Tolbert was selected in January as the first Black woman to serve as Dallas City Manager after beginning her career more than 30 years ago as an intern at City Hall.
DALLAS — Kimberly Bizor Tolbert first walked into Dallas City Hall more than 30 years ago as an intern, a student from the University of North Texas. This year she was named city manager, the most powerful job in the City of Dallas.
Tolbert sat down with WFAA to discuss her journey, the city’s $5.2 billion budget, the new HERO amendments, the future of the Dallas Mavericks and much more.
When you approach the city manager’s office in Downtown Dallas, what you notice is how busy it is. There’s a constant hum and buzz of people in the office, working, asking questions and vying for time with the city’s top executive. We spent an hour with Tolbert, 45 of them during our interview. This story is a summary of what we learned about her priorities, perspective and work as city manager so far.
“I came into this building into City Hall over 30 years ago and was hired by the first woman city manager for the city of Dallas, so that in itself, is like inspiration… was inspiration for me,” Tolbert said.
When asked why she wanted to be a city manager, Tolbert recounted her childhood growing up in Tyler and time spent with her grandfather who owned a restaurant in town.
“I’m sitting in the back seat and I’m pointing out things that are different,” Tolbert said. “In the side of town where the restaurant was and where we lived and so as I’m asking these questions and I’m talking about everything from, you know, street lights to sidewalks to the difference in the playgrounds on the side of the city that I grew up in I grew up in North Tyler my grandfather asked me this question and it was very simple, but it was a question that I will never ever forget. He said, will you be someone who complains about the things that are wrong? Or will you do something about it? And so, for me, that became the starting point of my public service journey.”
Tolbert was named city manager in January 2025, making history as the first Black woman named to the post. She served on an interim basis in the role before that.
“Even coming into the role as the interim city manager,” Tolbert explained, “I knew that I couldn’t be a seat warmer because I like to get things done. So the very day, like day one of my appointment, I sent counsel a plan and I said hey, here are the things I’m going to do and what I appreciated about this body that I have an opportunity to partner with, nobody told me to stop. It was go handle your business.”
The search processes for both the Dallas Police Chief and Dallas Fire-Rescue Chief began days after she was officially offered the job. It has not been without challenges or controversy. The new Dallas Police academy is over budget and behind schedule. In 2022, the city projected a cost of $140 million that ballooned to $275 million in a proposal this summer, along with a projected opening date that went from 2027 to 2029.
“The commitment for the new police training academy, we never wavered on the commitment,” Tolbert explained. “We had some bumps on the road there were things that we needed to go back and shore up with our great partner, the University of North Texas, and I think that over these last few months we were able to do that. City Council has approved the lease agreement we finally got that done, and so that’s really given us that 20 acres that we need on the campus to be able to get this academy built.” Noting that the city is currently finalizing the designs. “We want to be able to break ground and begin the construction so we can deliver this facility. We know that our officers deserve it. They have waited a long time and so to talk about it for another 1, 2, 3 years, was not something that we were going to do. We’re going to get it done.”
Tolbert presented the $5.2 billion budget to the city council last week. In it, 282 positions are eliminated as 277 positions, mostly for police, are added.
“I think in a city of our size and an organization of our size as we continue to reimagine services which is kind of the journey that we’ve been on for this last year, you really have to get to what problems are we solving for, the resources that we have to solve those problems and how do we position ourselves to where the priorities that we know that our residents have asked us to focus on we’re demonstrating that and they see it and it has to show up in the budget? There’s no other way to do it and so I think about it not as an elimination I think about it as how do we optimize,” Tolbert said when asked who’d be losing their job.
The Dallas HERO amendments, Proposition U and Proposition S, passed in November 2024. One requires the city to hire 900 more police officers and allocate more money for police, while the other makes it easier to sue the city. The current proposed budget includes a 5.7% increase, $68 million, for public safety.