And can you give us details about what that specific vote? conversation was entailing

sure so the city manager has brought forward a number of projects i think we're going to end up talking about them individually and some of them have support and i think across the board everybody realizes we need to finish funding the police academy the police academy this will be in november the fifth time we will ask dallas residents to vote on a police academy can you believe that so the first time um well we'll go to that in a minute so when it came forward There were people who say, look, like me, I'm very pro-public safety.

I think sometimes I'm actually criticized for being too pro-public safety.

And I want to make sure we have the most professional staff doing the best job that they can in Dallas.

I want us to be the safest city in America.

I do.

But we're not anywhere close to that.

Yeah.

Good.

Um, I am super concerned.

What happened when we approved our budget is we also approved an item about health insurance for our employees.

And what we did is we took away the PPO option and only gave them an HMO option.

And the problem is, I think a lot of our police and fire officers were members of the PPO and are now looking for other jobs.

So their contract is expired with the city.

I, I don't even understand how that can happen.

And isn't there some sort of infe- enforcement mechanism in those propositions, in those HERO amendments that, uh, i- if we don't have our police levels up, they- there's something that happens?

What is in the bond and why do you want to bust it?

Yeah, you know, I wish there was just some really great slogan that would tell everybody everything they need to know in one little phrase, but it's more complicated than that.

So there is sort of this bust the bond, vote no in November is just sort of a headline, but there's a lot of different reasons why this bond is problematic.

First of all, you may recall that just in 2024, the voters approved $1.25 billion of of debt for us to authorize.

We have not expended $750 million of that.

So it's just sitting there for us to use.

There's really no reason to add to this debt.

don't

deficit problems that Dallas appears to have?

You know, I think all large cities are struggling with budgets today.

But that's just because I think when you serve as a city council member, you can see all of the needs of the city.

And there is this big budget and you think, you know, wow, maybe I could fix this problem with these dollars.

But suddenly the scope changes.

Right.

The city is supposed to take care of these things.

Explain why and what that whole thing was about.

deficit problems that Dallas appears to have?

You know, I think all large cities are struggling with budgets today.

But that's just because I think when you serve as a city council member, you can see all of the needs of the city.

And there is this big budget and you think, you know, wow, maybe I could fix this problem with these dollars.

But suddenly the scope changes, right? The city is supposed to take care of these things.

But then you're like, but we could also do this because it's quality of life.

And so it just turns out that you're trying to fix the world's problem on a city budget.

Explain why and what that whole thing was about.

Is that your position?

Well, no. Um, this is definitely the kind of thing that I would have liked to have been briefed on that this would be one of the options if there was still Not a clear way to close this budget gap for this fiscal year.

Now the manager did have a budget briefing scheduled last Wednesday and Quite a few council members walked out to go to the FIFA game.

There were only six of us left sitting there.

And so since we didn't have quorum, the meeting ended and we didn't do a budget briefing, which I think is pretty shocking at this time.

And now that doesn't mean unilateral decisions should have been made.

It just means that city management should have doubled back.

What are some of those alternatives that you would like to explore?