{"id":209944,"date":"2025-09-08T10:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/209944\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:20:11","slug":"streets-front-of-mind-in-city-budget-discussions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/209944\/","title":{"rendered":"Streets front of mind in City budget discussions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A joint budget town hall for Districts 2 and 14 took place Aug. 25 at the Samuell-Grand Recreation Center. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.<\/p>\n

Recent City budget<\/a> town hall meetings held in East Dallas included plenty of talk about local streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maintenance of infrastructure was the highest priority in terms of major categories of City services, according to the City\u2019s 2025 Community Survey<\/a>. Residents also placed infrastructure and streets as the second biggest problem in Dallas behind homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, a District 2 resident addressed this during the public comment section of the City Council\u2019s Sept. 3 meeting<\/a> when he said, \u201cOur streets aren\u2019t getting fixed any faster,\u201d despite the money he and other neighbors pay in property taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, what I think I\u2019m hearing around my colleagues is our streets, we need to put more money into keeping our streets and alleys cleaned up and maintained,\u201d Council member Paula Blackmon said at District 9\u2019s budget town hall. \u201cD-9 is one of the worst in the city, and it\u2019s only going to get worse if you look at it through the longevity of the next three years. So we\u2019re going to need to put investment in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the proposed budget, the City plans to invest in street improvements and maintenance of more lane miles than last fiscal year. This is in addition to advancing the Vision Zero Action Plan to address traffic-related deaths and severe injury crashes, and implementing the first phase of the bike plan by designing and preparing to construct more bike lanes. For Vision Zero, the plan is to leverage money from other entities to make improvements identified in corridor studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are devoting substantial resources to our Vision Zero programs, specifically for traffic calming measures,\u201d Council member Paul Ridley said at the joint town hall meeting for Districts 2 and 14. Later during that town hall, Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Moreno added that Vision Zero is about \u201cmaking sure that we\u2019re not going to police our way out the way our streets are designed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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District 9\u2019s budget town hall meeting took place Aug. 28 at Lochwood Branch Library. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.<\/p>\n

In the Sept. 3 briefing, City Council favored an amendment to move a portion of funds dedicated to professional\/personal development conference fees to instead be used for transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve been told across the city is that street maintenance is actually the No. 1 priority of our residents,\u201d Council member Cara Mendelsohn said during the meeting while introducing her amendment. \u201cThis is the first year I recall that public safety wasn\u2019t overwhelmingly No. 1. I think the public realizes that we\u2019re taking care of public safety, that they see that we have this commitment, and so therefore, here comes street maintenance. A budget tells you what your priorities are. People can tell you what they care about, but when you see the budget, you know, and right here, we need to be focusing more on street maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendelsohn also presented amendments to move funds from Office of Government Affairs staffing, City Council offices staffing and the human resources department to street maintenance, but those failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amendments were not formally voted on but are recommendations from the council. The 2025-26 budget and tax rate are expected to be adopted on Sept. 17.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A joint budget town hall for Districts 2 and 14 took place Aug. 25 at the Samuell-Grand Recreation…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":209945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-209944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-tx","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115168178279438824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209944","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=209944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}