whether Dallas should move out of its City Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Council member\u00a0Cara Mendelsohn said including the 911 center with the other public safety projects could sink the whole package.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 911 center is a poison pill for this entire proposition,\u201d\u00a0Mendelsohn said. \u201cIf it goes in together, this bond will not pass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mendelsohn also accused city staff of \u201cplaying games\u201d by placing the 911 center in the same proposal as the police academy, which led to push back from Tolbert.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continuation of the comments as if staff has done something wrong by bringing this item today and that we\u2019re playing games with the City Council is unacceptable and it\u2019s not fair and I will not continue to sit and let those comments be made as if we\u2019re doing something intentionally,\u201d\u00a0Tolbert said.<\/p>\n
Council member Gay\u00a0Donnell Willis, who expressed support in continuing to explore the proposal, said council members still need to consider how the projects could be grouped for voters. But she said Wednesday\u2019s vote was about gathering more information, not making a final decision.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s really just to give us flexibility that we may never use,\u201d Willis said.<\/p>\n
The $500 million pension bond proposal would work differently from borrowing money for buildings. The city would borrow money and put it into the pension system, then repay the debt over time.<\/p>\n
Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland told council members Dallas doesn\u2019t need pension obligation bonds to fix the pension system, which already has a state-approved 30-year funding plan.<\/p>\n
He said the bonds would make sense only if market conditions improve enough for the city to borrow money at a lower cost than the pension system could earn by investing it.<\/p>\n
If voters approved the bonds, the city wouldn\u2019t have to issue them immediately, Ireland said.<\/p>\n
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Council member Paul\u00a0Ridley urged the city not to move forward with the proposal now. He said residents are already seeing budget pressure and may question whether City Hall is being \u201cfiscally wise\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m opposed to the staff spending a lot of hours getting ready for a bond election that is doomed to failure,\u201d\u00a0Ridley said.<\/p>\n
Ireland said the city has limited borrowing capacity each year. If voters approve new public safety bonds and council members prioritize those projects, some projects already earmarked in the voter-approved 2024 bond program could be pushed back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior recruit class seen in a classroom at the Dallas Police Academy in Feburary 2026. Juan Figueroa\/Staff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,94315,87998,88000,88952,89139],"class_list":["post-350457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-dallas-fire-rescue","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-city-council","tag-tp-dallas-city-hall","tag-tp-dallas-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}