch.

25:18

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got you.

25:20

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They really ought to be together. It needs some reconfiguration. The other thing I have seen as I have toured nine eleven centers around the country is that we don't have a video wall that most do. And the video wall, you first walk in, you're like, oh, they're all watching TV. Well, you can imagine you want them watching TV when it's nineeleven.

25:41

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's like, oh my gosh, there's another plane going into this tower. And God forbid that's Dallas. We want them real time watching that. They can flip on cameras for TxDOT and see what's happening on the highways. They need to know there's an attack somewhere happening because they're going to get those calls from So we do need to put in a video wall.

26:04

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Now, most of them have at least three monitors. They've got lots of information in front of them. We've invested in the hardware. Their hardware is up to date. Can't say that about everything in Dallas, so I do want to say that.

26:18

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They have pretty good hardware. They have new chairs. Their desks probably should be replaced so that they have heaters and fans. And the reason you'd want that is because the rooms are kept cold Yes. For all that tech.

26:31

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yep. And sometimes they are very cold. So a lot of public safety desks have these heater fans to adjust for a person who is sitting there for a very long time. So we should invest in all of that. It needs a couple million dollars.

26:48

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

The fireside, same thing. It's too small. It needs a video wall. Their kitchen, for some reason, we haven't fixed it. It's got like a track flooring, meaning all the wires are underneath.

26:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, it's kind of caved in, but no one's fixed it, so I don't even know how you walk on that. Okay. Everyone should have a little kitchen to do that. I think there's a question about how we even schedule the firefighters. They're on that twenty four hour shift and then two days off, except they're scheduled to work in a strange way.

27:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I'm just going to leave that. But they ought to be closer together. So just like the police dispatches in the next room, it ought to be just the next room over that fire dispatch is there. Because God forbid something horrible happens, we need someone to walk over and be like, Okay, we need to huddle. Like, we've got to address this right now.

27:43

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Are they proposing that it's separated?

27:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, right now, you have to walk down a hallway, through two doors, and in another hallway. So they're not far. But in most nine eleven centers I've been to, they're just across a partition.

27:58

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Oh, I see what you're saying.

28:00

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It ought to be actually closer together. But again, this is not hard to reconfigure. No, A million dollars takes care of this problem, as opposed to $40,000,000 which I guarantee will turn into a much, much more expensive project. You can't move a lot of this tech successfully, and you can't turn off our nine eleven center. So to move the nine eleven center, which is, again, now we're talking about hundreds of people moving, you actually have to build out the entire thing as a replicate so that you can turn that on and turn this off at the same time.

28:35

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Right? You can't ever just turn this off and, oh, we'll move it. And we do have a backup nine one center. That's a whole other problem. I would question the security of it.

28:47

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

There's a number of issues I really don't want to share what they are. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that that area is not secure. It's also very small. It does not have enough seats for what we would need for backup for more than just even a couple hours. So there's problems all around with that.

29:09

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay. And so it sounds like to me that whether Prop A passes or not, City Hall is going to be saved because of the signatures that everyone's collecting. Wrong? Am clearly, I mean, we don't know, right? But as far as if someone was placing a bet, I think I would

29:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

bet that I'm all in on saving City Listen, what the public doesn't know, what other people who are trying to abandon city hall don't really know. They don't know what our inboxes look like. So I'll just give you this example. When George Floyd happened and all the defund the police, we got so many emails. I had a longtime staffer who said to me, we have never seen a response like this before.

29:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's just crazy. And we have had at least four times that response about saving City Hall. When it was with George Floyd and reconsidering all of this, I'm going to tell you it was split. Probably 65, 70 saying, you know, we want to reimagine public safety, and probably 25, 30% saying, you know, we need the cops. You need to protect them.

30:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

With city hall, I would say 90 plus percent have been, save this building.

30:30

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, yeah, that's what I've heard.

30:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I do not think it'll be hard to get 20,000 signatures. I actually think it'll be ridiculously easy to get 20,000 signatures on this topic. So I think that will go to the voters in May. Would the manager or mayor try to bring forward a resolution to the council earlier and take that vote? Possibly.

30:53

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And I guess I'm prepared that we will have to take that vote, and I will, of course, vote no. But then I would imagine that the Save Dallas City Hall coalition will interact legally to make sure that doesn't happen. Got you. And this is I'll make the other side of the argument.

31:13

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, please. Because that's why I'm actually starting to I was going to take that turn now.

31:18

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So sometimes people will say, well, you're the city council. You were elected to make this decision. Like, why would you pawn it off on the people when you were elected to do that? But actually, did you notice that they didn't bring up this issue till after the May twenty five election? So had they brought it up earlier, and council members could have run on their position of, look, I'm for saving City Hall, and here's how I think we ought to do it, that would have been fair.

31:48

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Or I'm for leaving, and here's why. Right? And then people could have voted based on that or other factors that they want to consider. But this was purposely not brought up till after that election. Interesting.

32:04

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I don't think the people have had that voice. And we've had plenty of people come down and speak. And mostly the people who have said to leave have a very vested financial interest. And or, let's be honest, you were some of the people who come down and say, you should leave City Hall. It's not maintained.

32:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, you were in office. You didn't maintain it, right? So I don't want to see the fingers pointing at us either.

32:31

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay. So let's talk about the nine eleven emergency op center that's right now within City Hall. So let's just say hypothetically, the building survives and that it remains where it is. If this bond passes, would they be forced to leave because they would be earmarking the $40,000,000 for an additional location? Or could it be that they could possibly say, alright, now that we are going to keep this building, we have to invest and probably repair this one.

33:07

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah, the bond proposition is written so broadly that it could be used for a lot of different things, and it certainly could be used for updating the nine eleven center, absolutely. So that's not even an issue. I will say the one other aspect we haven't talked about yet is where they're proposing to move to.

33:26

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right. And that's what I want to know.

33:28

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It hasn't been super public, but there was a public RFP, right? A request for proposal, and they listed a location. And so, I mean, I obviously can't share things that are coming from executive session. But because there was this public RFP, it's at a property on Bellevue. This is the property that's right between the Deep Ellum, the Cedars Dart Bus Station train station.

33:52

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I'm sorry, train. Okay. So it's right next to train tracks. It's not a good idea. And then it's next to Jack Evans Police Headquarters.

34:00

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Is this by, what, where Washburn arms? Or is it a different location?

34:05

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It... It's, close to Botham Jean. Got

34:08

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

you. Okay.

34:09

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But it's a small street.

34:11

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

34:12

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

You could very easily take a box truck and cut off the street. You could blow something up with a train. I mean, there's so many different ways to damage this building. The building has windows all around it. I think there's an interest.

34:30

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

What I've heard anyhow is that perhaps you build a building within the building that would be concrete. And again, we're only talking about $40,000,000 here. I know it. Concrete's And you start talking about all of the technology that's involved with this, there's no way this thing's going be $40,000,000 It's not There's a parking problem. Right now, at City Hall, the nine one operators as well as the rest of the city staff, we have two different entrances to an underground parking garage that is secured with gates and security personnel.

35:04

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I will sometimes see I usually enter in a different door than most of the council members. And that door actually is the same door that the nine eleven operators will use. My office is slightly location than most of the council. So me and Jaime Resendez have an office on the other side of the mayor. So most of the council's here, then the mayor, and then me Jaime Resendez.

35:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And when you are walking in through there, you're walking by a lot of cars of people who work in this area. And sometimes there's somebody in that car. And I know what they're doing. They're being alone, right? They're decompressing.

35:47

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They're having a private conversation on the phone. They're having lunch. They just want to be by themselves to de stress. You and I would be as close, well, maybe a little bit closer than the nine eleven operators are. And so you're just with a lot of people, like a call center.

36:05

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so if you are a little bit more of a solitary person, you need introvert.

36:15

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yes. You recharge.

36:16

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I can I can definitely see it? My first week at City Hall in 2019, I was leaving. It was like 10:00 at night. And there were two women sitting on a couch. It's more of a bench as I'm leaving.

36:31

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And one of them is crying and the other one's Consolium. And I stop and like, I don't know the rules. I've just been given a lot of rules about things I'm allowed to do and not do as a council And so I stop and I'm like, are you okay? Is there anything I could do for you? And the one consoling looks at me very quizzically and says, well, we're nine eleven operators.

36:53

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I say, Okay, but are you all right? And she's like, oh, she just needs to do this to de stress. And I was like, wow, Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for what you do.

37:05

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yeah. Right? And I did have flashbacks of that Holly Hunter movie where was it broadcast news? Where she cries before? Yes.

37:13

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yes. And I thought, well, maybe this is what's necessary But to do this it did really touch me. And it was shortly after that that I had my first tour of the nine eleven center. Again, many council members before this whole discussion had never even been down there. Probably been down there a dozen times, maybe more.

37:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I've led tours for groups. Would you believe, before this whole discussion came up and last legislative session was starting, we offered tours to our state reps and state senators because we were showing them how cool our building was, how cool the nine eleven center is. And you know what? They thought it was. And now, it's being painted as if it's so horrible, and so outdated, and so atrocious that we have to abandon it.

37:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, that's ridiculous. That's totally ridiculous. So what happens to all

38:03

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

of these projects if Prop A, Proposition A fails? What happens?

38:08

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, I hope it does fail. I hope that people say, we're not giving you this much money when you already are sitting on so much voter authorized debt. I hope that we will come back in May with a different proposition that is specific to the police academy, and it is more detailed about exactly what will be accomplished. And the dollars will be used for that only, meaning if you have extra money, then it gets taken off the table. It doesn't get reprogrammed into whatever the latest ideas of eight people on council or the city manager.

38:44

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And that's what's been happening. So even money that has been issued and not spent and it's earning interest, well, we just come up with new ideas to spend it. And I don't think that's what should happen. And we have to start putting some limits on what we're spending. I'm just going to tell you some things that are going to probably flip you out.

39:03

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Number one, the city of Dallas has $8,600,000,000 of debt. That's from Moody's.

39:10

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I know that.

39:11

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Some of that is revenue debt, meaning the water bill is paying for it, so it's not coming out of your taxes. But God forbid something happened, yeah, all the taxpayers are on the hook for it. And that should concern everybody. That is a lot of debt. That is more debt than we should have.

39:31

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Number two, we have the lowest credit rating of any of the five large cities in Texas.

39:37

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I know.

39:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth all have better credit ratings than us. Mhmm. What do you think is gonna happen if the voters approve more debt for an already heavily in debt city with not a great credit rating?

39:55

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

So translate that to what it means to the actual constituent.

39:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, what that means is that every project that we currently have from the 2024 bond is going to cost more. Cost more money. It's going to cost more money. And that means we're probably not going to complete all the things that we told you we would do for 2024 because we issued this we authorized this debt. Now, the really shocking thing is that even the CFO says, well, we don't know when we're going to actually spend it.

40:23

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So here's this big crisis of, well, we need to replace we'll talk about this in a few minutes, right? We need to replace Fire Station four. Here's $20,000,000 But we don't actually know when we're going to do that. There's no actual plan or date. And frankly, there shouldn't be because we don't know what Fire Station four is going to serve the area all around Okay.

40:47

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Fire Station So we don't know. How do you know? It's completely barren right now. I know. And

40:53

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

so I thought you would have some insight that I couldn't find. Okay.

40:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Got you. We gave a great incentive deal to a developer. They were supposed to have brought in plans last year. They were running behind. We gave them an extra year.

41:09

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So we're supposed to have concrete plans by the end of this year. If not, I hope we take away that incentive. But all I know is that when we look at downtown city, downtown part of the southern part of downtown and it is barren. That is all one dude's property. Yeah.

41:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And then we've got another 15 acres that the hunt zone Mhmm. That they've been promising they're going to build for I don't know how many years Mhmm. Since reunion was there. Yeah. But they haven't.

41:38

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But somehow, even though the public has invested in the convention center, which, by the way, was supposed to solve all these issues. Now that's not even enough. And we turned the convention center to open up another 30 acres that are available now for development. That's not enough. Now it's, no, we have to have the 14 acres that City Hall is on.

42:01

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I don't understand it. Go develop all of this barren land, then come talk to us. There's no reason that City Hall cannot be part of some new great development. It's a very interesting building to walk around. I mean, like, it's photogenic, frankly.

42:19

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I mean, it has an amazing backdrop. And what's funny is that all these different people stand in front of City Hall. You have Michael Hena Hosa saying, I'm going to run for mayor, and I want to take down City Hall. But he does it in front of City Hall. All the live I've shots seen that.

42:41

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

42:44

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I mean, Live come shots about anything related to the city, even if it's not something that happened at City Hall, people go stand there because it is a symbol of our government. It provides a beautiful space for community gathering, whether that's for marathons or Christmas events or protests. It's a place where people do come together to make their voice heard or to have that community gathering. The places that we're looking at, there's been no guarantee that we will have that. I had made a motion to include that in a resolution that we could not consider any properties that didn't have that space.

43:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It did not pass by the nine people that want to abandon. There are a number of other motions I made that include making sure that there is an equal amount of parking as we have today, which I will say the manager says we don't have enough parking today underground at our city hall, but I do see a lot of open parking spots.

43:45

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got

43:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

you. Okay. So I, you know, would question that. But I said, well, if you say we don't have enough, I would just want to make sure we have at least as much as we have today. That motion failed.

43:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I will say every one of these motions was made with knowledge of properties being considered. And there's a reason I made these motions. I also made motions about security issues that I think are problematic. So none of them passed. It did take the meeting late into the night.

44:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But we should be discussing these things. Like the public should know what we're planning to do or what some are planning to do with their building, which is meant to be there for hundreds of years.

44:28

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, and this is so intertwined and nuanced. And my mind is just sitting here thinking about it from a development perspective. I don't blame anybody for not developing it because of the homelessness and the crime and what has existed for a while, and I know that the return on that investment would be very, very poor. I would gamble in years past. Maybe not during Tom Leppard's time, but now we're seeing a different side of safety, improvement in safety.

45:08

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And you and I want that, right? We want safety for the city. We want the police taken care of. So you do believe that there's a way to take care of the police? By voting no?

45:20

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. I'm the most outspoken public safety advocate at City Hall, maybe in the city. I don't know.

45:30

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Only want good things for public safety. I think it is core to the city. And frankly, everything else can go by the wayside, because if we don't have public safety, we will lose the city.

45:40

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And what happens to the police academy itself if this fails? Like, if this does not pass? Sure. What happens to it?

45:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, We have the $50,000,000 that has already been approved in the 2024 bond, and quite a bit of that has been deployed for planning and design purposes. There's additional money that the state has put in, the Communities Foundation, private donations that have come in. And it's time to utilize that to continue progress until we have that May bond. And then we can fund it as appropriate.

46:15

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got you. Okay. So you don't believe that the city has run into any type of issues because of the fact that they have a low credit rating and are unable to, to fund this at a more affordable rate. So you don't believe that it's irresponsible for them to continue with these plans and proceed with the funds that they do have, although they don't have the remaining funds available to them.

46:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So the credit rating part, actually our credit rating would probably be negatively impacted should this bond pass. Yes, I

46:56

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

understand. I understand It

46:57

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

would be better for the Academy for this to not pass as is and come back with a smaller targeted Academy bond in May. There are other funds that the voters have approved that could be redirected by just eight votes so that this project can stay on track as far as time. It's already by the way, we talked about not being on budget because the budget's now over $300,000,000 but it's also was intended to open in 2027. This is clearly not going to happen. It's now being talked about 2028.

47:31

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So that's why it was so ironic for the manager to get up and say, oh, we're going to deliver this on time and on budget. I'm like, well, you're already behind both time and budget. So that can't possibly happen. There are some other there's another project that we didn't talk about, which is really a crazy one. And this is the property room.

47:54

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And $150,000,000 is in the bond for this.

48:00

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Oh, the property room evidentiary vehicle storage in Crime Lab? Yep. Yep, dollars 150,000,000.

48:06

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I went to the property room. And first of all, they said, the first council member who's ever been to the property room.

48:14

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And where is that one right now?

48:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It is just right along I-thirty Okay. South of the Canton Street Service Center.

48:22

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay. So this one is outside of City Hall?

48:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yes. Got you. And it's an old building. Okay. And it's totally full.

48:29

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And it's got when I went there, they had just broken up some some fighting ring on dog fighting chicken, fighting something like this roosters. And so they had buckets of very smelly equipment that were on a pallet. They have so many bikes that they have taken that are they've collected that are either stolen or left somewhere. There's so many papers. It's like its own little library, and it's like medical files where the shelves will compress.

49:06

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

A lot of drugs that have been seized, guns that have been seized. It was fascinating to see there's some storage boxes, some like Connex boxes on property that are holding bikes and that kind of thing.

49:18

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

So

49:19

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

it needs to expand. This facility has not been well taken care of, and it reeks of marijuana. I mean, absolutely reeks

49:30

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

How long have we had that one?

49:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I don't know. I'm going

49:34

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

to say Before you came on

49:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

in 2019? Oh, this building is probably from the '40s or '50s.

49:41

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And Dallas has had it, has owned it since then.

49:44

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yes. I mean, it's an old building.

49:46

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

49:47

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I Got don't know the history of the building, but it's an old building. So I was like, wow, we got to do something about this. But what you're really talking about is kind of a glorified warehouse. A warehouse is one of the cheapest things you can build, Right? It doesn't have a fancy floor.

50:07

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's just a cement floor. It's not finished out walls. It's like rafters and that sort of thing.

50:13

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Does it need to be concrete? Is there anything

50:16

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

think it's concrete. Think the drugs and the guns are in a more protected space.

50:23

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got Okay.

50:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Again, not sure how much I can really say about that Sure.

50:26

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Of course. I'm thinking cost.

50:28

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But this is for sure the least expensive building type you can build. Okay. I'm just going to say that. Okay, got you. Why would it cost $150,000,000 And where would it go?

50:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So what's been floated out there is a place called Vilbig. Vilbig is a 71 acre. It used to be our auto pound. So if you parked illegally and your car got towed, you were getting your car at Vilbig, right? But it had two things.

50:57

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It had the cars towed, and it had the evidentiary cars. Yep. Meaning, you know, I'm in some sports car. There's a murder that happens in the car. The car is being held for evidence in a trial.

51:11

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

That car has to be held somewhere. It's being held at Vilbigh.

51:14

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay,

51:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

so a couple of years ago, we actually moved the towing cars to two different places. One of them is in Northwest Dallas, one of them is in South Dallas, which made it easier for people. But also because there was a development plan that these 71 acres, which are very close to downtown, Robert Walonsky said this is the best piece of property in the city. It was meant to be redeveloped into housing and some sort of mixed use development. So why would we keep and there's not that many cars in evidentiary holding compared to how many were there for towing.

51:49

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So it was towing. It was way over capacity. Now you're like, wow, it's like no man's land. Because again, 71 acres Yeah. It's a lot.

51:59

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It is. So if you want to put the property room there, which again is a warehouse, it's not that big, why would you put it there? And so as the council started asking questions, the mayor said, well, we're not sure it's going to go there. Wait a minute. You want 150,000,000 and you don't even have a plan?

52:19

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

No way. Again, the plan

52:22

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And is really why?

52:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Because they're going to redirect this money, Sarah.

52:26

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Ah, okay.

52:29

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So then they talk about the crime lab. Now, maybe it's a different part of the crime lab, but at the property room today, they have the ballistics testing. So, you know, when you watch TV and they're going to match the bullets and the markings, we have that machine in that place. And it's pretty cool, but it's not any bigger than, I'll say, a car. Right?

52:51

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So it's in a very small room.

52:54

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

52:55

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I'm going to guess that room is 15 by 10. Oh, it's not very big. Does it have to be bigger

53:02

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

or no? I mean, not

53:03

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It has that much have its own little ventilation system again. Why? Because of the lead with They're filtration system. I get it. Right?

53:08

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They're shooting a gun, it goes through water, it comes out, there's a match, and then there's three microscopes. That's it. That's it. That's the whole thing. And so, again, 150,000,000.

53:23

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

There's no way this thing's costing 150,000,000. Again, there might be a separate crime lab, and I hope there is somewhere that I haven't seen. But even if you're building out the best crime lab in the world, why would you put it at Vilbig? That's a terrible location because that deserves to be housing. It's elevated.

53:40

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's got beautiful views of the city. And District 6 is it's in District 6. They have always expected it to be a development, including affordable housing, mixed use.

53:52

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, that's right. When you

53:54

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

say it's so complicated and there's so much to it, let me tell you what also is included with Vilbig. It traverses the high speed rail alignment is impacted by this property. Oh. And so because there are moneyed interests with the high speed

54:14

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

rail How are we supposed to know this?

54:16

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Okay. Well This is crazy. Okay. These twelve hour

54:19

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

cities.

54:19

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Know. And

54:20

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I I used to be much better at making time for

54:22

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

this. But okay.

54:23

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

So so give me the details here.

54:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So So the problem is if a high speed rail line goes there, if there's people living there, it's a problem. And it won't pass the environmental test. But if you have an auto pound and a property room, it can go through. And again, not looking to throw any specific developers under the bus, but there's a specific developer who is working on the high speed rail. And they also are working on the convention center.

54:55

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And every one of these projects are being impacted by this developer's wishes and this high speed rail line, which we know is not going to get state or federal funding. At this point, we're told the first number I ever heard in 2019 of what it would cost just for the Dallas to Fort Worth portion was $6,000,000,000. This high speed rail line already matches a rail line we have between Dallas and Fort Worth. It's parallel. It's just a little bit further south.

55:27

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Why would we build another rail line? That's crazy. And then you say, well, Dallas to Houston, which I think a lot of council members have been pretty open to, and I would even be open to that. The problem is that thing's dead now because the environmentally cleared location in Houston that sold and all sorts of properties over the years have been built along the path that's supposed to go. And so now like Blinn College is building big campuses.

55:58

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

There's some housing developments. I mean, there's no way the current alignment even works. So I think that project's dead. And to try to spend $150,000,000, again, giving up 71 acres of prime real estate to help some dudes high speed rail fantasy. This is terrible.

56:22

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So meanwhile, we have all these developers coming after 14 acres of our City Hall, but you've got 71 developable acres right there. The Huns have 15 acres. This new this new park development right south of City Hall. I don't even know how many acres it is, but I'm going to guess it's 35 plus.

56:43

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay.

56:44

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So why are we why are we focused on the one thing that's built? And I don't have an answer for you, but go develop all this blank land that we have. There's lots of opportunities. And we just are building you a convention center with public dollars. I can't see I mean, I know there's an article that just came out in the Dallas Business Journal that we need public development to help.

57:13

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Yep. And I'm like, we've already done our part. Yeah, the Dallas taxpayer we pay the highest tax rate in Dallas of any large city in Texas.

57:24

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

57:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And then of all the medium sized cities surrounding us. We... I mean, when you talk about AT and T, you brought up AT and T. AT and T maybe left because of homelessness and because of crime.

57:41

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's

57:41

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

right. I think that's an element. Right? Oh, absolutely. But let's talk about the finances.

57:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

In Dallas, your tax rate starts with $0.69 In Plano, your tax rate starts with $0.43 Exactly. Now, Plano gave them a big incentive, but even without the incentive, this makes fiscal sense for them.

58:00

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

For

58:01

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

me as a as a homeowner, I get a big homestead exemption. AT and T doesn't get a homestead exemption. So every business that's operating in Dallas is under the burden of a very high tax rate. So this budget season, usually I will propose the no new revenue rate. People will laugh and not vote for it, and that's fine.

58:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Have different fiscal ideas around the council, but I have to at least try and make the case for trying to be competitive with our surrounding cities, if not for the goodness of the homeowners who really can't afford these ridiculous tax rates, but also as a competitive interest for businesses. And so this year, I said, Okay, instead of that, I'll just go 68¢ flat. It meant we would have to reduce our budget about $40,000,000 We can do that. I was sitting at the budget meeting with $50,000,000 of cuts that I was hoping would go to a reserve account for the manager as she's negotiating with Police and Fire for their pay. You may notice that the Police and Fire Association has not endorsed this bond.

59:14

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I'll say yet. Will they? I don't know. Will they not? I don't know.

59:18

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But the thing they keep saying is we're focused on today. That's right. That's You know a lot about Prop U. Yep. Right?

59:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I do. Prop you Too much.

59:31

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Too much, but yes.

59:32

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But prop you says we have to pay our police, and it it only says police in this Yep. In the top five

59:38

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

59:39

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Of the Metroplex. Mhmm. We're not doing that. I know. We're not even paying in the top five of last year's numbers.

59:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I know. And so at some point, this becomes problematic for our city. I think we're there. And I think the change in benefits has exacerbated it. I think just some of the management practices are causing a lot of conflict in our city.

60:04

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And again, my focus is on public safety and doing the right thing. Saying no to this bond is not anti police, is not anti city. I love this city. Would never do this job if I didn't love That's this right. Is about fiscal sanity and about getting it right.

60:24

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And I want a bond that gets it right. I want thoughtful planning. I want the citizens to be engaged. That didn't happen. I still don't know where some of this stuff is going to go.

60:35

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

When we were talking about the fire station just briefly, imagine if that development just south of City Hall what if it's 100 story buildings? Or what if it's three or five story townhomes? Depending on what it becomes is a different kind of fire station. We can't build that fire station till we know what the development is. And that's why that fire station has never even been considered.

61:01

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It was actually talked about being paid for by the PID in that area.

61:08

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Mhmm. That's right.

61:09

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

That's why in 2024, it wasn't that they cut that project. We didn't have enough funding. We'll just take it off and consider it next time. No, it was never even discussed because there's another way to fund it, and we don't even know what's coming.

61:22

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yep. Let me ask you, to kind of summarize things. If you had your ideal situation relating to the bond, and then ensuring that our police are well taken care of, removing some of these projects from this particular package. What would you do starting from now till, let's call it, next May? Because I care for the city so much, and I want just to hear what you, Cara, would do.

62:00

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, obviously, care for the city because you don't have to be doing this job, right? But you are trying to bring forward different issues. And so there's a lot of respect people have for you taking the time to Thank delve into you. The So you're giving me a magic wand? Yeah.

62:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Kind of like

62:16

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

that. A magic wand.

62:18

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, first, I would start talking to the residents and really find out what do they think the priorities are. And I think that what city staff is going to hear is very much what I'm saying, which is they care very much about public safety, But they also care about today's public safety. Don't let these longtime officers walk off the job and go to another city. They need to be paid properly, and that's both police and fire.

62:45

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

62:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I mean, God forbid, you have a serious medical emergency. You don't want it to be the first time they're giving CPR. And of course, it's not. They've been through very extensive training. Yes.

62:57

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But experience matters in these kinds of situations. Homicide investigation, aggravated assaults, all of these things, we want our experience to stay. Right. So we need to make sure that we are paying appropriately, that we have the benefit package that they need to stay. So that's the first part.

63:18

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But second, I think there's a lot of support for the police academy and I want to get it right. But there's still a lot of questions about it. And we had a fundraising team want to make sure that they've done what they've committed to if they can. Yep. If they're not able to, then we have to talk about that also.

63:36

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But let's get very firm plans about both locations of law enforcement, police training. I'm just say together, they make up the academy. And I want to see the specifics. And I think the public deserves to know what the specifics are before they're paying for it. And that really hasn't happened.

63:57

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Fire station for. Yeah, we should definitely build a new Fire Station 4. But let's talk about it once we know it's coming in that area. We don't even know what it is. There's another fire station downtown.

64:10

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's Fire Station 18. And that wasn't the bond, and it's going to be big and beautiful.

64:14

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

That's right.

64:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Possibly, we don't need another station downtown. Yeah. I mean, what if that takes care of the whole need? It's a busy, busy station, so probably we do. But we don't know what it is yet.

64:26

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So again, should something happen with it? Yes. Does it have to happen right now in November? No. The property room, we should definitely move the property room, but where is it moving to?

64:41

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Vilbig is not a great option. And again, I'd like to see what the redevelopment plans are for Vilbig. And let's look at where we can move evidentiary property, where we can move the property room to a proper location. I don't think it should stay where it's at or it needs to be rebuilt. Okay.

65:02

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So I think there are options, but they're also not like it has to be done tomorrow. There's nothing caving in. There's nothing like that. Although, again, it does smell of marijuana. And then for the nine eleven center, absolutely I mean, I don't know what the number of millions it is 4,000,000, 5,000,000, something like that for a renovation upgrade.

65:25

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

They both need video walls. I would reconfigure the whole thing. I'd probably take over a little bit more of the floor space down there for it. But it could look a little nicer. But again, it's not so bad that we weren't giving a tour saying, isn't this cool?

65:40

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And it is. I would get them all the desks. I would get the video wall. I would make sure they have really nice kitchen facilities. And I would put DFR a little closer to the DPD dispatch and the 911 call takers.

65:56

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Got you. Okay, thank you for that, because it just helps summarize things very nicely for me. Because in times past, you have spoken so highly of many people that you work with on City Council. And you're very smart, the mayor's smart. So for me, for the love of God, I've been like, what are these nuanced issues that's causing them to not be aligned here?

66:25

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

And so thank you for your time in explaining your side. It helps me to understand things in a more fulsome manner. And yeah, if there's anything else that you want to add to this, please do now.

66:39

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So we really haven't had organized opposition to a bond since 1978.

66:45

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah, yeah, you see.

66:45

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And what's happened is a whole group of neighborhood people who've not been involved in anything before, not even like political campaigns, have said, this is not right. Some of them are very much about saving City Hall and see this bond as a first step for leaving City Hall, and they want to stop it. Others have a more fiscal element to their interest. But when you start talking about the people taking back an issue like this, I love that because that's what makes Dallas great. We get these survey questions from The Dallas Morning News when you're a candidate, it says, what is great about your district or about Dallas?

67:29

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But don't say the people. But of course, that's the answer. Yeah. I mean, Dallas doesn't have the mountains or the beach to say, this is why people are here. Certainly, don't have the temperate weather that people would love.

67:43

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

But what we do have is this incredible spirit of being able to make this city and make themselves into what they want. And what they want is a stable government. And we seem to be going back and forth on so many different issues, so many things that have not panned out. And I don't want to just say failures, but really significant errors that have happened. And there's a lack of trust that's happened because of these failed projects.

68:14

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

So when people see things like the STEMMins project, or the Hampton project, or the Independence, or the Miramar, or so many other things that have occurred, they lose confidence in the ability of the council and the management to actually carry through the projects as they were described. And I think that's why the voters are saying, we want to know more about what exactly is going to happen and how it will happen and when it will happen. And those answers have not been given. So I hope people will vote no. And I hope that they will come back and say, we're for the Academy.

68:48

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

We're for moving forward with multiple elements of these projects. But tell us more, tighten up that budget, and lower that amount, and deliver.

68:58

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yep. Thank you so much for that. Because, again, like I said, coming into this, I had so many questions, but you've helped fill in a lot of that gray or nonexistent space for me, so thank you. And because we are a nonprofit, I always have to say this. I am not supporting any particular candidate, any particular side of an issue.

69:19

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Just like whenever I interviewed Ken Paxton, Wesley Hunt, I was not taking sides. Same here, but we just appreciate your honesty and your candid communication and always standing up for what you believe is right. Thank you. Thank you, Cara. Before we wrap up, what is the strongest argument that the opposition is making?

69:41

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

The people who are smart, capable, intelligent, and who are saying, no, pass this bond. Vote for Proposition A. What is their strongest argument?

69:52

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, their strongest argument is the PR argument of public safety, right? I think Dallas is a pro public safety city in general. And I think they're going to play on the emotions of, oh, if you care about public safety, you'll vote yes. And I'm going to say, I care very deeply about public safety and vote no. And it's because they're doing a slogan.

70:15

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

It's slogan politics. And that slogan is support public safety by saying yes. And I'm going to say support public safety by saying no, because you need the accountability and transparency to know these projects will actually happen. The projects being talked about, of which, you know, some should go forward wholeheartedly and some need some refinement. But the people are more in tune than just a slogan.

70:45

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And they deserve more than just a slogan. So some people don't want to know the detail. We've just talked a lot of detail, It's going to be more than what some people want to hear. But the people who want to know, it should be available, and it's not available. And you can watch the council meetings and hear things like, well, maybe we'll put it there, maybe we won't.

71:07

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Well, we don't know where the nine eleven center is going. We don't know where this is happening. And it's like, how can we be asking voters for so many millions of dollars when we don't even have a plan? And the voters should say, no, we want a plan. We want accountability, and it does not need to cost us much.

71:28

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Thank you for the clarification. Because it's in looking at what their arguments are, yeah, I just wanted that There's from

71:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

detail missing.

71:39

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay, there's detail missing. But I have inspected a lot of the old language in a lot of the different earmarked funds. This does appear to be worded in a way that could actually have the city on the hook legally and possibly open to lawsuit should they not use these funds for, let's say, the items that they're listing versus, let's say, using it as a blank check, right, just to

72:13

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

Oh, place where I don't agree.

72:14

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Let's get You don't. No.

72:16

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

I'll give you a I'm going to give you a creative scenario. What if the building inspector or the fire chief comes into City Hall and says, well, we didn't put in sprinkler systems in City Hall because that was not the code at the time. Most of the buildings downtown do not have sprinkler systems, by the way.

72:36

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Yeah.

72:37

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And therefore, we're going to say this building has to be shut down. It's a public safety hazard.

72:45

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

I see.

72:46

Council Member Cara Mendelsohn

And since it's a public safety hazard, we can now use the bond funds, which have to be for public safety capital expenses, to move out. So I think there's a lot of ways to be creative when you have as vague language as what is proposed.

73:04

Sarah Zubiate Bennett

Okay. Well, thank you for your time, Cara. Sure. I appreciate you.

Episode Timeline

Full Transcript

Episode Timeline

Full Transcript

Fight for The Truth

The Dallas Express reports what Legacy Media won’t.