D: Tom, what about you?
DUNNING: I was trying to think of that while Laura was answering her question. I really can’t think…. You know, he and I don’t always agree on issues but I can’t think of anything that just jumps out at me.
D: We’ve written recently that Dallas needs to change the city-manager form of government. Do you think we need a strong- mayor system?
DUNNING: I think we need to review this every five years, 10 years. I think it probably ought to be put back on the agenda.
MILLER: I think we need to review city government to make sure that it is fulfilling its role. To say the city-manager form of government is a sacred cow, I think, is wrong…. I think that the majority of the council is prepared to form a charter-review commission, just to look at the issue, to have a good, healthy dialogue citywide. You know, there are very few cities, top 10 cities, that have a city manager form of government.
D: There is a lot of speculation about whether the city has excess unused debt capacity. What do you think about that?
MILLER: I think the reason that it’s a discussion point right now is because we are in a recession, and we are historically very conservative at City Hall about how much debt we flow, and because we do think that having a AAA bond rating, which most large cities don’t have, is a point of pride for Dallas. Because of all those things, we are looking at doing a bond program in September that’s $200 million, which is teeny-tiny [when] we have a $4 billion needs list. You have to look at perhaps some other options. The AAA bond rating is a point of pride of Dallas, but having a AA bond rating is okay, too.
DUNNING: That’s one of those sacred cows, [but] I think we definitely should look at going to AA. It is my understanding that it would increase our capacity. We could do more, and, you know, pride is a great thing, but sometimes your pride gets you in trouble. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. If we could generate more dollars, especially, as Laura mentioned, in the time of a recession, I think it’s a plus. One, it’s cheaper to borrow money, and two, it could help stimulate the economy here.
D: Let’s talk about downtown. We counted 14 abandoned buildings, many owned by foreign investors. What would you do about it?
DUNNING: First of all, I think downtown is, outside of DFW Airport, our most important asset. I think a strong city has to have a strong downtown. I think we ought to do everything we can to make downtown Dallas strong…. I think that we need to use incentives, just like the city council did with the Mercantile Building. I think where we have an abandoned building, where we have properties that are not being used-or anything that needs to be totally revitalized-I think we ought to use those incentives to make that work. I think it is so important that we have a strong downtown. I think we ought to have tree-lined walkways on Main Street all the way over to the arts district. I think completion of the arts district would be nice. My focus would be on downtown to make sure that downtown is strong and to use incentives, which we have.
MILLER: What we need to do downtown is have a plan of action, which we don’t have. The most disappointing thing about our economic development efforts at City Hall is that we are reactive instead of proactive. So we wait for developers to come in with their projects and they want incentives, they want cheap land, or they want a pass on their property taxes, or they want fee rebates. So we scattershoot all these incentives and we don’t have any kind of master plan for downtown…. I think the city has to offer incentives, perhaps, to the nonprofit sector in Dallas. If you will come down and move downtown, we will buy a building; we will clean it out if you will agree to come down here for 20 years and sign a lease. There’s got to be a specific plan. There’s no plan now.
DUNNING: You see, I think there is a plan, though, at least for part of it. There’s a plan for Main Street. It would be great to have an overall greater plan. The cost, though, is going to be prohibitive to do everything. You can’t do it all at one time. You do need to phase it in. And I’m just saying that if you can get where there’s building owners, we can get somebody else to come in there and look into redoing a building or what’s now a vacant lot, even building a new one. Whatever we can do to get more development in downtown-more good development-I think we need to move on it.
D: Laura, in 60 seconds, why would you be a better mayor than Tom Dunning?
MILLER: Well, I do not compare myself to Tom, who is a friend of mine and who I think is wonderful.
D: Just try.
MILLER: I’m going to tell you why I’m going to be a great mayor for me. It doesn’t have to do with anybody else. I have been there for three and a half years. I have had my fingernails dirty for three and a half years. I do all my homework. I use all my tools as an investigative reporter that I honed over 20 years to get to the meat of the matter at City Hall, to get to what I believe is the right thing to do. I ask all the hard questions. I’m very energetic. I know exactly what needs to be accomplished for citizens and neighborhoods and taxpayers and families, and I’m ready to go to work. That’s why.
D: Tom, why do you feel you would be a better mayor than Laura Miller?
DUNNING: Let me say, I won’t say “better than Laura Miller.€VbCrLf I’ll stay with Laura on this, too. Why I would be a good mayor and why I have so many people supporting me, people I have worked with on boards and commissions, people who I didn’t even get along with necessarily are supporting me because they know I listen. They know I encourage dissent. I encourage discussion, but at the end of the day, I can build a coalition to task what we have been discussing, and that’s what being mayor is.
D: Laura, is he intimating that you can’t get a majority?
DUNNING: I’m not saying that. I’m just saying…
MILLER: I just want to point out that I could not have gotten a stronger ethics code or a Dallas Ethics Commission or saved four inner-city swimming pools or gotten, two months ago, $750,000 for the park department unanimously unless I had the support and goodwill and respect of my fellow council members.
D: I’ll ask you again, why should someone vote for you?
DUNNING: You heard it. That’s why I am running. Whether Miss Miller was running…
MILLER: Laura. You can call me Laura.
With that, we had to call time-out.
Click Next to read the full hour’s transcript.
Mayoral Debate:
Laura Miller & Tom Dunning
November 30, 2001
D: So, let’s just start off. It’s very simple. What’s the first thing you’re going to do as mayor?
LAURA: My first thing as mayor is to do the small things that make a big difference in people’s lives. Smooth roads, green parks, great schools, safe secure neighborhoods.
D: That’s a beautiful statement, but what’s the very first thing you’re going to do as mayor?
LAURA: That’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I’m going to focus on.
D: Okay. Tom, what’s the first thing you’re going to do as mayor?
TOM: Do you want my statement, too?
What I would do, the first thing I would do as mayor is I will call a meeting of the neighborhood presidents from the various neighborhood associations and we’ll have an all day meeting, just like we did with Dallas Together about 13 years ago. And the reason is that people find that they don’t have access to City Hall, or they feel like when they do finally find access, there is no accountability. So that would be one.
And also to discuss literally what the best practices are in various neighborhoods. What works over here? What works here? What doesn’t work? So that we can have a win-win situation with developers and neighbors and neighborhood associations. And so that’s one thing that I have made a commitment that I would do within the first 30 days.
Do you want all the things that I would try to do in the first 30 days? Or just the first thing?
D: No, no, no, just the first thing you plan to do.
TOM: Okay.
LAURA: Can I respond to that?
D: Yes.
LAURA: I don’t have to call a neighborhood meeting because I’ve been working with neighborhoods for 31/2 years and I know what neighborhoods want. Neighborhoods all across the city want basically the same thing. Certain neighborhoods in North Dallas have issues that they don’t have in Oak Cliff, but overall neighborhoods want great schools, they want smooth roads, they want green parks, and they want police and fire acceptable to make them feel safe. That’s what they want. I already know that because I have already worked with neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods are the backbone of the city.
TOM: You see, that’s where I think that Laura and I differ is because I want to hear what these different neighborhood people say. We had a press conference today at lunch, I mean at a meeting, and you know everybody had something slightly different to say. I mean, I am a past president of my neighborhood homeowners association. And we even sued University Park when I was president of it because they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. We lost in court, but we did it. But the fact is that a neighborhood may be doing something different in Prestonwood that has worked for them that a person that has an East Dallas neighborhood, they may say, “My gosh, I never thought of that.” Or people I have talked to, one person was an architect today who is down there all the time. Well, he made a comment, he said here’s the number to call and two neighborhood presidents said “I never knew that; I’ve been calling the wrong number.” So just we can learn from each other, so my thought is that we go through an all-day meeting. We learn what works, what doesn’t work; we get ideas. I mean, that’s what me being mayor is all about or being an elected person. It’s listening and trying to help others so they don’t go down the same road and hit a dead end.
D: Tom, Laura mentioned one of her four things was police. Are you concerned about the current state of the police department and leadership, and if so, what are you going to do about it?
TOM: Let me go back and answer just because I did not give an opening statement. Just so you know what my goals are would be at the end of five years, five and a half years, or nine years or whatever-a year and a half if I’m kicked out of office. My goal would be to be able to look back and say, okay, what does the city look like today versus what it looked like when I took over. And I was talking about last summer, back to basics, a city that works. But we’re basically saying similar things is that the word potholes is used a lot but really are the streets safer? Are the parks cleaner? Are we putting enough money in our parks? Are we filling the potholes? Are we filling the potholes in the alleys? Is our police force efficient? Are the police well paid? Are we still losing them to the suburban cities? Those are the questions.
Basically, all this comes back to is that the city of Dallas, I think, should be about jobs, too. We need to make sure that we are attracting not only other businesses or corporations that may move here, law firms, whatever, but we need to be attractive for those who already are here. We need to make sure that they think this is a safe city, a clean city, because they produce jobs.
We also need to look at education, and I don’t just talk about doing it; I’ve been involved in it. As you know, I headed the last DISD bond. As you know, I received a Lynch Award for taking over the failing University Center. I also chaired the first University North Texas System Center, the one that raised the money, System Center Committee that raised the money. I was the fundraiser to match what the state said they would do if the University of North Texas moved.
And then finally to take a look at the Trinity, one [hitting?], get the dirt flying. But bring people together to make sure that at least we have a majority of people going in the right direction so it doesn’t sit here forever and forever. Those are pretty simple but those are the issues that I see are basic.
Now, back to the leadership of the police department. What I would do is-again, one of the first things I would do-is I would get the police association, all the police association leaders, and I’m going to tell them this is that we would put everything on the table-just not, we want to increase our pay equal to Plano or the other suburbs, but what I would do is we’d say, but you don’t ever look at the pension plan because the pension plan isn’t important-I think we ought to put everything on the table, the pension plan, sick leave, vacation time. If we’re going to be comparing apples to apples, we need to compare it across the way. I mean businesses, as you know, change their compensation packages once every eight or ten years. They have somebody come in and do a study. And I think if the police and the fire department personnel are unhappy, then I think we ought to have a look at it. But nothing’s off the table. We aren’t just going to look at starting salaries. We’re going to look at everything. I think this absentee policy or the sick leave is ridiculous that was just instituted.
As far as the leadership of the police department, that is the city manager’s responsibility. The city council should hold the city manager responsible for that department as well as all departments.
D: How do you feel about Terrell Bolton?
TOM: I personally like Terrell Bolton. There are some things I think all of us wish that he had not done or done the way that he did it. And I think if there are enough councilpersons who are upset with Terrell, then they need to bring that forward to the city manager.
I think that he got off to a shaky start and he has been somewhat shaky since then. I think he’s trying, but as mayor and then the former government we have today, it is the city manager’s responsibility and, excuse me, it is the city council’s responsibility to go behind closed doors with the city manager on any personal issues.
I don’t have all the knowledge. I haven’t been in those closed-door meetings. I know what I read in D Magazine and then the Dallas Morning News.
D: So we know what kind of source that is. [laughter]
LAURA: From day one, the police chief promotion scenario has been a fiasco. We shouldn’t have demoted the assistant chiefs if there was a liability risk, which we did. We shouldn’t have settled before going to first base in the court system because subsequently said we didn’t have to pay the money. And three, we shouldn’t have borrowed $8.3 million at 4 percent interest over 5 years to pay off the settlement, which is going to cost us an additional $1 million in interest payments. So it is a large problem with many aspects to it.
D: Can you name a couple of the aspects besides the ones you just did?
LAURA: Those are the main problems. I mean if there is a risk to the city financially, then I think it is the job of the city manager and the city attorney to either not do it or to come to the council and say, “What do you think? Here are the risks.” Neither of which happened.
D: The second part of my question was what are you going to do about it?
LAURA: That scenario can’t happen again, and the city attorney and the city manager are appointed by the council. And so the city manager and the city attorney are going to have to know from the city council and the mayor that this isn’t going to happen again-some of which has happened but only behind closed doors so far. Secondly, I would like to meet with the chief when I’m elected, just to go through the entire thing from A to Z, which hasn’t happened. I would like to meet with Madeleine Johnson to talk about what happened.
D: Has it happened with you?
LAURA: It might have happened with any of us. It just hasn’t happened. And you know, from meeting to meeting some of the facts change, so there’s never really been a thorough explanation or accounting of what happened in that three-year period.
TOM: That surprises me. I’m really surprised that the city council would not have said, “We want to have this meeting behind closed doors because you are talking about personnel.”
LAURA: The only way, Tom, that we can put something on a briefing agenda, if the mayor or the city manager doesn’t do it themselves, is if five council members ask for that. So I attempted at some point in all this to see if my colleagues would, five of us would, request to put on a public briefing agenda ,and I could not get more than one other signature for that. Then some of the council members suggested that if I tried to get the five signatures for a private meeting away from the public and the media, they might be willing to sign it. So I attempted to do that, although my preference was to have a public meeting.
TOM: Even when you’re talking about personnel?
LAURA: Yeah, I think since all of this has been aired in the media, I thought it would be a good idea to ask the chief and get in all his witnesses. “Take us through this. Tell us your reasoning. Tell us what happened.” And I couldn’t get the five signatures for a private meeting. I was then asked to prevail on the mayor to see if he would put it on an agenda, and he explored it and came back to me and said that the manager did not want to do that. He did not want his chief to have to talk to the council. So, therefore, it never happened.
D: Tom, you recall that famously, or infamously, that Laura’s house was picketed by protestors and her complaint at the time was the slow response of the police department. How does that make you feel?
TOM: First of all, I was not aware that it was a slow response time. The first thing I would ask is what is normal during a protest? I mean, are the police out there, I mean, all the time during a protest? I would be concerned, quite frankly, if my house was being protested and the police were not called out there or that they did not respond. That’s the first time I heard about it. I thought, “I don’t mind a protest, but I think a protest where they have signs with bad language, posters which just shouldn’t be using words that shouldn’t be said or harassing one’s children, whether yours or Ron Kirk’s, is terribly wrong.” I called up one of the protestors on both instances and said, “You are making a mistake.” Both times the protestors did not want to hear from me, but I really believe you have every right to protest but don’t get in the face of family members and don’t put up signs.
LAURA: Thank you, Tom, for doing that. I didn’t know you had done that.
TOM: No, well, I mean, I feel that way. I felt€¦.
LAURA: I know you would feel that way.
D: Is that a fair characterization of what happened, the way I asked that question?
LAURA: Yeah. The major problem with this was the police enforcement.
D: Let me ask you a question. Is that going to prejudice your ability to handle your employees as mayor?
LAURA: Which employees? The police employees? No. The problem isn’t that the police€¦.
D: How about Terrell Bolton?
LAURA: The police officers were wonderful and, thank goodness, they were in my front yard, because that’s what made my kids feel safe. The problem was that the officers who were out there had some difficulty enforcing the picketing lines. I mean the number one picketing law, which I learned through this situation, is that if you are picketing someone’s home, you have to be 200 feet from your target. These picketers were on the sidewalk in my front yard. They were within inches of the target.
D: You have to be 200 feet from €¦.
LAURA: From the property line.
D: But that’s the entire portion.
LAURA: Right, right, from the property line.
TOM: And the police were not enforcing?
LAURA: Well, the issue was, after it was over, the officers-who were so nice and made us feel very safe-said to me privately, “We were told no citations, no arrests, so, Miss Miller, if you want to pursue this-those violations-you need to do this yourself.”
D: One might suspect fairly that that would tend to have you form a predisposition of some sort toward the police chief.
LAURA: You know, everyone gets disappointed with everybody some time, and no one was hurt. And I agree with Tom that Terrell Bolton is a very nice, charming guy, and I would look forward to sitting down and talking to him.
That particular issue was resolved thanks to the Dallas city council and the mayor, Ron Kirk. Because when all of this information came to the horseshoe the following Wednesday and I told everybody what was going on-including the fact that I had just had a town hall meeting in the middle of all this and that the police officers who always come to the town hall meeting when you ask them to didn’t show up. Okay, so there was a disconnect in my request to the city manager’s office to send police officers. But all that came out at the horseshoe, all of the Dallas city council and the mayor were very firm and said, “We will not stand for this. This is not acceptable. This is going to stop.” And the protests stopped.
TOM: Did the police show up? I’m still not sure. You made it sound like the police did not respond.
D: No, no, I didn’t, Tom. That’s why I asked whether I had a fair characterization. I thought about enforcement.
TOM: Okay, I thought that they didn’t show up.
LAURA: It took a little while for them to get there. It was surprising to me that it took some time to get there because at 7 a.m. sharp, when they started, there were bullhorns, which are totally illegal. And so it took quite a lot of time for the police to come, and the minute that the police came, they all threw the bullhorns in the pick-up trucks. So they know the laws; they know the rules.
D: Laura, your disagreements with Ron Kirk are famous. We want you to pick out one thing in the last six years that Mayor Kirk did that you would have done differently.
LAURA: You know, I think that the thing that just comes instantly to mind is I wish that he had worked with me to save the swimming pools, because it was very difficult for me to go through all that. It was two months of just 24 hours a day beating my head against a wall to try to figure out a way to keep these swimming pools open in the poorest neighborhoods in Dallas. And it just shouldn’t have been that hard. As the leader of the council, if he had said, “You know what, Laura’s got a good point. We should save these swimming pools. Let’s help her out,” it would have happened instantly, because the minute he did decide to save the pools-after we raised the $100,000 privately-the rest of the council all went with him. So that’s the thing I think about.
D: Tom, what about you?
TOM: I was trying to think of that while Laura was answering her question. I really can’t think. You know, he and I don’t always agree on issues, but I can’t think of anything that just jumps out at me.
D: We’ve written recently that Dallas needs to change the city-manager form of government. Do you think we need a strong-mayor system?
TOM: I think that we need to review this every five years, every 10 years; I think it probably ought to be put back on the agenda.
D: Who should review it?
TOM: The City of Dallas. It think it ought to be a€¦as you know, you have raised the issue. I have raised the issue before and I think we ought to look at the pros and cons. You know, it’s been one of those sacred eggs or whatever you call it that you don’t want to break it because it’s worked for us in the past.
D: It’s always been a sacred egg to me. If there’s such a thing as a sacred egg.
TOM: Whatever the word is. Anyway, it’s a fragile thing. Times have changed. I think we need to look to make sure that what we are doing today works for us, for a city like Dallas. We are still the largest city under a city-manager form of government. It’s something that I would say that we ought to look at because I thin-whether it’s me, Ms. Miller, Mayor Kirk, whoever is mayor-I think the mayor is the stronger; I think that they put themselves in a stronger position and a strong mayor.
D: How do you look at it?
TOM: How do I look at what?
D: You say we ought to look at it. How do you look at it? How would you propose€¦?
TOM: What I would propose is I would look at how other cities of similar size are doing. You know, you look at a city like Pittsburgh. The mayor was in town several weeks ago-and what that mayor’s been able to accomplish. You look at other cities, both with city managers and€¦. Are we doing things right?
One of the things that I would question€¦one of the things I would do as mayor, I want to know what the best practices are in other cities. Just not if it’s a city-manager form of government. But one of the issues that we have constantly is-wherever I’ve heard from town hall meetings to meeting with people-since I’ve been running for mayor is code enforcement.
Our code enforcement department has been bad for years. I was told that it was fixed or they completely redid it three years ago, but I’m hearing complaints, whether it’s from apartment owners or from normal citizens, like I was sitting around a table here. I want to find about what cities really have this down pat. Who is doing it well? Are they using their city attorneys to enforce the code? Are they bringing in outside firms?
So, in other words, I think we need to review city government to make sure that it is fulfilling what its role is and that should be responsive to the citizens and to say that the city-manager form of government is a sacred cow I think is wrong. I think we ought to look at it. I’m not saying that we would change it, but I think we ought to look at it.
LAURA: And then I proposed to my fellow council members that we put council pay on the ballot. And it took a long time for all of us to get to that place€¦. Kirk said to me, “You know, I’ve been there, done there; I don’t want to do that again.” Other council members said, “It’s self-serving. It doesn’t look right.” But eventually a majority of them agreed with me that we should have a briefing and discuss it and put it on the ballot, which we did.
But one of the things that we also discussed was what about establishing a charter review commission to decide whether or not the city charter ought to change, whether we should look at changing the city-manager form of government to a strong-mayor system. And principally because one of the real champions of getting pay on the ballot was Max Wells, former council member Max Wells.
He was very helpful in that he got all the various Chambers of Commerce to support us in that initiative. And he was very clear with me and he said, “I do not want to change the form of government ,”and, “I will go and get all of these chambers to support this, but I really don’t want that to be an issue at this time.” I said, “I agree; that’s fine.”
So we did pay and I think that a majority of the council is prepared to form a charter review commission, just to look at the issue, to have a good, healthy dialogue citywide. Each council member would get an appointee-and that’s 15 members-just like we did the ethics review commission, which created the new ethics code and the new ethics commission. And the charter review commission would have a very healthy dialogue and would survey other cities and bring people in to talk about what’s good and what’s bad about the city-manager form of government versus other forms of government. But we are€¦. You know there are very few cities-top ten cities-that have a city-manager form of government ,and, I think, Phoenix.
TOM: That’s it.
LAURA: I think it’s a very critical issue, and I think it’s long overdue that we have the discussion.
D: There is a lot of speculation about whether the city has excess unused debt capacity. What do you think about that?
LAURA: I think the reason that it’s a discussion point right now is because we are in a recession. And since we are historically very conservative at City Hall about how much debt we flow. And because we do think that having a AAA bond rating, which most large cities don’t have, is a point of pride for Dallas. Because of all those things, we are looking at doing a bond program in September that’s $200 million, which is teeny tiny, and $200 million when we have a $4 billion needs list doesn’t get you very far. So the question becomes what do you do and then what do you put on a bond program?
One of the hot-button issues is the performing arts center, which everybody wants and which is a really good model of a public-private partnership because the private sector is willing to raise $200 million. We will put up $37 million; that’s the request. That’s a wonderful deal and everyone knows that the National Garden and the Meyerson€¦. But it’s very important to finish the arts district and to give it synergy and to do this building. And the small arts groups and the large arts groups are together on this and the question becomes, in a $200 million bond package, when 52 percent of all the citizens who are surveyed citywide want their roads fixed, do you do one quarter of your bond program for one building?
So then if you want to do that, you have to look at perhaps some other options, one of which is-and I was surprised to discuss with the chairman of First Southwest, which is our financial adviser and he mentioned to me at lunch recently, you know, a AAA bond rating is a point of pride of Dallas, but having a AA bond rating is okay, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. You want to have larger debt capacity, if you want to fix more projects. If you want more construction projects, you can do that. But maybe Dallas should look at not having a AAA bond rating anymore.
I don’t know the answer to that. I think that is also worth having a conversation with our financial advisers because they are a very big company and they know what they’re talking about. And I think that conversation ought to be had with the entire city council, the repercussions of doing that.
TOM: Again, that’s one of those sacred cows, and I think we definitely should look at going to AA. It is my understanding that it would increase our capacity. We could do more. And you know pride is a great thing, but sometimes your pride gets you in trouble. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. If we could generate more dollars, if we can do more at the city, especially as Laura mentioned in the time of a recession, I think it’s a plus. One, it’s cheaper to borrow money and, two, it could help stimulate the economy here.
D: I know exactly what Nancy Nichols is thinking right now. I want to ask you each a question. Is that going to increase my taxes, if we lower the bond rating?
TOM: What I’ve been told is it is so small between a AAA and a AA. It’s more pride than actually dollars.
D: Do you have an answer for that?
LAURA: No€¦. [laughter] Sometimes I think that citizens see these bond packages and yet they never see the impact of those bond packages. And their streets stay the same; their library stays the same; the rec center still has leaks in the roof; and so it is so tempting to me to have a bond package this year that would be just for those. And I’ll ask the city staff what would it cost to get all of roads up to a 100 percent acceptable level. Right now 21 percent of our roads are unacceptable, so if you go to 100 percent, every single street in this city is fixed.
D: Could you please clarify something for me? I don’t want to interrupt your thought. Who says 21 percent of our roads are unacceptable or that 79 percent of our roads are acceptable?
LAURA: The public works department, and they have a formula for figuring this out. Now, I’ll tell you, I have been down roads that they say are acceptable, and I don’t think they were acceptable. Their standard for what is an acceptable road is basically, I think, means driving down it without losing any hubcaps, okay? It could be, to give you a shorthand version, but their number that they come up is that 79 percent of the roads are acceptable now. But to get us to 100 percent€¦.
D: Wait a minute. Twenty-one percent€¦
LAURA: Are unacceptable. 79 percent are acceptable. For us to get to 100 percent would cost, they tell me-which they figured out two weeks ago for me-is $221 million, which is the size of this bond package. Now the question becomes-and it’s the balancing question-do you go and do what all the citizens most want? When you do these surveys, 52 percent wanted the roads fixed. The next level down was police and fire facilities up 19 percent. And everything else was way below that.
So the question becomes, what do you do? Do you do what’s great for the arts district and do fewer roads? Do you do all the roads in the city and then the citizens decide if they want to spend extra tax money to do the animal shelter, which we desperately need?
But the performing arts center which is a wonderful project which we have to do. All these other projects that people care about€¦. And so part of the problem that Tom or I are going to have to figure out is what do you do with a teeny, tiny $200 million bond package that makes the most sense to citizens? You know, that is what the staff is saying, the manager’s office is saying, that’s the amount, without raising taxes€¦.
D: With a AAA bond rating?
LAURA: With a AAA bond rating.
D: I think we just heard what could be characterized as the pothole populism to the roads, that’s what people want. Then I also heard a mixture of “Gosh, we’ve got to do big projects, too. So we’ve got to do some of these things that may be way down the list.” I may have mischaracterized this, but go ahead.
TOM: First of all, I must have talked to the city manager a short time after you did, because he said, “You know we’re at 79 or 80 percent, and for us to go to 100 percent, it would be so costly.” And he said, “Don’t forget we have $67 million left from the last bond program.” And I don’t know if some of that is being spent now or will be spent over the next two years. No matter what you raise in bonds, you aren’t going to be able to do that in one year. I don’t think you can, or they would have done the $67 million that when they issue bonds, they never€¦when you issue $200 million of bonds, you aren’t going to spend all that money in one year. It’s usually over a period of three or four years. That’s like we’ve done out at the airport, but the point is that it does need to be balanced.
A concern, by the way, that I have-and I had it when I was on the park board-over 20 years ago, the last bond issue they had I said, “I’m not going to participate in this bond issue unless there is money set aside to maintain these buildings after and maintain the parks after we build them”, because what was happening.€¦ We had buildings we could not use; we had rec. centers that were having to close early because we didn’t have enough personnel. And yet here we were going out building more. It made no sense at all and I still feel the same way. Although I think the city does-and you can tell me on this-but I think the city does require that they set up, if they’re building a new building, that there is something in the ongoing budget to maintain it.
But it is still a concern, as Ms. Miller said, that we aren’t giving enough money to the parks department now. And yet we need to build more soccer fields, more libraries, more rec. centers, so I think if we could increase this€¦and I don’t think we are going to be able to get all the roads done in one year or two years. I think the goal should be over the five-year period, maybe bring it up to as high as we can get it. I mean, already under the city council, what did you go from six to ten pothole trucks in the last year or so?
LAURA: Yes.
TOM: Which is helping. But you know, people always need to be€¦I mean if you talk to people who use their alleys as their entrance to their home, there are cars that could almost get lost in some of those potholes€¦and with the newer trash trucks and so forth. So it’s just not what’s visible; it’s what’s un-visible. I talked to a guy last night over in East Dallas. He said, “I won’t let my son play soccer in this park because it’s not maintained. There are holes that he could break an ankle in.” So my concern is that we have not maintained, and I don’t know it’s because we haven’t prioritized, but the fact of the matter is our parks are not getting enough money.
D: Let me ask you this. Whose fault is that, and what are you going to do about it?
TOM: I think that if I was mayor, I would make sure that we prioritize what we think is important, whether it’s roads, parks, alleys. We would need to prioritize and then make firm decisions. You know that’s a separate budget, but since the O&M, which moved from the parks department over to the City of Dallas€¦.
D: O&M is oversight and maintenance?
TOM: Right. They are not giving€¦.
LAURA: Operations and maintenance.
TOM: Operations. They are not getting as much money today as they were five years ago on today’s dollar.
LAURA: When I talked about the bond program for $221 million for the roads-that would be over a three-year period. So, it would take three years and $221 million to bring them all up to a 100 percent acceptable level in every council district.
Operation and maintenance is a very interesting issue. This year, for example, in November, we want to have issued a certain amount of 1998 bond funds for the parks department. We did the budget in August, and one of the things that the park department director told me is we’ve got a problem-and the park board was told this. We’re issuing all these bonds€¦we’re doing all these, you know, 25 new playgrounds, different park and rec. facilities, and we have no operating and maintenance money for any of the new projects, okay? So, we had the last day of the budget discussion for this current budget and the night before, on Sunday, I had the director of the park department, Paul Dyer, fax me all the new projects that were coming online this year and how much it would cost to do the O&M on them-and it was $750,000. So the next day, in our last budget meeting, I proposed to the council that we restore the $750,000 to the parks department-because otherwise these projects couldn’t be maintained-and so we did that. We put the whole $750,000 in. And it’s funny; I also asked for another $500,000-because that’s how much their budget had been cut from the previous year. Okay? So, you’re talking about two problems, and so the council unanimously went along and did another $500,000 in the amendment.
What was interesting is, when the meeting was over, the park department director came up to me on the way out the door and he said, “Well, I didn’t think you’d be able to get all the money. And I think I have to give some back because I’m going to get in trouble that I was the only department that didn’t get budget cuts.” So, guess what happened: the $500,000 went to other things. Two weeks later we saved the $750,000 for O&M. What’s really interesting about the O&M-the Trinity River Project, $236 million, has zero budget for O&M. The issue is going to be that that whole long stretch of improvements€¦that’s going to be park department land, and there is no money planned, envisioned, to take care of-what is it?-nine miles of park land.
TOM: Although this first part is not the whole thing, right?
LAURA: Yeah, first you do one leg, then you do this part, and€¦
TOM: But what I’m saying, the funds are just there for that first part. Isn’t that right? It’s not for the whole nine miles.
LAURA: Well, it’s there for a good part of it.
TOM: It’s there for that first leg.
LAURA: The first leg. Right.
D: Operations and management will come out of the city budget.
LAURA: And a lot of the parks. The only park that’s been designated-I think there was 20 of them, different kind of portal parks along that Trinity project-the only one that’s not funded is-and the most important one to me as an Oak Cliff council member- is at the Oak Cliff gateway, but all the others are funded in the bond program. But there’s no O&M for all of those parks.
TOM: But that is a concern I had 20 years ago; I fought the city over the years. I thought they corrected it. They did that one year, but I guess they forgot about it. So thank you. It doesn’t make any sense to be putting money-buying new parks, buying new equipment, building new buildings-if you can’t maintain them and if you can’t keep personnel there.
D: Do you think the city council has been negligent?
TOM: I wouldn’t say they have been negligent. I think Dallas has always been very supportive of big bond issues, even when they can’t maintain what they already have and it’s a€¦. I know years ago-and I don’t know if it’s still happening or not-but they tried to get it where they could use some bond money for maintenance. I don’t know if that’s happening today or not because it’s much easier to issue bonds than to pull cash out of your pocket€¦.
D: For the operating budget.
TOM: Right.
D: I’ve got to let Laura go to pick up the carpool as I promised, so I need to ask just one more question. First of all, speaking of bonds, do you support the DISD bond issue? I know your€¦
TOM: Very supportive.
D: first goal of your campaign is to get yourself elected, but are you going to support publicly?
TOM: I have declared publicly I am for it. As you know, I chaired the last bond issue.
D: Laura, let me ask you the same question.
LAURA: Yeah, Walter Anchia and I have agreed to do joint appearances for the bond to try to push the bond and make sure people vote for it. And every time I speak publicly anywhere, I say that it is equally important on January 19 to vote for your choice of mayor and to pass the school bond program.
D: Are you saying that would be your one focus?
TOM: I’m just saying that would be one of my focuses€¦is downtown. I mean, I’m not a one-focus person. I’m just saying that I think it is as important as anything we do€¦is to make sure that downtown is strong.
D: The reason there are 14 abandoned buildings is not because they didn’t buy that bond; it’s because nobody would sell. They are owned by foreign owners not willing to sell. What are you going to do about the benefits?
TOM: I think any time you have abandoned buildings, what the city has to do-and I think they’ve done a better job on some-is they have to make sure these buildings are maintained-and they don’t have people living in them that they shouldn’t-but the windows, the doorways, and so forth are clean. So you don’t have all the trash that accumulates around a lot of them.
D: What about buildings and parking lots?
TOM: For the parking lots, somebody needs to make sure the parking lots are clean. Somebody needs to make sure that the buildings around there are clean and that the urine and all the other unpleasant odors are not there-and I think that’s the city. One of the things that the Downtown Association has done is that they have ended up taking care of the streets of downtown Dallas-something the City of Dallas should be doing-but they end up maintaining or keeping the streets much cleaner now than they would have been if they did not have it.
LAURA: What we need to do downtown is have a plan of action, which we don’t have. The most disappointing thing about our economic development efforts at City Hall is that we are reactive instead of proactive. So we wait for developers to come in with their projects, and they want incentives-they want cheap land, or they want a pass on their property taxes, or they want fee rebates. And so we scatter shoot all these incentives, and we don’t have any kind of master plan for downtown.
I recently raised $110,000 privately from Dallas businesses to bring the Urban Land Institute, which is a nonprofit in Washington, DC, to Dallas. And they came here six weeks ago, and they studied the 50 acres called the Oak Cliff Gateway, which is where the viaducts hit Oak Cliff-which, in my mind, is ground zero for the first Trinity River-related southern sector economic development project that we should do. They spent a week here, and they came up with a fabulous blueprint for how to develop it-what it’s going to cost to develop it, how you phase it in-and it is a convention center project. It is going to help a future hotel that is planned to be built on the viaduct.
And what I would like to do is bring the Urban Land Institute back to Dallas to do that kind of analysis for what do you do after you do the Gateway. You get over the viaduct, and then you go over to the West End. And you go down Commerce, Elm, and Main to Deep Ellum. And how do we do it? Then we have to have a plan for how to develop it, and then we have to go block by block, building by building, parking lot by parking lot, and get control of those properties.
I think we have to close the tunnels downtown. I think we have to look at doing that. We have to look at taking the sky bridges down. We have to get people on the street. I think we have got to be very, very aggressive and very detailed-building by building-to get downtown revitalized. I think the City has to offer incentives, perhaps, to the nonprofit sector in Dallas. If you will come down and move downtown, we will buy a building. We will clean it out, if you will agree to come down here for 20 years and sign a lease.
There’s got to be a specific plan. There’s no plan now.
TOM: You see, I think there is a plan though, at least for part of it. There’s a plan for Main Street, the CBDA. It would be great to have an overall greater plan. The cost though is going to be prohibitive to do everything.
You can’t do it all at one time. You do need to phase it in. And I’m just saying that if you can get where there’s building owners, we can get somebody else to come in there and look into redoing a building or what’s now a vacant lot, even building a new one. Whatever we can do to get more development in downtown-more good development-I think we need to move on it.
I have not studied the Madison plan, but I like the concept of having more retail on Main Street. I mean, there always has to be the lead dog. And if you redo Main Street, then I think, if it’s done right, it will spill over onto the other streets. And my goal is that you help-you provide incentives, as much as you can-to get more businesses downtown. But once they start coming on their own, then you cut them off.
You don’t have to do it for every building, every block, but we have to start some place. We all know that the tunnels were a poor decision made by city planners 25 years ago. But the fact is we can close the tunnels, but we aren’t going to be able to close the eating spaces and all that under the, whatever the building is called now, Bank of America-all that stuff is tied in. I mean, there are restaurants, those are actually part of those buildings. The same thing with the Bank One building.
There are things we need to do. I think we need to attack. That’s why I like and support the Main Street idea.
D: Would you favor getting the independent authority and imminent domain to take control of downtown?
TOM: I would have to think through on that. I hate giving any independent authority to anyone and a domain on that.
D: How would you view an independent authority and imminent domain to control downtown?
LAURA: We actually commissioned one of our many thousands of studies that we do at City Hall. We commissioned a group for $100,000 to look at what is wrong with our economic development program and all these various agencies that we have around town working on developments, southern sector developments. And they came back with a surprising conclusion which is what you’ve got now is ineffective and what you need is what other cities have done, which is to create a board that would be in charge of economic development, that would have the power of imminent domain. You would pretty much dismantle your City Hall operations.
D: What’s the name of that study?
LAURA: It’s on my bookshelf. I promise I will get it to you. But I will tell you, it is a huge leap for Dallas, Texas to give imminent domain to a private board like that. So it would have to be done in a way where City Hall has enough credibility, which it doesn’t have right now. And there would have to be enough trust that if there’s a plan and if you show citizens a plan of action and tell them how you’re going to get there-of course, it would all have to be phased in, but groups like the Urban Land Institute tell you how to phase it in and they tell you what it’s all going to cost.
That’s the beauty of having that group come to town. Once you show citizens what is going to happen there-how it can be done realistically-I think citizens would have more of a comfort level with letting us do imminent domain that way, which I think we ought to look at.
TOM: Excuse me, one comment on that. I think once again, we ought to look at what other cities have done. The best practice is to see where they have been successful, where they have been unsuccessful.
Again, Pittsburgh comes to mind because I often meet with Terry Murphy, and I’m not sure not everybody likes him. What they did-which I think was fascinating and maybe falls into this same category-is that they floated a bond issue for $60 million and they got $40 million from the private sector, the companies that were there, the foundation. They formed this $100 million. They would actually go and buy property along the river, the abandoned steel mills or whatever they had there. They would clear it out. They would develop it, and then they would sell it. I don’t know if they had the right of imminent domain. But they did it. They were able to maintain some property for parks. They were able to designate what was housing, but they had a lot of property on three of those rivers. Today they have a great development because it’s not a hodgepodge.
I asked, “Were you able to get back all your money?” He said, “No, sometimes we actually ended up having to do it for less” because they had the parks and they had the plazas and some other things like that. But they said every part of the river is now open to the public. There are jogging trails and bicycle trails, rather than leaving it open to developers to put in whatever they want to.
It may be a different approach than what you had mentioned, but that’s why I’m saying for me to say that I would give an authority that’s not the city government imminent domain, I have a problem with that. I’m not saying I wouldn’t change. I just have a problem with that.
LAURA: What makes it attractive is that it took, in Oak Cliff, three years for the city and a nonprofit that we contracted with for an ungodly amount of money to assemble enough land-three years-to do one Albertson’s grocery store in my neighborhood . And it was ridiculous because there were so many little pieces of land that nobody wanted to sell. It would have taken us about six months to do it, if we could have done it more aggressively. I think there’s no choice but to look at doing that and see if we’re ready for that.
D: Laura, in 60 seconds, why would you be a better mayor than Tom Dunning?
LAURA: Well, I do not compare myself to Tom, who is a friend of mine and who I think is wonderful.
D: Just try. Thank you.
LAURA: So I’m going to tell you why I’m going to be a great mayor for me. It doesn’t have to do with anybody else. And the reason I’m going to be is because I have been there for three and a half years. I have had my fingernails dirty for three and a half years. I do all my homework. I use all my tools as an investigative reporter-that I honed over 20 years-to get to the meat of the matter at City Hall, to get to what I believe is the right thing to do. I ask all the hard questions. I’m very energetic. I know exactly what needs to be accomplished for citizens and neighborhoods and taxpayers and families, and I’m ready to go to work. That’s why.
D: Tom, why do you feel you would be a better mayor than Laura Miller?
TOM: Let me say, I won’t say better than Laura Miller. I’ll stay with Laura on this, too. Why I would be a good mayor and why I have so many people supporting me, people I have worked with on boards and commissions€¦people who I didn’t even get along with necessarily are supporting me because, one, they know I listen. They know I encourage dissent. I encourage discussion, but at the end of the day, I can build a coalition to task what we have been discussing. And that’s what being mayor is. Common sense. It’s listening. It’s trying to move the city forward. At the end of the day, you have to be able to get a majority on the council to go with you, and eventually you have to have the overall city with you, and I have the experience and a proven track record of doing it.
LAURA: Can I say one thing?
D: Laura, is he intimating that you can’t get a majority?
TOM: I’m not saying that. I’m just saying€¦
LAURA: I just want to point out that I could not have gotten a stronger ethics code, or a Dallas Ethics Commission, or safe four inner-city swimming pools, or gotten two months ago $750,000 for the park department unanimously, unless I had the support and goodwill and respect of my fellow council members.
D: I’ll ask you again, why should someone vote for you?
TOM: You heard it. That’s why I am running. Whether Miss Miller was running€¦
LAURA: Laura. You can call me Laura.
[laughter]
TOM: Seriously, I didn’t know for sure if she was going to run. There are a lot of other people. I was saying the same thing last summer. That’s why I’m running. I love the city. I am concerned about its future. I’ve been part of it and I want to be part of it as mayor. It’s just that simple.
