The Dallas Morning News
By Devyani Chhetri
6:31 PM on Jun 26, 2024 CDT
Dallas City Council members want more time to deliberate council pay increases, term lengths, election days and other proposed changes to the city’s constitution that voters
could weigh in on November.
During Wednesday’s meeting, council members said they’ll pick up the related discussions in August.
Council members struggled to build consensus on several amendments, often spending nearly an hour on just one topic in recent weeks.
In previous meetings, they delayed discussions on
council pay because they couldn’t agree on whether increases were warranted at a time when the city is facing a budget shortfall. Meanwhile, some expressed the desire of instituting term limits so council members don’t serve more than eight years.
“July is
coming, and we get something that we don’t often have, which is time to reflect and think about some of the things that we’ve studied,” council member Gay Donnell Willis said, adding that some good ideas that were crowd-sourced did not survive the review process.
Council members have signaled they want changes that could shift some mayoral powers to the full council and to add a preamble in the charter declaring the city’s intention to
propel equity and inclusivity.
Meanwhile, they’ve shot down ideas such as making the city’s office of the inspector general independent of the city attorney’s office and requiring council members to collect five signatures from others on the council in order to call for a special meeting. Currently, only the mayor, the city manager and a three-signature council memo can call such a meeting.
Deputy mayor pro tem Adam Bazaldua said the back and forth over the term lengths showed that the council needs more time to fine tune language of the amendments.
Volunteers and city officials spent months rummaging through dozens of amendments, aimed at evolving the city’s governance structure and policymaking.
Should Dallas move elections from May to November in odd years? Should service on boards and commissions be limited to citizens or can it be extended to those who are permanent residents in the United States?
The process to tweak the city’s charter happens every 10 years. A 15-member commission of volunteers reviewed more than 100 submissions from residents, former city officials and activists.
Council member Chad West said he would have preferred knocking out changes like requiring the city manager to submit a budget by Aug. 15. West said technical or operational
changes of this kind make up about two-thirds of the amendments, on Wednesday.
Those ideas that don’t have consensus could be debated on in August, he added. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” West said.
West wanted to introduce a measure to stop the Dallas Police Department from issuing citations or making arrests for marijuana possession of four ounces or less. That
discussion will now happen after the council’s July recess.
In the meantime, Ground Game Texas, an advocacy group, submitted almost 50,000 signatures this week to put decriminalizing marijuana on the ballot. The city secretary will ratify the petition over the summer to see if it has enough valid signatures of registered voters.
Laura Morrison at the City Attorney’s office said the deadline to call the election is
Aug.19.
