Dallas Officer
                             

2008-09 Annual Budget - City of Dallas

If you haven't been to your council person's budget town hall meeting, I have some bad news.

I'm not going to cover the entire budget, but there are three items that really grabbed me.

On page 24 and page 37, you will find references to "PILOT" which is an acronym for Payment in Lieu of Taxes.  This relates to Dallas Water Utilities.  On Page 24, we are told the Water Department is going to double what it pays into the Public/Private Partnership.  On page 40, there is a chart showing the increase in our water charges.  No big deal?  Guess how the PILOT funds are used?  That's the source of the $11 million the council voted to give AT&T to move to Dallas from another Texas city.  In fairness, not all of the $11 million is coming from the Dallas Water Utilities PILOT funds -- only $5 million.  The rest of the $11 million is in the form of tax abatements.

Don't you feel wealthy knowing you are subsidizing AT&T when you pay your water bill?

Why does one city department have to pay anything "in lieu of taxes"?  If the water department has a surplus after all expenses and retaining an adequate escrow for emergencies and capital improvements, those funds should go into our general operating budget or rebated back to water users.  That's not the way City Hall sees things.  Once they've got our money, they are not about to let us have it back.  Dallas is not in Alaska.

I asked how we benefit by having AT&T here when it has already cost us $11 million to have their presence in Downtown?  Karl Zavitkovsky, Director of Office of Economic Development talked about the 600-700 jobs AT&T will bring to Downtown.  Sounds great, except we don't know those people are going to live in Dallas or shop in Dallas. 

I mentioned that council just voted to close a business that employs over 60 Dallas residents who live near Woodard Paint & Body, a million dollar business that generates hundreds of thousands in sales tax revenue for this city.  Just got a grin and a shrug.

Page 16 has Zoo admission fees generating an additional $144K from a $1 per ticket increase.  Page 29 shows a plan to close the Zoo 1 day per week (probably Tuesday), to save $342K.  I asked how we save money by losing the revenue from a day of visitors.  They actually had a believable answer.  The savings will come from a reduction in security on the closed Tuesdays.  Without visitors in the park, they can probably do more maintenance than is possible with people and little ones running around. 

My real objection relates to more funding of more programs for the homeless.  Weren't we promised that building them a $10 million spa/hotel Downtown would get them off the streets and make Downtown safe for the rest of us who pay taxes?  Hope you didn't believe that because they lied to us.  Funding the spa/hotel was just the beginning of what we will get to spend on the street bums.

Page 24 calls for us to "issue $2m in certificates of obligation to enhance housing funding included in the 2006 Bond Program Proposition 8.  I interrupted Mr. Migas to see if that's where the funding for the "condos for the homeless" is coming from.  He reluctantly said it was and asked me to let him finish the presentation. 

Page 30 has an item "childcare contract - provides assistance to homeless individuals."   No dollar value was noted.

When it was appropriate for me to ask more questions, I asked again about the condos for the homeless.  If you don't think this concerns you, it is the intent for all neighborhoods to share the experience of having these people live next door.  Some of the housing will be group homes with "assistance" from city staff.  Some of the housing will be newly constructed SRO's, as in single room occupancy rental units.  Just what we need, more apartments for more problem people.

When will anyone at City Hall put Dallas taxpayers first? 

sb