Dallas officials unveiled new schematic designs for the city’s new police academy Monday, but the math required to see this project through still doesn’t add up, and one council member stated the city should’ve asked for more money in last year’s $1.25 billion bond program.
“I don’t think we asked enough for the bond at the beginning. I don’t think $50 million was sufficient, given the size of the project,” said council member Cara Mendelsohn, who chairs the public safety committee. She mentioned the city of Plano, where voters recently approved a $51 million bond package for their new police training center.
The total project is estimated at $275 million, with the 20-acre police academy at the University of North Texas at Dallas accounting for most of the expenses.
“I think we under-asked,” Mendelsohn said, if cities are measured by population. “And what we’ve asked of our fundraisers is a huge task. It’s basically asking them to raise double what we put in as a bond, and I think it’s unheard of.” Dallas has 1.3 million residents, and Plano has over 299,000.
Political Points
Mendelsohn’s comments came after The Dallas Morning News reached out to city officials and council members last week. As recently as June, Dallas officials were considering going to voters in May 2026 for a bond election to cover a $124 million funding gap for a new police academy and public safety complex, emails obtained by The News showed.
However, city spokesperson Rick Ericson told The News last week that the city does not have the capacity to take on more debt in the near future and has no plans for a bond package.
On Monday, Assistant City Manager Dev Rastogi clarified the discussion around a future bond election.
“We’ve been thinking about funding strategies for this project, as well as the complimentary public safety complex because we recognize that there were components that were not going to be able to be put on the UNT Dallas,” Assistant City Manager Dev Rastogi told council members Tuesday, adding that the bond was brought up as a funding source in a presentation that was not briefed to the City Council.
Further, the city is focused on private dollars to close the gap and would only draw money as needed, she said.
The current police academy in Red Bird has been a pain point for officers and city officials. It spans 63 acres across two industrial warehouse sites. Years of mold and sweat, weathered training rooms, insufficient storage and limited parking spots had officials vying to build a modern facility rivaling Fort Worth’s police academy.
There are two pieces to the academy project. The UNTD campus will house training centers for recruits and officers already in service. It needs $185 million, and the city has raised $96.5 million so far through state and private dollars.
City officials told council members they’re banking on private fundraising to close a 42% funding gap.
Lynn McBee, the city’s workforce czar and one of the fundraisers for the project, told council members that the collected funds will help the city break ground in November next year and build two of the four planned buildings at the UNTD site.
Private fundraisers have a goal of raising $70 million, of which they’ve already raised $11.5 million, former council member Jennifer Staubach Gates told The News last week. Gates, too, is helping efforts to raise private dollars, as is former Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins.
McBee said the fundraising team has received another $10 million donor commitment, bringing the total to $21.5 million. Another $6.5 million was donated for a reality-based training village.
Officials have not yet addressed the second component of the project, a 60-acre public safety complex that’s budgeted at $90 million. There’s no road map provided by the city so far on how they intend to get those dollars.
Previous briefing materials also showed proceeds from the sale of city-owned real estate could be used to cover the gap, but officials have also floated using dollars from a real estate sale for other needs, such as boosting payments to the pension system and tackling deferred maintenance.
Still, the pressure to raise private dollars is high, and several council members in the public safety committee urged better project management and more vigilance to ensure the decades-long promise to build a police academy is not broken. “We have to have this project,” Mendelsohn said.
Council member Adam Bazaldua said he would not support a new bond election to cover the remaining components of the project.
“I do not support continuing to move the goal post on our taxpayers,” council member Adam Bazaldua said when reached by The News. “The remaining funds were supposed to be raised privately, which is what was sold to the public for them to vote on our last bond.”
In February, The News revealed the city had quietly changed plans for the police academy, splitting it into two separate construction projects. UNT Dallas’ campus in southern Dallas had been billed since 2021 as the training site for all future Dallas police hires, but officials wanted to use the college campus to train officers already in service.
Since then, officials have said its UNT Dallas facility will serve both recruits and current officers, and the city needs to complete a feasibility study for the 60-acre public safety complex to finalize a location and get better estimates of the project.