After nearly a month-long delay, the city of Dallas will likely no longer withhold its payment to Dallas County for jail services due to the lack of performance measures in its contract.
The city’s public safety committee on Tuesday voted to recommend the City Council pay its October installment of an $8.7 million annual contract for housing people arrested by Dallas Police and processing them in the county’s Lew Sterrett Justice Center.
The committee also recommended city staff work with county officials to develop and include performance measures in the agreement – a process that could take six months, said Dominique Artis, the city’s chief of public safety.
The discussion came after the City Council voted last month to send the payment deal to the public safety committee for further review amid concerns led by council member Cara Mendelsohn about delays police experience during the intake process.
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At Tuesday’s meeting, County Commissioners John Wiley Price and Andrew Sommerman stressed the need for the performance measures to go both ways as they said the county has held up their end of the agreement. Sommerman said the county is open to developing metrics, but those cannot hold up the city paying what it owes.
“What is before you is a payment that is due and then there is a future negotiation of a future contract,” Sommerman said. “These two things should not be conflated with each other nor should they be leveraged against each other. That’s not good partnership.”
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The late payment will result in the city paying the county an interest charge, but Artis could not confirm how much that would cost.
Deputy Police Chief Monica Igo said she is exploring four options for tracking police officers’ time from booking people in jail to when they get back on the streets to determine where backups are occurring. Currently the city can confirm when an officer arrives and departs the jail but cannot determine how long it takes them to accompany people through booking, during the medical intake process or whether the person must be taken to Parkland hospital for treatment.
“I want to implement performance metrics that are reasonable,” Igo said. “I don’t want the officers to feel they are being rushed like we’re keeping track of them.”
While the current $8.7 million contract is up 11% over last year, Price said that amount was negotiated down from $9.3 million in what he said was the county’s true costs.
“The city is definitely getting a bargain,” Price said.
The county and city fell into a similar dispute in 2022 when Dallas withheld payments for more than a year citing overcharges under an outdated contract. The stalemate ended later that year with a new payment formula based on actual usage, prioritization of Dallas detainees and a quarterly committee to address ongoing issues.
Mendelsohn said former city staff were supposed to finalize and implement performance measures into the contract at that time, but “it didn’t happen.”
“It’s not OK to just have a rate without any kind of performance measures,” Mendelsohn said.
In July the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found Dallas County noncompliant for keeping two men in holding cells for about two and a half days each — beyond the 48-hour maximum allowed.
The narrowly focused inspection — which was triggered by complaints — followed failed inspections in 2018, 2021 and 2022 for neglecting to conduct regular observations of suicidal people, failing to provide hygiene items, faulty observation logs and other violations.