Amid budgetary constraints and federal directives to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Dallas officials have developed a plan to help them decide when to take the lead in addressing resident needs and when not to.
City officials presented the products of their nearly yearlong effort to sift through policies, laws and programs to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders from earlier this year. The president’s directives require recipients of federal contracts or grants not to operate or support any programs that give benefits or contracts on the basis of race, sex, national origin or religion.
The orders don’t explicitly ask cities to discontinue equity programs, but city officials, who have $980 million in federally funded projects in the pipeline, said they were pre-empting potential disruptions and were using the executive order to improve their data collection and response to the city’s most pressing needs.
“Even as Dallas grows, many households are continuing to struggle,” said Jessica Galleshaw, deputy director of the housing and community empowerment department. “We know that nearly one in five children in our community live in a household that struggles to meet basic needs. Additionally, we’re lagging behind state and national averages when it comes to important things like home ownership rates.”
Political Points
Recent changes involve consolidating the city’s equity office, housing, homelessness solutions and community care departments under one banner. The city reworked its racial equity plan to suspend a tool it uses to measure racial and ethnic disparities. It also ended its business inclusion and development plan, which gave added weight to contracts with minority- and women-owned businesses.
The two programs were replaced by new iterations, which the council was briefed on Wednesday.
For its small business development program, Dallas tweaked existing vendor contracts to comply with federal directives. The program applies to goods and professional services, as well as construction contracts.
The city’s new regional policy attempts to ease fixed rules and ties benchmarks to specific goals of the contract. For instance, the previous program required an eligible business to have 51% minority or female ownership. But the new rules replaced that criteria with a focus on businesses having their principal location in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, as well as the size of the businesses. Officials said they wanted to make the program nimble and in line with the market.
The new program widens the pool of vendors by expanding the types of certifications a small business can hold. The former policy did not allow a small business certification under the Texas Comptroller’s Office that extends access to disabled- and veteran-owned businesses.
Officials changed the 2017 “drivers of poverty” program to “drivers of opportunity.” The older program was based on nine issues that worsened poverty in the city: decline in middle-income households, unaffordable transportation, lack of homeownership and exorbitant rents, an increase in impoverished neighborhoods, high teen birth rates and lack of educational attainment and English language proficiency, among others.
The city cannot do it all, officials said. In January, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert convened leaders from local universities, hospitals, business groups, transit agencies and philanthropic groups to assess areas where the city could pull back and offer support through collaboration or advocacy.
“We will partner as needed. The resources will come outside the city, but it’s really about how we support the overall ecosystem that really does drive opportunity for people across the city,” Tolbert said.
For instance, Galleshaw said the city would best serve as a collaborator rather than a leader in areas such as affordable transportation, where the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency could be at the forefront, with the city offering support through the public works and transportation department.
The city sees itself leading efforts to bring more affordable housing to the city, elevate infrastructure, maintain community assets and cultural hubs, bolster economic growth, provide a clean, safe environment and public safety, which involves trust-based policing and protection from crime.
Officials said the data-driven work will be reflected in a dashboard that shows where the city is putting in the work.
“We heard that loud and clear from our city manager, who charged us to focus, and from our City Council, as we brief this, that we should drive in our lane, and that’s what we intend to do through these drivers of opportunity,” said Assistant City Manager Liz Cedillo-Pereira.