{"id":171124,"date":"2025-08-24T07:07:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T07:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171124\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T07:07:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T07:07:14","slug":"dallas-city-hall-is-doing-right-by-cops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171124\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas City Hall is doing right by cops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas voters were clear with City Hall<\/a> last November that the police force needs to grow and police need better pay <\/a>with a secure pension.<\/p>\n

Proposition U, a charter amendment requiring the city to spend half of new revenue on police pensions and salaries, passed with just over 50% of the vote.<\/p>\n

Now there is criticism that the city isn\u2019t fulfilling its obligations under the amendment. We disagree and think the math indicates that City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert is fulfilling not only the letter of the proposition\u2019s requirements but also its spirit of getting more and better paid cops on our streets.<\/p>\n

Like most charter amendments, Prop U has some complicated legal language under it that most voters never read. The ballot language voters approved called for the city to spend 50% of new money on the pension and on increasing starting salaries while building the force to 4,000 officers. <\/p>\n

Opinion<\/p>\n

Get smart opinions on the topics North Texans care about.<\/p>\n

Turns out, most of the city\u2019s money is restricted. All \u201cnew\u201d money can\u2019t be spent any way the city wants. If you pay for a building permit, you expect that money to go towards the inspector. That\u2019s a fee for service. Same with your water bill. Same with enplanement fees at Dallas Love Field. Then there is the portion of property tax that is devoted to paying off the city\u2019s debt. Debt service gets carved off for a reason; the city must pay its bills.<\/p>\n

The proposition recognizes this and so defined the revenue that could be spent as those funds not already restricted under state and federal law. <\/p>\n

That leaves about $61.6 million in new money, according to a city analysis. A half share of that is $30.8 million. <\/p>\n

The city already plans to raise its pension contribution by more than that amount, according to Tolbert and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland.<\/p>\n

But the proposed budget <\/a>also calls for raising the starting salary for officers to $81,232 from $75,397. There is some debate as to whether that meets the charter\u2019s requirement that Dallas be in the top 5 of \u201cstarting salary and non-pension benefits\u201d among cities of 50,000 or more in the five-county area. City management believes the city is, but this is a moving target. Will Dallas have to do a perpetual analysis? That isn\u2019t reasonable and isn\u2019t called for in Prop U.<\/p>\n

The proposition also doesn\u2019t state a point in time for Dallas to hit 4,000 officers<\/a> from the current staff of about 3,100. <\/a>Tolbert plans to have more than 3,600 on the payroll by 2027. That\u2019s moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

In addition to raising starting salaries, the city plans to adjust all officer pay upwards. All told, that\u2019s another $25.5 million investment in pay, not counting the pension adjustment. <\/p>\n

A lot of the money Tolbert plans to spend on salaries isn\u2019t new. It\u2019s coming from the city eliminating open jobs in other departments and turning the funding over to police.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s over and above the requirements under Prop U. But it\u2019s what residents want, and credit to city management for delivering it. <\/p>\n

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and <\/b>submit your letter here<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at <\/b>letters@dallasnews.com<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas voters were clear with City Hall last November that the police force needs to grow and police…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,4219,1596,14840,14841,14842,6083,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-171124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-city-council","12":"tag-dallas-city-hall","13":"tag-dallas-police","14":"tag-editorials","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-tx","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115082483685948620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}