I agree with S, but U is dumb as fuck. Y’all want 50% to go to ONLY two departments within the entire city organization?! What about all the other departments that serve critical functions.
Pensions are literally why so many northern cities are sinking financially. That shit should be transitioned to a traditional 401k to take financial burden off the city.
Yes you can. You got rid of the pension, establish 401 matching benefits, and increase salaries to compensate for individuals being responsible for their own retirement.
Literally what 99% of the private sector has done.
You might want to do a quick google search to see how the transition from pensions to 401s for baby boomers is playing out for them. Hint: it’s not good.
If you want people to provide a public service, it is the tax payers responsibility. That includes their pay, insurance, and retirement. It’s always been that way. Pensions keep people in those jobs, a 401k won’t. Simple as that.
Also, either you dont know the meaning of “majority,” or you didnt google the baby boomer retirement crises as I asked. 2/3rds of boomers do not have enough to retire on because they are the first generation to have a majority 401k instead of a pension based retirement.
Just because Detroit is having a problem does not mean Dallas will have problems. In fact, most cities, counties, states and the federal government have pensions systems, and as you say, “most are doing fine.” A few struggle but the vast majority are doing fine.
Pension systems can be managed to perform well, the problem is that a lot of cities that have pension plans look at those pension funds as a big pot of money they can borrow from to make risky bets. That's exactly what the fund manager for Dallas did, and they lost a shit-ton of money. Now the city had a plan to slowly replenish those funds over the next twenty years but that was too slow to avoid incurring big costs covering the lost money in the short and mid-term, and was really more about Dallas wanting to kick the can down the road, maybe even hoping that somehow they could get rid of the pension system altogether and never have to repay the money that got lost. Of course, if Dallas and their fund manager hadn't played games with that money we wouldn't be talking about it now, but here we are.
OR you could even use the TMRS system where the employee kicks in 7% and the city matches with another 14. It would have way less costs to implement and would have less bull sugar attached to it.
S was a tough one, and as a lawyer I get why it sounds reasonable to laypeople. Sovereign immunity sounds insane, and the standing requirements to sue for something are pretty arcane.
We will see how this turns out, but it could become a good object lesson in why standing and sovereign immunity make sense. In theory, this now means that the city could be tied up in lawsuits from busybodies for every decision they make (whether those suits have merit or not).
It's funny how people complain Dallas PD takes hours to respond to their calls, and in the same breath complain about bills hiring more police. Ill-informed voters indeed.
Increasing the number of cops has never decreased the amount of crime. Prop R will free up more police time than anything. And if you actually cared about good policing you would note that the police chief and the largest police union were against it.
Increasing the number of cops can never decrease crime. For every one cop, there's 100 criminals. I never said that was the case.
All I said was people complain about Dallas police taking hours to respond to their calls, if they show up at all. Then complain about hiring more cops.
I don't particularly care about the issue one way or the other. 🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️
Interesting, source on that? I mean I’ve hear crime is low bc not enough police argument too. I dk what to believe then. But I bet decriminalizing weed will help lower petty crime too.
The most recent fbi report revised the crime numbers significantly up to the point there it showed a large increase in crime rather than a decrease. It made the news you can google it
Huge increase in localized areas, but the argument has always been that violent crime is on a downtrend nationally, which it in fact is and has been since at least 2021
The current facility is only capable of training at max 200 new cops per year, and that's if 200 qualifying applicants, which there never is.
Also they'll have to cough up 200 million extra dollars and somehow find 900 applicants when they can't even find 200.
Oh, and to make things even more problematic prop S passed, meaning the city of Dallas can now be sued for not having enough cops, and because this bs is in the charter the city will likely be losing those cases. So now, they have to find the money to hire rougly 4x the number of cops they were aiming for this year when there's already no applicants, pay for both the fire and police pension which now they're legally bounded to instead of giving the flexibility to potentially switch to a 401k matching model (oh, and 50 fucking percent of the entire city budget each year has to go to that, meaning they cant even use that money for hiring more officers if they somehow find the applicants. Also hope you enjoy potholes because the city isn't going to have any money to maintain the roads anymore), and now have an entire section of the city budget dedicated to full time lawyers because you can sue the city now if you trip on the sidewalk and not have it immediately tossed, and somehow do this with a training facility that's 40 years old and is about to be replaced in 2027.
Oh yeah, and just to rub further salt in the bleeding wounds of the city's finances it'll stay at 50% each year. Frankly, this is going to make dallas much more like another that whose name starts with a D, but as it existed in the early 2000s: Detroit. Congrats Dallas residents, you've basically guaranteed a city bankruptcy and that Fort Worth is going to be the center of the metro area in 20 years.
Lol yeah sorry but that's still crippling for the city budget as time goes on. Although, it does raise the question as to what happens if there's a decrease in revenue.
The only real path that Dallas has to add cops quickly now is by recruiting them from other cities' police departments. The only way to do that is with increased pay and better benefits. Currently the completely mismanaged Dallas pension plan for cops and firefighters is acting against Dallas' ability to recruit. Why work for Dallas when you can get better pay and benefits somewhere else? Dallas has had some big ticket spending items recently like billion dollar parks, so cops in other cities see that Dallas would rather spend on parks than protection. At least 169K people signed the petition to get the so-called Hero amendments on the ballot for a reason. Even here on reddit the complaints are endless about cops never showing up and not enforcing most low-ticket laws like running fake plates.
They already passed something for this a billion dollar plan before the HERO amendment was on there folks are just dumb and don’t know what be going on
Cops require 800 hours of training to enforce the law.
As an electrician, I had to take 8,000 hours of training to get my license.
I was as trained as an electrician as we require cops to be less than 6 months into my apprenticeship, and I promise you, I didn't know jack shit about my job back then.
Cops require 800 hours of training to enforce the law.
No.
It takes 830 hours to complete BPOC.
Which is the first of many, many stages of training for a new police officer.
By the time an officer is qualified to work on his own, he's at around the 2,500 hour mark of supervised training - which, honestly, isn't enough, but it's also not realistic to get more.
Law enforcement training after BPOC is generally 1:1 direct supervision, staged out over time where a new officer gets more control as milestones are achieved, whereas your electrical training is anything but.
City of denton, "Over 800 hours":
https://www.cityofdenton.com/FAQ.aspx?QID=414
Police beat magazine "average length of the core basic training program was just over 800 hours"
https://apbweb.com/2024/01/an-overview-of-law-enforcement-training-in-the-u-s/
Dallas basic training is 1400 hours! Woohoo! It's a 40 week program, meaning they're only doing 35 hours a week.
https://dallaspolice.net/training-academy
After basic training they go into a 24 week field training... but they've already got the badge and the gun. And it's still not the four years it takes to become a journeyman electrician.
Doing it this way, yes, extraordinarily dumb. It's not designed to hold officials accountable, it's designed to bankrup the city. If you were in any way informed on what it is, you'd know this.
These were not the two props that did this. So you dumb and didn’t read the ballot. It was a prop for inspector general office which overseas these cases about fraud waste abuse towards city council. This the one that holds them accountable. Not S T and U moron
The propositions are local meaning they will affect you faster than anything federal so again yes those folks are morons who didn’t research them before going to the polls
It takes money to sue someone. I find it hard to believe that people will just sue for the fuck of it. It has to be a legit chase or else they are just wasting money
You sure ? Lol 😂 someone says hold my beer. Jsut watch and see hopefully Prop S will go to court to be overturned bc a city can’t lose or take their power away under the constitution which this is what this does - another court case is coming soon
Because now you've pigeon holed where excess funds can go.
-Roads are falling apart and we have extra funds?
-More Cops and Firefighters.
-The school needs a new gymnasium and we have some excess funds
-MORE COPS AND FIREFIGHTERS
As for the suing of a citynand holding them "accountable" Good luck making a budget when the city has to fight thousands of frivolous lawsuits and hire lawyers to fight them.
Oddly enough I came to my beliefs through Catholicism and Jesus' teachings. Stuff like loving my neighbor, taking care of the less fortunate, and good will toward my fellow human. Guess I was the only one with those takeaways...
I heard they got on the ballot by wildly misinforming the people signing their ballot initiatives, leading them to believe they were signing something else. UGH
i don't know about misinforming specifically but the person who approached me outside a local Walmart got very upset that I wouldn't sign without going home and looking up what the fuck they were talking about. I'd never heard of it and they couldn't seem to tell me anything but "hero = good".
they got increasingly frustrated as they followed me back to my car, even after multiple "I need to go home and research anything I'm signing, dude". Pretty gross
Excess of previous years’ revenue, so still any new revenue is functionally halved. Goodbye water and road infrastructure lol. That’s usually over budget due to unpredictable construction/materials costs and dips into any budget excess, not to mention for basically every budget increase the revenue increase corresponding to it has to be doubled. Either our infrastructure will basically stagnate, or our property taxes are about to skyrocket. Honestly at this point fuck it, turn us into Flint, we literally asked for it.
How will infrastructure stagnate when infrastructure is already planned into the budget? This bill is touching "bouns money" not the planned money.
I will admit I'm not super well versed in city accounting, however, I don't think that revenue == budget. Even if future budgeting is currently based on forecasted revenue increases, this proposition would override that.
That said, the excess revenue provision is not the part that will most damage the city. The requirement to hire new police officers until we have 4,000 officers, and then to maintain a specific ratio of officers to citizens going forward, is the really wild part.
From reporting that I have seen, the police department would need to hire around 900 new officers to meet the 4,000 quota. First, police officers don't materialize out of thin air -- are there even 900 officers available to hire right now? If so, are they officers that we want to hire? Second, the budget to pay police officers does not materialize out of thin air -- where is the money going to come from to pay for 33% more officers?
There are thousands of qualified LE candidates that apply every year. The problem is they’re 99% white males and the department has to hit their “majority minority” quota for every round of hiring so they end up hiring 150 officers a year if they’re lucky.
Very very valid point on it ballooning the City's budget like crazy. Yeah not sure how that will be handled. We currently have 3100 officers now, so you are right. That is 900 spots that need to be filled. I would say the city is capable of that number because it was around 3600 in year 2010 until the pension situation happened (according to Google). The city has grown considerably since 2010. So the increase in officers maybe justified.
With all that said, I would say maintaining a pension vs moving to a 401k is the biggest issue and is likely the root cause of all the issues.
Pensions are considered superior to 401ks from a retiree POV because there are no downside risks. If the stock market tanks you still get your pension, but can lose most or all of your 401k value. If Dallas switched to 401ks they likely would entirely lose any recruiting power because anyone wanting to be a cop or firefighter could just go do a different city that still had a pension benefit.
Where are you getting the mandate that the they actually have to have the officers on hand and not budget for an authorized strength, with allowable vacancies. When the department had 3600 officers they budgeted for that, when the officer count dwindled down to 3,000 the difference in that budgeted salary disappeared. If council hadn't made that difference disappear this wouldn't even be questioned. Council adjusted the authorized strength to coincide with their plans with the budget. This ensures the money is where it should be.
The bill isn’t just touching “bonus money” it’s allocating 50% of all revenue greater than that of the previous year to the pension plan. “Bonus money” would be budget surplus/money exceeding the budget; what this does affects any actual or expected increase in revenue even if that’s already been budgeted for or needs to be allocated due to necessary budget increases.
As a hypothetical; let’s say the 2024 revenue was 100 million, and the budget for 2024 was 100 million, and we expect the revenue to increase in 2025 to 120 mil, even if the set 2025 budget is increased to 120 mil to account for inflation/rising construction costs/etc. Half of that “new” 20 million is automatically allocated to the pension, in addition to whatever money the city already budgeted towards the pension fund. So then you’ve got a deficit of 10 mil, and the city either needs to cut programs (likely starting with non-essentials such as the DART, Parks and Rec, public schools, etc.), borrow funds, or raise property taxes. (And sure the budget could be kept the same year to year, but that’s not realistic because the cost of everything else continues to increase.) So if the budget has to be increased by 6% every year to account for inflation/rising costs/salaries/etc, in order to meet that 6% increase, revenue now has to be increased by 12%.
Plus; often cities need “extra” money on hand to account for costs not reflected accurately in the budget. Can’t speak for everything, but most water infrastructure projects cost about 20-40% over what they’d been budgeted for, since a lot of municipal capital improvement plans were conducted accounting for present costs not cost of construction at the time it’s expected to be bid at.
And even more insidious, Dallas already is in a deficit. This functionally cuts in half any new revenue that could be used to pay back existing loans or cut down on the need for future loans/bonds.
I appreciate you actually responding and providing some education vs people just calling me stupid. I love the detailed post. Sounds like it probably was not the best decision to pass it. But to late now. I wish there was a medium where people could go into details about this kind of stuff before the election. All I get are political talking points. Thank you for your post!
Yo, and I appreciate you asking for clarification! Sorry if I came off at all patronizing earlier on, been an eventful day lol. I feel like too many people these days jump to assuming anyone that asks a question is asking in bad faith. This kinda stuff is designed to be confusing so it passes unnoticed, it’s legitimately hard to understand. Would definitely be nice to have a place to discuss the details of props without all the automatic hostility.
At the end of the day, it isn’t the end of the world, and theoretically any amendments to the charter can be re-amended later.
Proposition S gives a resident the ability to put the city on notice for violating one of its own ordinances, charter codes or any law in Texas. After 60 days, the resident can sue — and the city must give up its governmental immunity. Sounds pretty good on paper, right? Protecting the citizens from government overreach or ignoring its own ordinances, codes, and state laws.
This measure will leave the city vulnerable to hundreds — if not thousands — of lawsuits and tie up millions of dollars in resources and manpower for litigation, eventually leading to the City of Dallas having to cut services and payroll in an effort to stave off bankruptcy as legal defense expenses grow exponentially.
There will be a veritable wave of lawsuits filed in the coming years by individuals and groups enticed to do so by billionaire Monty Bennett either by direct compensation or quid pro quo. Skeptics of this initiative have ferreted out the probable underlying reason, which is to allow Bennett to point to ineffective city leadership and lay blame for the city’s woes on mismanagement. It’s a blueprint to remove the leadership of blue cities and provides another tool in the red team toolkit to consolidate power, backed by a billionaire quietly pulling the strings from a safe distance.
Is the city really breaking thousands of it's own rules, laws, and state laws? To get any lawsuit certified the plaintiff will have to show reasonable evidence of the city breaking a law, ordinance, etc. If there's nothing to show then there's no lawsuit.
Have you ever dealt directly with the City of Dallas trying to resolve or fix an issue? It is not known for its efficiency.
Here are just a few off the cuff examples that could potentially lead to hundreds of lawsuits if not cured within the 60 day period proposition S provides.
broken or leaking city owned irrigation during watering restrictions or watering on unapproved days
excessive illumination during evening hours from city properties
city events exceeding noise ordinances
city owned fleet vehicles lacking proper registration tags and/or current inspections
failure to comply with state mandated annual training, certification, or continuing education hours for city employees
improper public notice served or posted for proposed zoning changes
failure to complete open records requests within mandated time frames
failure to maintain clean, litter free public streets (as would be expected of private businesses)
failure to maintain city owned derelict properties to comply with public safety/code enforcement
improper storage of hazardous materials
violations of OSHA requirements
violations of TCEQ regulations
Etc., etc. - these are just off the top of my head. Spend a few months with a dedicated team identifying and researching the lowest hanging fruit with the largest number of probable violations, then have that same team spend 40 hours per week for the next year clogging up the system with individual reports that are tracked. This doesn’t even get into more Byzantine issues. Proposition S was created with the intent of being abused, and it will be.
All of these things sound like things that should be getting done? I mean, if the city expects its residents to obey the law then the city should as well. Also, regarding the city fleet vehicles, most of those are, or should be, running "exempt" plates. All the buses do, as well as police and fire vehicles. I'm pretty sure that any vehicle owned or leased by the city that's for official use can run exempt plates. That "exempt" means they don't pay registration fees. They won't have to pass safety inspections after the first of the year either, though I wonder if they have to pass emissions inspection. Since they aren't subject to registration fee requirements they may not have to go through any inspections at all.
In a bigger picture, if the city can't comply with some of its own ordinances and rules they always have the option to write those out of the law instead, though that means that nobody will have to comply with them. For instance, if the city rewrites the ordinances to allow improper storage of hazardous materials they can't be sued over those violations, and also can't enforce them for anyone else.
But is it reasonable to expect a city to fix every single issue within 60 days? Is it reasonable for the city to pay an individual fees ordered by court because one of their service vehicles doesn't have an up to date sticker?
You ignored what I wrote about vehicle registrations, so I have no choice to ignore what you wrote here. Regarding things like OSHA and TECQ violations, hazardous storage violations, are delays in addressing those really necessary? Especially OSHA violations since the city will be paying out big fines and injury/death lawsuits on those anyway. And what about city lights blasting people trying to sleep, or noise? Do city residents have any rights to being able to live a quality life?
People will flee Dallas in droves and the only replacements will be more millionaires or investment funds that turn these homes into short term rentals
Requiring 50% of new funding to go to the police means we either:
Spend the most money on police of any municipality in human history, or
Intentionally forego new spending on non-police things (infrastructure, transit, misc. government services) because amendment U makes doing so prohibitively expensive.
Requiring 50% of new funding to go to the police means we either:
Just want to be clear on what the proposition say. It states "excess' funds. Which is different than "new" funds.
To me that means in year 2025, if expect 10 mil tax revenue, I budget for 10 mil spending across roads, police, fire, community services... If I happen to get 11 mil then 500k goes to police. In 2026 I adjust the budget for 11 mil and now I have no excess. Am I interpreting that incorrectly?
Just want to be clear on what the proposition say. It states "excess' funds.
What it actually says is this:
Shall Chapter XI of the Dallas City Charter be amended by adding a new section compelling city council to appropriate no less than 50 percent of annual revenue that exceeds the total annual revenue of the previous year to fund the Dallas Police and Fire Pension, with any monies remaining of that 50% to be appropriated to increasing the starting compensation of officers of the Dallas Police Department and to increase the number of police officers to a minimum of 4,000, and to maintain that ratio of officers to the City of Dallas population as of the date of passage of this amendment?
I've emphasized the relevant part for this discussion.
To me that means in year 2025, if expect 10 mil tax revenue, I budget for 10 mil spending across roads, police, fire, community services, infrastructure.... If I happen to get 11 mil then 500k goes to police. In 2026 I adjust the budget for 11 mil and now I have no excess. Am I interpreting that incorrectly?
You are interpreting that incorrectly. To modify your example, what it means is if in year 2024 the total annual revenue was $10 million, and in year 2025 the total annual revenue was $11 million, then $500k goes to the police and fire pension fund in 2025.
Also no mention of inflation. The nominal dollar amount of revenue always goes up because of inflation even if tax rates and the actual things the city spends on remains the same. So every year more of the budget has to be 50/50 split.
If inflation varies but is like 2 to 4 per year, then it would take between 18 and 36 years for the city budget to be stuck with 50 % going to pensions. And then that doesn’t include the actual public safety budget.
So if this is not repealed Dallas’s real budget will be only half the size it is now but your taxes will be the same or higher. The 50% goes to a big bonfire.
Commented in another part of the thread, but I’d recommend doing a couple searches regarding older northern cities and how pensions are essentially sucking money away from all other services. In the next decade or two they will cause many to go bankrupt.
City governments don’t have the money to cover pensions anymore. The only entities that are really big enough to handle this is the fed government. They all need to be offloaded to 401ks or at the minimum begin the transition for new employees.
In the next decade or two they will cause many to go bankrupt.
This is a good argument because the math supports it. This is a con against the bill. In my opinion, that issue should be addressed separately. The rest of the world has moved away from pensions like 30 years ago. Dallas should do the same.
When I voted there was a truck passing by the front door advertising STU. Pretty sure you can't electioneer within 100ft of the enterance, especially since they were past the sign saying so. We let the city pass policy a park cities billionaire threw at us.
We let the city pass policy? No the citizens who didn’t do research help to pass it. The city had to allow it on the ballot due to the signatures they (Dallas HERO) collected it’s in the charter to allow for this etc.
All the idiots who voted for U. Enjoy paying all those tickets that the 900 extra cops are going to write so the city can not go bankrupt paying for all these new cops.
Oh god forbid someone roll a stop sign on some side street with out a single other car on the road, besides the 4 cops on every corner thanks to this bill.
Nope. That is when you practice the most. You build habits and muscle memory. You have blind spots. You get tired. You sometimes forget. Your brain tricks you all the time.
Have literally had dumbasses do this in school zones where kids walk and ride bikes daily.
"Huuuuurr durrrr there was no one there, I can see for blocks bro" yeah until one of the above factors causes you to run over someone and your only excuse was "I didn't see them officer".
This amendment will do nothing to change that. The DPD does not have the facilities nor the budget to train AND RETAIN enough officers to meet this.
Blame your legislature for people running lights - they’re the ones that took away the cameras because THEY didn’t like getting caught
Are you 18? Who worries about parking/speeding tickets when we don’t even have enough cops to stop violent crime in dallas. I posted asking people to explain their rationale for U and it was always “untrained cops are bad” — ok so no cops are better? Didn’t convince me, public safety is more important than any other programs the city is wasting money on.
Okay the reason why U is bad if you would’ve read the documentation on it is due to the additional revenue going to their pensions vs other services needed in the city
Where is the additional revenue and or money coming from? Tax payers
900 officers when they only have the resources to train about 125-200 officers a year along with equipment, cars etc.
This could bankrupt our fcking city we are already in a budget deficit it would be millions of dollars to do this and city council already passed something in September to fix this now this added bullshit is going to add onto what was already approved money wise increasing taxes for us taxpayers in the city again. Just dumb af uninformed voters per usual
Really not a fan of U. Dallas already does not have the budget for that. Pretty sure increasing the budget is just going to have more police Corvettes on the road not doing anything. Even the departments themselves said they can't handle that either.
The money is there, they will have to cut pet projects and non essential city functions. They found hundreds of millions for a park. Decor for a bridge. Millions to hire a company to count trees.
All of the comments blaming Republicans is making me die with laughter. Dallas proper is more blue than the county which is 60/40 blue. S&U doesn't pass without significant support from Democrats.
to be fair a lot of Democrats in Dallas are bougeoise neolibs who love shitting on the poor. So cutting all services (like section 8) to hire 900 more police to do just that would be right up their alley.
So the uninformed democrat voter is who you are mad at? Right? Lololol Dallas county is majority blue and these won in a majority blue county. Stop acting like democrats aren’t the uninformed voters you’re mad at.
You literally talking about democrats and republicans when the city propositions got approved that would mess it up for the entire city. Have a good day idc if they blue or right. Bc tons of uninformed voters on BOTH sides just voting for stuff that “sounds good”
I see a lot of comments conflicting with how I voted, so let me share. I'm curious to hear about counter arguments (I wont be going into a discussion though, just curious at surface level).
I voted for Prop S as it felt pretty common sense.
I voted against Prop T. I felt while it looked good at surface value, that it was ripe to abuse given the small 1400 signatures required and lack of details around how those would be collected. I felt it was easy to circumvent to get extra bonus.
I voted for Prop U. While I'm not an expert on DPD, I constantly see on reddit we are lacking police resources and I feel it every day driving around. Dallas is a death trap on the road. Coming from AZ, where there are police on the street, people aren't running reds or swerving through traffic on the daily, I voted to increase the police force and funding. It's a scary thing to vote for because I don't want a police state, but as it currently is, Dallas feels pretty lawless. I rarely see police driving around, I rarely see people pulled over for traffic violations and the few friends that got into accidents and called for a police to come, never had one show up. That's not a place I want to live in.
Really curious on counter points. I will say I did not extensively research prior to going to the polls, so hold that against me if you will.
The reason why everyone was against Prop U (including the police chief) is because it hamstrings the entire city budget in perpetuity. The state legislature passed a law a couple of years ago that prevents cities from ever reducing the budget for the police department. Once it goes up, it can't go down.
Other than that, DPD is having a really hard time hiring qualified candidates. It's not that they don't want to hire more police, they can't find enough people. That's why they're considering revising the qualification criteria.
Other than that, DPD is having a really hard time hiring qualified candidates.
Why is bringing a new cop up through the police academy considered the only option? Recruiting already trained cops from other cities seems like it would also be an option. How would we do this? Better pay and benefits seems like a no-brainer. Dallas has been trying to run a threadbare police department on the cheap, and it shows through lack of police response to any but the most severe crimes. Lots of perps have realized over the years that they can commit smaller crimes with impunity, crimes like running fake tags and not having insurance, running red lights, doing side shows and racing, etc.
The whole reason U passed was because the average citizen is tired of never being able to get a cop to respond to their needs. The fact that DPD is understaffed was never in question, that's been apparent to anyone who has ever had to call the cops and the cops never showed up. The real question was, would Dallas fix it on their own, or would someone make them fix it? Well, here we are. By slow-walking the fixes, stretching out things like dealing with the pension plan screwups, and doing all the other things that left citizens to wonder if they even had a police force, we opened up ourselves to an outsider to create Prop U and get it on the ballot.
Department has had a true lateral program for about two years now. They've recruited only a handful of certified officers. I believe the number is in the single digits.
I understand why people feel that way. Police don't come out for most car wrecks. They have really slow response times. They ignore the majority of traffic violations. The list really does go on and on.
I don't know that the number of DPD officers is the problem though. Police staffing standards that all cities strived for twenty years ago dictated that you should have one officer per 500 residents. The population of Dallas is about 1,300,000. DPD has 3100 officers. That should be enough for a population of 1,550,000.
DPD used to respond to emergency calls. DPD used to write tons more tickets than they do now. DPD used to come out to more car wrecks to write accident reports. What happened?
My suspicion is that they are doing the equivalent of a workforce slowdown to try to get what they want. Police are barred from striking. This is the closest they get to doing a strike. I also think they're still pissed about the George Floyd protests and are trying to prove a point.
From what I hear, suburbs usually always pay better and they don't have as much crime. Police officers don't want to work in big cities as much.
As far as the academy goes, I don't know how DPD treats applicants from other cities or municipalities. My ex-girlfriend always wanted to be a Houston cop. But she missed the first training academy she applied for and was really depressed about it. I suggested just being a cop in one of the suburbs but she refused to do it because she would have to do the Houston police academy anyway if she did eventually get hired. She got into the next academy so it worked out for her in case you want to know how she ended up.
Seems to indicate that 3,900 officers would be the target for 1.3M population. That's not far off the Prop U requirement for 4,000, and it would not surprise me if Prop U authors used that 3/1000 number as the starting point for the Proposition.
Now that funding is mandated, the City Council, who hires the Police Chief, should get ahead of this by writing new rules to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the police in this city. To paraphrase, "With great funding comes great responsibility". It's time to start being serious about transforming DPD into a true professional force tailored to meet the needs of our citizens.
DPD isn't the only police force in Dallas though. There's also DART, Dallas County, the city Marshalls, DISD cops. I don't know how many are in those organizations or if I left anyone out.
3/1000 is a new one for me. Typically, I've heard 2/1000. Even that, academics say may be overkill. It depends on the city and what other options are available. The problem with this ordinance and the law passed by the legislature a couple of years ago is that it ties our hands in terms of finding what works for us.
I've been in a "domestic violence situation." When the police came out, they also had a social worker with them that took the lead. That person did a great job. We need more of that. That's an option that may be completely cut out because of this ordinance.
DPD is the only one that answers your emergency calls when you place a call to 911. The other agencies work the city detention city or county jail, and the train stations or the schools. That’s it. DPD does not receive help with the emergency call load from them.
Just wanted to note that if what we had was working for us then the backers of U would not have been able to get it on the ballot and it would not have succeeded. When people are told one thing, that U wasn't needed and that everything was doing well, and their actual lived experiences contradict that completely, then they're going to seize on a chance to change things. Dallas leadership should never have created the opening for the Hero amendments in the first place, but they did. From the POV of many people the city council seemed more intent on spending large on amenities instead of necessities. Lots of money for parks, no money for sidewalks.
When people are told one thing, that U wasn't needed and that everything was doing well, and their actual lived experiences contradict that completely, then they're going to seize on a chance to change things.
This was not the message that I heard from the opposing coalition. What I heard was "This proposition places an insane burden on the city budget and unreasonable demands on DPD."
I never said things were going well. In fact, I said the opposite. I just pointed out that it's probably not the reason you think.
And really, I don't think the campaign against these initiatives said that either. It was centered around the collateral damage this initiative would cause.
The petition process got these initiatives on the ballot. Are you saying we shouldn't have that?
I'm only saying that U happened because the city council created the opening for it to happen. It didn't have to be this way. Too many people are trying to frame it as only the result of an outsider, but the reality is that the city council allowed it to happen through their bad decisions. As a person who has experienced the complete lack of responsiveness of DPD and who has to navigate busted sidewalks and potholes while looking at the city spending hundreds of millions on fancy parks and amenities I fully understand why U succeeded.
Appreciate the comment (everyone else just insulted me lol). I wasn't aware there was some stipulations that we can't decrease the budget, I wonder how that passed.
I can understand not being able to find qualified participants. It's a hard job and comes with a lot of requirements and hate from the public.
If you don’t mind, can you share why you didn’t research before voting? To me (and apparently others), it seems like common sense to do your research before voting for/against anything, hence the negative response to your original comment
Don't mind at all. Originally I wasn't even going to vote due but decided last minute to. I usually skip anything I don't fully grasp. From the wording I did decide to vote on a few things.
Personally, I don't know anyone that reaches all these propositions ahead of time, nor do I know where people are even learning (of course I can Google).
In my day to day life, I don't really focus on politics. I only care about a few things, so for me, spending time researching and taking notes to remember when voting what I'm going to vote for is a hassle.
Perhaps I should have not cast any vote at all, I doubt it would have made a difference as I think a lot of people are misinformed about some of the propositions and the wording.
Hope that helps and I don't think it makes me look any better in this situation. I'm actually shocked so many people do the research, as I mentioned, none of my friend groups do.
This story isn't from Dallas, but it explains why research beforehand is a must: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/31/explain-issue-1-in-ohio-ballot-language-was-written-by-opponents/75936806007/
Tl,dr: partisan groups write the proposition language to steer the vote towards their cause, so you can never trust that what is printed on the ballot actually reflects the change that will happen.
I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. It can definitely take time and effort to research, especially with the number of props. But there are resources like vote411.org that simplify the language and give unbiased reasons for/against each item. It took maybe 15-20 min to go through it all, which is well worth it for a big decision (and which people should be able to spare) IMO.
I hear you on not being into politics, but this is the time we can influence policies that actually impact us through elected officials and propositions. I would challenge you to consider researching for future elections and encouraging your friends to do the same!
Yeah I actually reached out to my friends to ask if I was alone in not researching and reconfirmed I wasn't. A few of them did start to do some research and this thread helped me understand that I should at least step it up a bit. This is my second time voting, so I'm not going to claim I'm super experienced or knowledgeable, but I do see now that some prep work is required.
I learned in another comment there is a spring election that is more local, so I'll take this as a growth opportunity and move forward. Again, I really appreciate your demeanor, a message comes off much better than just insulting a person without understanding their perspective or experience.
All they’d have to do to get normal people applying is let them smoke weed off-hours. They only want to hire a bunch of tight-laced church-goers and wonder why they have no applicants. 🙄
For Prop S... There is a reason the government has immunity from lawsuits. If everyone can sue the government for any reason, it would quickly become an unmanageable situation. The city would have to spend an increasing amount of the budget fighting lawsuits because trash wasn't collected at exactly 8am or Thursday is too close to Tuesday or whatever other reason a citizen comes up with. While people may not win those suits, the city has to defend them. And that's expensive. Sure, they'll settle some to keep costs down, but that will only create more suits. More and more of the budget goes towards attorney fees than providing services.
For Prop U... No one would say we don't need more cops but even the Police Department said this was a bad way to do it. Currently, 30% of the city's budget goes to police protection. Now you've set it at 50%. That 20% increase has to come from somewhere. Other city services will suffer and no matter how much extra revenue the city generates, 50% of it HAS to go to police protection. More cops may not even fix the issues you raise. The real question is why the current police force isn't providing the services you say they should. This isn't adding more training or providing better equipment. It's just throwing more cops at a problem. Prop U is like adding more stoplights because people keep running stoplights. It's wildly expensive, you haven't addressed the underlying issues, and you may have actually made things worse.
These two measures will consume a significant portion of the city's budget, leave less and less money for other services. Prop S will do nothing to improve the lives of the citizens who live here (except the ones who win lawsuits, of course). Prop U sounds good on paper, but fixes none of the actual problems with DPD.
Currently, 30% of the city's budget goes to police protection. Now you've set it at 50%.
Prop U does not do this. It does require that 50% of any new revenues go toward cops, but does not take away a single dollar of existing revenues toward existing spending. Also, 50% of any new revenues is free to be spent on whatever the city wants. If revenues increase from $100 to $105, then $2.50 of that has to go toward the PD, leaving $102.50 going toward everything else.
Sure that’s great for now or next year. What happens in 10-15 years when now that 50% of “new revenue” actually have the police budget at 50-60% of the overall? It’s ridiculous and will end up strangling the city for no good reason.
Increasing police funding doesn’t mean that there will be additional cops. And even if there are additional cops it doesn’t mean that lawlessness will even decrease.
I’m a normal 41 year old white IT guy. The most privileged demographic. And I’ve never in my life had a positive experience with a cop. Either they are targeting me to give me a ticket or they’re feigning powerlessness. Like when my front door was kicked in in the middle of the night and the cops showed up 2 hours later to take a report. I had to chase the burglars off myself.
While filing the report I could tell they were giving no shits and asked them point blank what the next steps were. They started acting hostile to me!
S - it will let any citizen bring a lawsuit with the city about anything. This takes away time and resources and can stop and hold up process on the smallest shit just bc someone gets their panties in a bunch about anything. No legal merit now that this has passed
T is about the survey of 1400 ppl if the city manager doing good then a raise and or bonus or fired. This is NOT how civics work in a city with a city mananger. The city manager has the most important job of all bc that person manages our budget. Nobody would even want to take the job we just lost our city manager to Austin due to bickering and petty shit between Major Johnson other council members and them trying to go behind his back to fire him so he pulled the okie doke resigned and got hired with Austin
U has nothing to do with Firefighters and or Police cops. This is Dallas HERO and dummies who signed the petition to say we need more officers (900) and yes we are understaffed for DPD however they just passed for an increase for 250 officers and the dept only has the resources to train about 150-200 a year in addition to the equipment, cars etc. it would cost millions of dollars to do this when they already approved millions to hire 250 more. So now since this passed it’s more millions that comes to us with increased property taxes and anything else they can increase. It said all the city revenue goes to them meaning not to other services
A lot of times folks are just really really really uninformed. I attend meetings and they are always empty folks don’t really pay attn and attend these meetings to know what’s going on in the city
Then get in these booths and vote ignorantly. We are already in a budget deficit in the city it could bankrupt us as a city then what?? We shall see
There’s no way of decreasing the number. It only goes up and mandates funding the pension. This will bankrupt the city idiot. Maybe research before you go to the poll. Jesus Christ the ignorance 🤦🏼♂️
The voters were not misinformed or dumb. They have watched for 30 years the city council and managers kick the can down to road over and over. Police stations falling apart while DFR gets new stations and remodels. Parks receiving tons of funding. The police academy was supposed to be a temporary facility in the early 90s until they could plan a new one. Multiple times the citizens passed bonds to fund a new one and the city didn't take action. The new one the city is begging for private donations instead of just putting the money up. Even then they are half assing this new academy that lacks many things like driving track, gun range, etc.
We suffered through junk squad cars. Our gun range is from the 50s with contaminated tap water. The fire department has a dedicated academy with everything they need. Why doesn't DPD? Ft Worth has a world class facility that the police and fire share. We have a world class dump.
You can feel how you want about policing, but the voters have voiced their want.
"I lived near Uptown and wanted to start a family. It was too dangerous to live there," he said. "I am blessed I can afford Park Cities, but most can't do that, and they have to live with this crime."
Woohoo! Can’t wait to have 900 more cops on the road, further continuing to not respond to actual crime and instead write people tickets to pay for their salary.
Not sure what you mean by "plenty of police", but the proposition is pretty straightforward there: We must hire up to 4,000 officers, then maintain the same ratio of police : citizens going forward. So yeah, we have to keep hiring more as the population increases.
The "excess" requirement is based on revenue -- i.e., income. If the city gets more taxes in than it did in the previous year, that's new revenue in excess of the previous year (whether due to tax rate increases, property valuation increases, or new residents).
This is kindof an inherent problem with these sorts of ballot measures. It sounds great to hire more police and give them more money for their pensions. But the ballot can't explain the economic impact of that, and whether it's realistic or not.
Not that voters are super informed elsewhere, but Texas has done a masterful job in convincing people that politics doesn't matter and voting is a waste of time.
They've also somehow convinced people that we are a state of freedom when I can't smoke pot, gamble or buy liquor on Sundays.
I mean, Florida had something like 57% of voters back an amendment to protect abortion access, and 57% also voted for the guys who took away abortion access.
I'm against the propositions, but we need to also blame Dallas government. People like to point out violent crime is down, and it is, but the thing people have been screaming for is fixing property crime and our Mad Max roadways. Thankfully, most people don't experience violent crime, but 1 in 22 experience property crime and lots more are experiencing road rage or being terrified in traffic. Those people probably looked around and thought "if this is the help I get from DPD, God help me if I ever actually need the police." Yes, we might have good emergency response times, but numbers don't help when someone already feels let down by the police.
Dallas property crime is worse than similar cities and our roadway fatalities are some of the worst in the nation. The only change Dallas offered recently was an online portal so your property crime can be ignored faster. Maybe they could have sold the online portal better if they cited numbers that it resulted in faster response times, but I certainly did not hear that. For traffic fatalities, DPD has just said "Oh, we don't do that." With that response, can anyone really be surprised people voted stupid and angry?
Personally, I wish we formed a larger traffic task force and started handing non-emergency/non-violent crime response to Dallas-311 and people with digital cameras driving Honda Civics, but that was not an option. I know I looked at 3 squad cars recently responding to a car vs guardrail incident on a residential road and thought "That's a half million dollars in cars and kit to write a ticket and take some pictures."
I might disagree with it, but it is hard to blame people for voting for the bad option when there was no other option given.
If it doesn’t, it means gradually over time pensions will make up 50% of the budget. The city just becomes a tax farm for retiree benefits. That’s ridiculous.
Happy we get to pay for the police departments stupid handling of the pension fund. Maybe don’t invest the entire pension into a failed commercial real estate ploy.
Hopefully, U gets challenged by the fire department and police because it’s not feasible to meet that higher numbers. Plus they can show the courts evidence that they already have passed 11 billion for a 30-year pension plan.
S I am less worried about for that reason. It's possibly against state law for the city to forego their sovereign immunity, which makes the whole idea of suing for breaking state law a bit circular.
frenchezz@reddit
We truly live in the dumbest most ill informed timeline.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
It’s wild how dumb and uninformed voters are
Zestydrycleaner@reddit
This election just proved how dumb most Americans are
Version_Popular@reddit
... and most Texans! Ted Cruz, come the fck on! 🤦🏽♀️
Zestydrycleaner@reddit
You’re absolutely right.. everyone hated him and abbot for like a week after the snow storm and then forgot.
BlazinAzn38@reddit
The median voter is ill-informed and their believes are often at complete odds with each other.
anonMuscleKitten@reddit
I agree with S, but U is dumb as fuck. Y’all want 50% to go to ONLY two departments within the entire city organization?! What about all the other departments that serve critical functions.
Pensions are literally why so many northern cities are sinking financially. That shit should be transitioned to a traditional 401k to take financial burden off the city.
RandyChampagne@reddit
Tom Leppart gutted the police and fire pension. you cannot compete with the suburbs for talent if your P&F pension is garbage.
anonMuscleKitten@reddit
Yes you can. You got rid of the pension, establish 401 matching benefits, and increase salaries to compensate for individuals being responsible for their own retirement.
Literally what 99% of the private sector has done.
bwaters1894@reddit
You might want to do a quick google search to see how the transition from pensions to 401s for baby boomers is playing out for them. Hint: it’s not good.
anonMuscleKitten@reddit
That not the taxpayers responsibility. I’m on a private 401k like the majority of Americans and doing fine.
It can also be phased. Existing employees stay on pensions, new ones on 401k.
Salaries for the new employees would be adjusted to compensate.
bwaters1894@reddit
If you want people to provide a public service, it is the tax payers responsibility. That includes their pay, insurance, and retirement. It’s always been that way. Pensions keep people in those jobs, a 401k won’t. Simple as that.
Also, either you dont know the meaning of “majority,” or you didnt google the baby boomer retirement crises as I asked. 2/3rds of boomers do not have enough to retire on because they are the first generation to have a majority 401k instead of a pension based retirement.
Just because Detroit is having a problem does not mean Dallas will have problems. In fact, most cities, counties, states and the federal government have pensions systems, and as you say, “most are doing fine.” A few struggle but the vast majority are doing fine.
noncongruent@reddit
Pension systems can be managed to perform well, the problem is that a lot of cities that have pension plans look at those pension funds as a big pot of money they can borrow from to make risky bets. That's exactly what the fund manager for Dallas did, and they lost a shit-ton of money. Now the city had a plan to slowly replenish those funds over the next twenty years but that was too slow to avoid incurring big costs covering the lost money in the short and mid-term, and was really more about Dallas wanting to kick the can down the road, maybe even hoping that somehow they could get rid of the pension system altogether and never have to repay the money that got lost. Of course, if Dallas and their fund manager hadn't played games with that money we wouldn't be talking about it now, but here we are.
TheChrisSuprun@reddit
OR you could even use the TMRS system where the employee kicks in 7% and the city matches with another 14. It would have way less costs to implement and would have less bull sugar attached to it.
caseylain@reddit
Ah yes, move every ones retirement funds on to the stock market. Then, crash the market and take it all for the 1%.
We definitely haven't seen this strategy played out before.
anonMuscleKitten@reddit
I agree it’s a risk, but cities simply don’t have the money to support this type of post employment support.
NotClever@reddit
S was a tough one, and as a lawyer I get why it sounds reasonable to laypeople. Sovereign immunity sounds insane, and the standing requirements to sue for something are pretty arcane.
We will see how this turns out, but it could become a good object lesson in why standing and sovereign immunity make sense. In theory, this now means that the city could be tied up in lawsuits from busybodies for every decision they make (whether those suits have merit or not).
RemoteEffect2677@reddit
R: hey Dallas, don’t comply with Texas law on marijuana possession S: you can sue Dallas for not complying with Texas law.
Buckle up, folks. And buy new lake houses, trial lawyers
RandyChampagne@reddit
sovereign immunity is one thing, but when the horseshoe breaks the law, there should be consequences
tbear87@reddit
This is exactly what will happen in a society as litigious as America
nickybshoes@reddit
Bc we live in a timeline where GOP is telling everyone there is so much crime across the country. It’s simply not true.
Majsharan@reddit
Actually they were suppressing the numbers and there was in fact a huge increase
TheDaiyu@reddit
It's funny how people complain Dallas PD takes hours to respond to their calls, and in the same breath complain about bills hiring more police. Ill-informed voters indeed.
Kamden3@reddit
Increasing the number of cops has never decreased the amount of crime. Prop R will free up more police time than anything. And if you actually cared about good policing you would note that the police chief and the largest police union were against it.
TheDaiyu@reddit
Increasing the number of cops can never decrease crime. For every one cop, there's 100 criminals. I never said that was the case.
All I said was people complain about Dallas police taking hours to respond to their calls, if they show up at all. Then complain about hiring more cops.
I don't particularly care about the issue one way or the other. 🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️
R0b0Saurus@reddit
Telling the truth is dangerous, friend
Majsharan@reddit
It’s dangerous generous to go alone, take this: 45-47
nickybshoes@reddit
Interesting, source on that? I mean I’ve hear crime is low bc not enough police argument too. I dk what to believe then. But I bet decriminalizing weed will help lower petty crime too.
Tam4511@reddit
The FBI
Majsharan@reddit
The most recent fbi report revised the crime numbers significantly up to the point there it showed a large increase in crime rather than a decrease. It made the news you can google it
Lawineer@reddit
Don’t try giving them facts here
nickybshoes@reddit
Thx I will
greelraker@reddit
Source is the commercial they saw on TV that says so!
Shoddy-Store-4098@reddit
Huge increase in localized areas, but the argument has always been that violent crime is on a downtrend nationally, which it in fact is and has been since at least 2021
The-Purple-Church@reddit
HEY!
Get out here with your facts. This is not the place for any of that!
ifheartsweregold@reddit
Holding elected officials accountable and adding more cops is dumb?
csplonk@reddit
Literally yes? Who wants untrained cops
ifheartsweregold@reddit
I don’t believe this charter says anything about changes to onboarding and training cops. So they will be just as trained as the cops we have today.
DonkeeJote@reddit
Dallas doesn't have the capacity to add trained cops that quickly. Lowering standards is the only way to add them.
And that doesn't even address the funding problem.
not-actual69_@reddit
Based on what? “Trust me bro”
Unlucky-Watercress30@reddit
The current facility is only capable of training at max 200 new cops per year, and that's if 200 qualifying applicants, which there never is.
Also they'll have to cough up 200 million extra dollars and somehow find 900 applicants when they can't even find 200.
Oh, and to make things even more problematic prop S passed, meaning the city of Dallas can now be sued for not having enough cops, and because this bs is in the charter the city will likely be losing those cases. So now, they have to find the money to hire rougly 4x the number of cops they were aiming for this year when there's already no applicants, pay for both the fire and police pension which now they're legally bounded to instead of giving the flexibility to potentially switch to a 401k matching model (oh, and 50 fucking percent of the entire city budget each year has to go to that, meaning they cant even use that money for hiring more officers if they somehow find the applicants. Also hope you enjoy potholes because the city isn't going to have any money to maintain the roads anymore), and now have an entire section of the city budget dedicated to full time lawyers because you can sue the city now if you trip on the sidewalk and not have it immediately tossed, and somehow do this with a training facility that's 40 years old and is about to be replaced in 2027.
Oh yeah, and just to rub further salt in the bleeding wounds of the city's finances it'll stay at 50% each year. Frankly, this is going to make dallas much more like another that whose name starts with a D, but as it existed in the early 2000s: Detroit. Congrats Dallas residents, you've basically guaranteed a city bankruptcy and that Fort Worth is going to be the center of the metro area in 20 years.
xinstinctive@reddit
It's only 50% of revenue that exceeds the prior year. If we're gonna rant let's rant accurately.
Unlucky-Watercress30@reddit
Lol yeah sorry but that's still crippling for the city budget as time goes on. Although, it does raise the question as to what happens if there's a decrease in revenue.
DonkeeJote@reddit
statements from the police unions, council members, et al.
AlarmedSnek@reddit
They can’t even meet recruitment numbers now? What is this prop gonna do?
noncongruent@reddit
The only real path that Dallas has to add cops quickly now is by recruiting them from other cities' police departments. The only way to do that is with increased pay and better benefits. Currently the completely mismanaged Dallas pension plan for cops and firefighters is acting against Dallas' ability to recruit. Why work for Dallas when you can get better pay and benefits somewhere else? Dallas has had some big ticket spending items recently like billion dollar parks, so cops in other cities see that Dallas would rather spend on parks than protection. At least 169K people signed the petition to get the so-called Hero amendments on the ballot for a reason. Even here on reddit the complaints are endless about cops never showing up and not enforcing most low-ticket laws like running fake plates.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
They already passed something for this a billion dollar plan before the HERO amendment was on there folks are just dumb and don’t know what be going on
Usual-Caregiver5589@reddit
Cops require 800 hours of training to enforce the law.
As an electrician, I had to take 8,000 hours of training to get my license.
I was as trained as an electrician as we require cops to be less than 6 months into my apprenticeship, and I promise you, I didn't know jack shit about my job back then.
They're untrained.
DaSilence@reddit
No.
It takes 830 hours to complete BPOC.
Which is the first of many, many stages of training for a new police officer.
By the time an officer is qualified to work on his own, he's at around the 2,500 hour mark of supervised training - which, honestly, isn't enough, but it's also not realistic to get more.
Law enforcement training after BPOC is generally 1:1 direct supervision, staged out over time where a new officer gets more control as milestones are achieved, whereas your electrical training is anything but.
Usual-Caregiver5589@reddit
City of denton, "Over 800 hours": https://www.cityofdenton.com/FAQ.aspx?QID=414
Police beat magazine "average length of the core basic training program was just over 800 hours" https://apbweb.com/2024/01/an-overview-of-law-enforcement-training-in-the-u-s/
Dallas basic training is 1400 hours! Woohoo! It's a 40 week program, meaning they're only doing 35 hours a week. https://dallaspolice.net/training-academy
After basic training they go into a 24 week field training... but they've already got the badge and the gun. And it's still not the four years it takes to become a journeyman electrician.
ifheartsweregold@reddit
Fair enough.
Unrelated note, how much do you charge for a Tesla charger install?
Usual-Caregiver5589@reddit
I don't do sidework.
greelraker@reddit
So, not at all. Got it.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
They can only train about 150-200 cops per year due to the resources to train them are y’all slow? Have y’all never worked a job
It’s a training dept if they can only have the capacity to train 150-200 a year then what about the other ones? Some will slip through the damn cracks
ArchReaper@reddit
Doing it this way, yes, extraordinarily dumb. It's not designed to hold officials accountable, it's designed to bankrup the city. If you were in any way informed on what it is, you'd know this.
CryOnTheWind@reddit
At the cost of everything besides policing, the loss of libraries and parks and community services… yeah, it’s dumb.
CknHwk@reddit
Forget any investment in mental health services, ya know, to address the real problem.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
These were not the two props that did this. So you dumb and didn’t read the ballot. It was a prop for inspector general office which overseas these cases about fraud waste abuse towards city council. This the one that holds them accountable. Not S T and U moron
RequirementIll8141@reddit
To the Mod I wasn’t calling the person a name I was calling voters who don’t research that name.
Dallas-ModTeam@reddit
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ifheartsweregold@reddit
“so you dumb”? Read a book.
Calling someone a moron on a forum?
Praise the lord for democracy.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
The propositions are local meaning they will affect you faster than anything federal so again yes those folks are morons who didn’t research them before going to the polls
RequirementIll8141@reddit
Someone who don’t do research on propositions on a ballot before voting are absolutely morons. If you took offense does the shoe fit?
Estosnutts@reddit
Now anyone with enough money will try to sue as soon as they get heir panties in a wad.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
Correct
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
It takes money to sue someone. I find it hard to believe that people will just sue for the fuck of it. It has to be a legit chase or else they are just wasting money
RequirementIll8141@reddit
You sure ? Lol 😂 someone says hold my beer. Jsut watch and see hopefully Prop S will go to court to be overturned bc a city can’t lose or take their power away under the constitution which this is what this does - another court case is coming soon
Ruggerx24@reddit
Because now you've pigeon holed where excess funds can go.
-Roads are falling apart and we have extra funds? -More Cops and Firefighters.
-The school needs a new gymnasium and we have some excess funds -MORE COPS AND FIREFIGHTERS
As for the suing of a citynand holding them "accountable" Good luck making a budget when the city has to fight thousands of frivolous lawsuits and hire lawyers to fight them.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
This becomes a non factor when you budget properly. So I don't see a big issue.
You are assuming excess funds have been allocated to schools and roads in the past. Do you have any evidence of that?
ifheartsweregold@reddit
Roads are already disastrous in Dallas. (Munger, Ross to name a few)
School fundings come from Property taxes.
Judges will throw out any frivolous lawsuits before Dallas needs to spend significant resources on lawyers.
Ruggerx24@reddit
"Roads are already disastrous". So you're insinuating we shouldn't use excess funds towards them?
DonkeeJote@reddit
elected officials are already held accountable through elections. That's the point of democracy.
thecardboardfox@reddit
Was fun while it lasted!
Forsaken-Pangolin-57@reddit
Yes, these amendments are designed to make the city government inoperable.
TheClownIsReady@reddit
Right. Cause having a strong and increased police force is bad. Right.
frenchezz@reddit
Poorly trained police force would be more accurate. That's the issue I have with the proposition, not the hiring of cops.
ooliuy@reddit
Have you seen the movie "Idiocracy"? It's a satire of a dystopian future where humans are stupid and corporations rule. I think we have arrived...
CuriousCamels@reddit
Turns out Idiocracy was just a documentary from the future.
Agreeable_Meaning_96@reddit
Maybe this is a point for introspection on how you came to your beliefs....so the majority of the country is dumb and I'll informed?
frenchezz@reddit
Oddly enough I came to my beliefs through Catholicism and Jesus' teachings. Stuff like loving my neighbor, taking care of the less fortunate, and good will toward my fellow human. Guess I was the only one with those takeaways...
Forsaken-Pangolin-57@reddit
Yep. Thanks a lot, morons.
AppropriateSite9077@reddit
I heard they got on the ballot by wildly misinforming the people signing their ballot initiatives, leading them to believe they were signing something else. UGH
aroslab@reddit
i don't know about misinforming specifically but the person who approached me outside a local Walmart got very upset that I wouldn't sign without going home and looking up what the fuck they were talking about. I'd never heard of it and they couldn't seem to tell me anything but "hero = good".
they got increasingly frustrated as they followed me back to my car, even after multiple "I need to go home and research anything I'm signing, dude". Pretty gross
RequirementIll8141@reddit
This literally could bankrupt Dallas
naazzttyy@reddit
Ding ding ding - we have a winner!
(That was the entire intent behind this proposition…)
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
(That was the entire intent behind this proposition…)
Could you explain how for us who are out of the loop?
AbueloOdin@reddit
Imagine you have to spend any raises at work on guns and ammo. Forever.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
I kind of get that, but it says "excess". That means that if you get a raise you make a new budget.
In the end you have very little if at all "excess" cash.
Cantfindthebeer@reddit
Excess of previous years’ revenue, so still any new revenue is functionally halved. Goodbye water and road infrastructure lol. That’s usually over budget due to unpredictable construction/materials costs and dips into any budget excess, not to mention for basically every budget increase the revenue increase corresponding to it has to be doubled. Either our infrastructure will basically stagnate, or our property taxes are about to skyrocket. Honestly at this point fuck it, turn us into Flint, we literally asked for it.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
I get that. But the city budget has already been set for the year and projects are planned based on that set budget. So when you say
How will infrastructure stagnate when infrastructure is already planned into the budget? This bill is touching "bouns money" not the planned money.
NotClever@reddit
I will admit I'm not super well versed in city accounting, however, I don't think that revenue == budget. Even if future budgeting is currently based on forecasted revenue increases, this proposition would override that.
That said, the excess revenue provision is not the part that will most damage the city. The requirement to hire new police officers until we have 4,000 officers, and then to maintain a specific ratio of officers to citizens going forward, is the really wild part.
From reporting that I have seen, the police department would need to hire around 900 new officers to meet the 4,000 quota. First, police officers don't materialize out of thin air -- are there even 900 officers available to hire right now? If so, are they officers that we want to hire? Second, the budget to pay police officers does not materialize out of thin air -- where is the money going to come from to pay for 33% more officers?
alnelon@reddit
There are thousands of qualified LE candidates that apply every year. The problem is they’re 99% white males and the department has to hit their “majority minority” quota for every round of hiring so they end up hiring 150 officers a year if they’re lucky.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
Very very valid point on it ballooning the City's budget like crazy. Yeah not sure how that will be handled. We currently have 3100 officers now, so you are right. That is 900 spots that need to be filled. I would say the city is capable of that number because it was around 3600 in year 2010 until the pension situation happened (according to Google). The city has grown considerably since 2010. So the increase in officers maybe justified.
With all that said, I would say maintaining a pension vs moving to a 401k is the biggest issue and is likely the root cause of all the issues.
noncongruent@reddit
Pensions are considered superior to 401ks from a retiree POV because there are no downside risks. If the stock market tanks you still get your pension, but can lose most or all of your 401k value. If Dallas switched to 401ks they likely would entirely lose any recruiting power because anyone wanting to be a cop or firefighter could just go do a different city that still had a pension benefit.
Knetza@reddit
Where are you getting the mandate that the they actually have to have the officers on hand and not budget for an authorized strength, with allowable vacancies. When the department had 3600 officers they budgeted for that, when the officer count dwindled down to 3,000 the difference in that budgeted salary disappeared. If council hadn't made that difference disappear this wouldn't even be questioned. Council adjusted the authorized strength to coincide with their plans with the budget. This ensures the money is where it should be.
Cantfindthebeer@reddit
The bill isn’t just touching “bonus money” it’s allocating 50% of all revenue greater than that of the previous year to the pension plan. “Bonus money” would be budget surplus/money exceeding the budget; what this does affects any actual or expected increase in revenue even if that’s already been budgeted for or needs to be allocated due to necessary budget increases.
As a hypothetical; let’s say the 2024 revenue was 100 million, and the budget for 2024 was 100 million, and we expect the revenue to increase in 2025 to 120 mil, even if the set 2025 budget is increased to 120 mil to account for inflation/rising construction costs/etc. Half of that “new” 20 million is automatically allocated to the pension, in addition to whatever money the city already budgeted towards the pension fund. So then you’ve got a deficit of 10 mil, and the city either needs to cut programs (likely starting with non-essentials such as the DART, Parks and Rec, public schools, etc.), borrow funds, or raise property taxes. (And sure the budget could be kept the same year to year, but that’s not realistic because the cost of everything else continues to increase.) So if the budget has to be increased by 6% every year to account for inflation/rising costs/salaries/etc, in order to meet that 6% increase, revenue now has to be increased by 12%.
Plus; often cities need “extra” money on hand to account for costs not reflected accurately in the budget. Can’t speak for everything, but most water infrastructure projects cost about 20-40% over what they’d been budgeted for, since a lot of municipal capital improvement plans were conducted accounting for present costs not cost of construction at the time it’s expected to be bid at.
And even more insidious, Dallas already is in a deficit. This functionally cuts in half any new revenue that could be used to pay back existing loans or cut down on the need for future loans/bonds.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
I appreciate you actually responding and providing some education vs people just calling me stupid. I love the detailed post. Sounds like it probably was not the best decision to pass it. But to late now. I wish there was a medium where people could go into details about this kind of stuff before the election. All I get are political talking points. Thank you for your post!
Cantfindthebeer@reddit
Yo, and I appreciate you asking for clarification! Sorry if I came off at all patronizing earlier on, been an eventful day lol. I feel like too many people these days jump to assuming anyone that asks a question is asking in bad faith. This kinda stuff is designed to be confusing so it passes unnoticed, it’s legitimately hard to understand. Would definitely be nice to have a place to discuss the details of props without all the automatic hostility.
At the end of the day, it isn’t the end of the world, and theoretically any amendments to the charter can be re-amended later.
not-actual69_@reddit
Imagine if you cut corruption and spending on nonsensically items how beneficial it would be? You have no ability to think on your own huh?
AbueloOdin@reddit
Oh. Yeah. Just "cut corruption". Why didn't we think of this before?
naazzttyy@reddit
Proposition S gives a resident the ability to put the city on notice for violating one of its own ordinances, charter codes or any law in Texas. After 60 days, the resident can sue — and the city must give up its governmental immunity. Sounds pretty good on paper, right? Protecting the citizens from government overreach or ignoring its own ordinances, codes, and state laws.
This measure will leave the city vulnerable to hundreds — if not thousands — of lawsuits and tie up millions of dollars in resources and manpower for litigation, eventually leading to the City of Dallas having to cut services and payroll in an effort to stave off bankruptcy as legal defense expenses grow exponentially.
There will be a veritable wave of lawsuits filed in the coming years by individuals and groups enticed to do so by billionaire Monty Bennett either by direct compensation or quid pro quo. Skeptics of this initiative have ferreted out the probable underlying reason, which is to allow Bennett to point to ineffective city leadership and lay blame for the city’s woes on mismanagement. It’s a blueprint to remove the leadership of blue cities and provides another tool in the red team toolkit to consolidate power, backed by a billionaire quietly pulling the strings from a safe distance.
noncongruent@reddit
Is the city really breaking thousands of it's own rules, laws, and state laws? To get any lawsuit certified the plaintiff will have to show reasonable evidence of the city breaking a law, ordinance, etc. If there's nothing to show then there's no lawsuit.
naazzttyy@reddit
Have you ever dealt directly with the City of Dallas trying to resolve or fix an issue? It is not known for its efficiency.
Here are just a few off the cuff examples that could potentially lead to hundreds of lawsuits if not cured within the 60 day period proposition S provides.
Etc., etc. - these are just off the top of my head. Spend a few months with a dedicated team identifying and researching the lowest hanging fruit with the largest number of probable violations, then have that same team spend 40 hours per week for the next year clogging up the system with individual reports that are tracked. This doesn’t even get into more Byzantine issues. Proposition S was created with the intent of being abused, and it will be.
noncongruent@reddit
All of these things sound like things that should be getting done? I mean, if the city expects its residents to obey the law then the city should as well. Also, regarding the city fleet vehicles, most of those are, or should be, running "exempt" plates. All the buses do, as well as police and fire vehicles. I'm pretty sure that any vehicle owned or leased by the city that's for official use can run exempt plates. That "exempt" means they don't pay registration fees. They won't have to pass safety inspections after the first of the year either, though I wonder if they have to pass emissions inspection. Since they aren't subject to registration fee requirements they may not have to go through any inspections at all.
In a bigger picture, if the city can't comply with some of its own ordinances and rules they always have the option to write those out of the law instead, though that means that nobody will have to comply with them. For instance, if the city rewrites the ordinances to allow improper storage of hazardous materials they can't be sued over those violations, and also can't enforce them for anyone else.
Xyllus@reddit
But is it reasonable to expect a city to fix every single issue within 60 days? Is it reasonable for the city to pay an individual fees ordered by court because one of their service vehicles doesn't have an up to date sticker?
noncongruent@reddit
You ignored what I wrote about vehicle registrations, so I have no choice to ignore what you wrote here. Regarding things like OSHA and TECQ violations, hazardous storage violations, are delays in addressing those really necessary? Especially OSHA violations since the city will be paying out big fines and injury/death lawsuits on those anyway. And what about city lights blasting people trying to sleep, or noise? Do city residents have any rights to being able to live a quality life?
Xyllus@reddit
idk why ignoring me leads to a good discussion but ok. have a good one.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
We are already in budget deficit
Davidwalsh1976@reddit
Maybe they should adjust property tax rates a on millionaires to accurately reflect the value
RichardPainusDM@reddit
That’s already the case. The property taxes in Dallas are some the highest I’ve ever heard of. It scales with the value of the property.
Dallas has definitely lost a lot of middle class home buyers that fled to the burbs to escape the property tax.
Maker_Of_Tar@reddit
People will flee Dallas in droves and the only replacements will be more millionaires or investment funds that turn these homes into short term rentals
Davidwalsh1976@reddit
This is the nationwide plan of VC groups like Blackstone right? You will own nothing and like it
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
Could you explain how for us who are out of the loop?
neolibbro@reddit
Requiring 50% of new funding to go to the police means we either:
Spend the most money on police of any municipality in human history, or
Intentionally forego new spending on non-police things (infrastructure, transit, misc. government services) because amendment U makes doing so prohibitively expensive.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
Just want to be clear on what the proposition say. It states "excess' funds. Which is different than "new" funds.
To me that means in year 2025, if expect 10 mil tax revenue, I budget for 10 mil spending across roads, police, fire, community services... If I happen to get 11 mil then 500k goes to police. In 2026 I adjust the budget for 11 mil and now I have no excess. Am I interpreting that incorrectly?
NotClever@reddit
What it actually says is this:
I've emphasized the relevant part for this discussion.
You are interpreting that incorrectly. To modify your example, what it means is if in year 2024 the total annual revenue was $10 million, and in year 2025 the total annual revenue was $11 million, then $500k goes to the police and fire pension fund in 2025.
steavoh@reddit
Also no mention of inflation. The nominal dollar amount of revenue always goes up because of inflation even if tax rates and the actual things the city spends on remains the same. So every year more of the budget has to be 50/50 split.
If inflation varies but is like 2 to 4 per year, then it would take between 18 and 36 years for the city budget to be stuck with 50 % going to pensions. And then that doesn’t include the actual public safety budget.
So if this is not repealed Dallas’s real budget will be only half the size it is now but your taxes will be the same or higher. The 50% goes to a big bonfire.
Xyllus@reddit
Is it possible for the city to cut pension funding in the actual budget because the excess will cover it?
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
I stand corrected. I had to reread that bolded portion a few times. Yeah that is def going to balloon the hell out of the city budget.
anonMuscleKitten@reddit
Commented in another part of the thread, but I’d recommend doing a couple searches regarding older northern cities and how pensions are essentially sucking money away from all other services. In the next decade or two they will cause many to go bankrupt.
City governments don’t have the money to cover pensions anymore. The only entities that are really big enough to handle this is the fed government. They all need to be offloaded to 401ks or at the minimum begin the transition for new employees.
ShamokeAndretti@reddit
This is a good argument because the math supports it. This is a con against the bill. In my opinion, that issue should be addressed separately. The rest of the world has moved away from pensions like 30 years ago. Dallas should do the same.
permalink_save@reddit
When I voted there was a truck passing by the front door advertising STU. Pretty sure you can't electioneer within 100ft of the enterance, especially since they were past the sign saying so. We let the city pass policy a park cities billionaire threw at us.
happy_puppy25@reddit
Do you have evidence? You can send proof to the prosecutor and they are filing charges. Same with any person who wore campaign clothes
permalink_save@reddit
Where do you send it? I took pictures
RequirementIll8141@reddit
We let the city pass policy? No the citizens who didn’t do research help to pass it. The city had to allow it on the ballot due to the signatures they (Dallas HERO) collected it’s in the charter to allow for this etc.
T_ReV@reddit
All the idiots who voted for U. Enjoy paying all those tickets that the 900 extra cops are going to write so the city can not go bankrupt paying for all these new cops.
Vzninja@reddit
Is having more cops in Dallas bad now?
Kamden3@reddit
Yes
EvanOnTheFly@reddit
I drive fine. I actually want traffic enforcement.
People are too idiotic now.
God forbid people don't run lights and roll stop signs.
caseylain@reddit
Oh god forbid someone roll a stop sign on some side street with out a single other car on the road, besides the 4 cops on every corner thanks to this bill.
EvanOnTheFly@reddit
Nope. That is when you practice the most. You build habits and muscle memory. You have blind spots. You get tired. You sometimes forget. Your brain tricks you all the time.
Have literally had dumbasses do this in school zones where kids walk and ride bikes daily.
"Huuuuurr durrrr there was no one there, I can see for blocks bro" yeah until one of the above factors causes you to run over someone and your only excuse was "I didn't see them officer".
LensofJared@reddit
This.
EvanOnTheFly@reddit
Or that?
LensofJared@reddit
Maybe those?
BikerCow@reddit
This amendment will do nothing to change that. The DPD does not have the facilities nor the budget to train AND RETAIN enough officers to meet this. Blame your legislature for people running lights - they’re the ones that took away the cameras because THEY didn’t like getting caught
EvanOnTheFly@reddit
If they are required to, or lose their jobs, there will be something changing.
Status quo is not an option right now.
not-actual69_@reddit
…. So you mean paying for tickets if you break the law and have a valid reason to pay a fine? Seems like an easy thing to avoid
Icecoldruski@reddit
Are you 18? Who worries about parking/speeding tickets when we don’t even have enough cops to stop violent crime in dallas. I posted asking people to explain their rationale for U and it was always “untrained cops are bad” — ok so no cops are better? Didn’t convince me, public safety is more important than any other programs the city is wasting money on.
maybeidontknowwhy@reddit
Police don’t stop violent crime. They let it happen. See Uvalde Elementary School Massacre
GIVE_US_THE_MANGIA@reddit
Did you know that the police chief and Dallas Police Association opposed this?
Also read up on Monty Bennett to understand why this is evil and Dallas HERO is a sham.
bulls1441@reddit
Yes, in fact, I would rather not have a cop show up somewhere than have an untrained cop show up.
2ManyCooksInTheKitch@reddit
You thought Amber Guyger was bad.... Hell I can't imagine how much worse it can be with an even worse trained moron behind the badge.
Optimistiqueone@reddit
I thought I just saw a report that violent crime was down around is lowest levels.
inkydeeps@reddit
Things the city wastes money on… water, trash, city streets. Are these the kind of things that you want to give up for more cops?
BwAVeteran03@reddit
When the property tax bill skyrockets, no worries right?
RequirementIll8141@reddit
Okay the reason why U is bad if you would’ve read the documentation on it is due to the additional revenue going to their pensions vs other services needed in the city
Where is the additional revenue and or money coming from? Tax payers
900 officers when they only have the resources to train about 125-200 officers a year along with equipment, cars etc.
This could bankrupt our fcking city we are already in a budget deficit it would be millions of dollars to do this and city council already passed something in September to fix this now this added bullshit is going to add onto what was already approved money wise increasing taxes for us taxpayers in the city again. Just dumb af uninformed voters per usual
rambo6986@reddit
Dude they don't write tickets now. DPD is the worst department I've ever seen. They just sit in parking lots writing "reports"
InsultInsurance@reddit
Really not a fan of U. Dallas already does not have the budget for that. Pretty sure increasing the budget is just going to have more police Corvettes on the road not doing anything. Even the departments themselves said they can't handle that either.
dfwpopo@reddit
The money is there, they will have to cut pet projects and non essential city functions. They found hundreds of millions for a park. Decor for a bridge. Millions to hire a company to count trees.
InsultInsurance@reddit
Sure I would agreed if it was only those side project. Instead we're increasing it to 50% of the city revenue dedicated to those wage increases.
That's not just a few millions lol That's 100s of millions.
azwethinkweizm@reddit
All of the comments blaming Republicans is making me die with laughter. Dallas proper is more blue than the county which is 60/40 blue. S&U doesn't pass without significant support from Democrats.
Viper_ACR@reddit
I'm amazed U passed. I got a LOT of texts about voting against it
caseylain@reddit
to be fair a lot of Democrats in Dallas are bougeoise neolibs who love shitting on the poor. So cutting all services (like section 8) to hire 900 more police to do just that would be right up their alley.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
Dallas HERO is a conservative right wing non profit organization. They are responsible for the props S T and U.
not-actual69_@reddit
So the uninformed democrat voter is who you are mad at? Right? Lololol Dallas county is majority blue and these won in a majority blue county. Stop acting like democrats aren’t the uninformed voters you’re mad at.
RequirementIll8141@reddit
You literally talking about democrats and republicans when the city propositions got approved that would mess it up for the entire city. Have a good day idc if they blue or right. Bc tons of uninformed voters on BOTH sides just voting for stuff that “sounds good”
Micronbros@reddit
Half the people who voted did not know what STU was. All they saw was “more police funding” and voted yes.
A TON of people had no clue what that law does. They saw an advertisement that said “hero amendment, vote yes” and they voted “yes”.
This was a pure marketing stunt and it worked.
majora2007@reddit
I see a lot of comments conflicting with how I voted, so let me share. I'm curious to hear about counter arguments (I wont be going into a discussion though, just curious at surface level).
I voted for Prop S as it felt pretty common sense.
I voted against Prop T. I felt while it looked good at surface value, that it was ripe to abuse given the small 1400 signatures required and lack of details around how those would be collected. I felt it was easy to circumvent to get extra bonus.
I voted for Prop U. While I'm not an expert on DPD, I constantly see on reddit we are lacking police resources and I feel it every day driving around. Dallas is a death trap on the road. Coming from AZ, where there are police on the street, people aren't running reds or swerving through traffic on the daily, I voted to increase the police force and funding. It's a scary thing to vote for because I don't want a police state, but as it currently is, Dallas feels pretty lawless. I rarely see police driving around, I rarely see people pulled over for traffic violations and the few friends that got into accidents and called for a police to come, never had one show up. That's not a place I want to live in.
Really curious on counter points. I will say I did not extensively research prior to going to the polls, so hold that against me if you will.
BucketofWarmSpit@reddit
The reason why everyone was against Prop U (including the police chief) is because it hamstrings the entire city budget in perpetuity. The state legislature passed a law a couple of years ago that prevents cities from ever reducing the budget for the police department. Once it goes up, it can't go down.
Other than that, DPD is having a really hard time hiring qualified candidates. It's not that they don't want to hire more police, they can't find enough people. That's why they're considering revising the qualification criteria.
noncongruent@reddit
Why is bringing a new cop up through the police academy considered the only option? Recruiting already trained cops from other cities seems like it would also be an option. How would we do this? Better pay and benefits seems like a no-brainer. Dallas has been trying to run a threadbare police department on the cheap, and it shows through lack of police response to any but the most severe crimes. Lots of perps have realized over the years that they can commit smaller crimes with impunity, crimes like running fake tags and not having insurance, running red lights, doing side shows and racing, etc.
The whole reason U passed was because the average citizen is tired of never being able to get a cop to respond to their needs. The fact that DPD is understaffed was never in question, that's been apparent to anyone who has ever had to call the cops and the cops never showed up. The real question was, would Dallas fix it on their own, or would someone make them fix it? Well, here we are. By slow-walking the fixes, stretching out things like dealing with the pension plan screwups, and doing all the other things that left citizens to wonder if they even had a police force, we opened up ourselves to an outsider to create Prop U and get it on the ballot.
dfwpopo@reddit
Department has had a true lateral program for about two years now. They've recruited only a handful of certified officers. I believe the number is in the single digits.
noncongruent@reddit
One of the downsides of trying to run a PD on the cheap.
BucketofWarmSpit@reddit
I understand why people feel that way. Police don't come out for most car wrecks. They have really slow response times. They ignore the majority of traffic violations. The list really does go on and on.
I don't know that the number of DPD officers is the problem though. Police staffing standards that all cities strived for twenty years ago dictated that you should have one officer per 500 residents. The population of Dallas is about 1,300,000. DPD has 3100 officers. That should be enough for a population of 1,550,000.
DPD used to respond to emergency calls. DPD used to write tons more tickets than they do now. DPD used to come out to more car wrecks to write accident reports. What happened?
My suspicion is that they are doing the equivalent of a workforce slowdown to try to get what they want. Police are barred from striking. This is the closest they get to doing a strike. I also think they're still pissed about the George Floyd protests and are trying to prove a point.
From what I hear, suburbs usually always pay better and they don't have as much crime. Police officers don't want to work in big cities as much.
As far as the academy goes, I don't know how DPD treats applicants from other cities or municipalities. My ex-girlfriend always wanted to be a Houston cop. But she missed the first training academy she applied for and was really depressed about it. I suggested just being a cop in one of the suburbs but she refused to do it because she would have to do the Houston police academy anyway if she did eventually get hired. She got into the next academy so it worked out for her in case you want to know how she ended up.
noncongruent@reddit
I found this article:
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-police-staffing-history-11559463
Seems to indicate that 3,900 officers would be the target for 1.3M population. That's not far off the Prop U requirement for 4,000, and it would not surprise me if Prop U authors used that 3/1000 number as the starting point for the Proposition.
Now that funding is mandated, the City Council, who hires the Police Chief, should get ahead of this by writing new rules to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the police in this city. To paraphrase, "With great funding comes great responsibility". It's time to start being serious about transforming DPD into a true professional force tailored to meet the needs of our citizens.
BucketofWarmSpit@reddit
DPD isn't the only police force in Dallas though. There's also DART, Dallas County, the city Marshalls, DISD cops. I don't know how many are in those organizations or if I left anyone out.
3/1000 is a new one for me. Typically, I've heard 2/1000. Even that, academics say may be overkill. It depends on the city and what other options are available. The problem with this ordinance and the law passed by the legislature a couple of years ago is that it ties our hands in terms of finding what works for us.
I've been in a "domestic violence situation." When the police came out, they also had a social worker with them that took the lead. That person did a great job. We need more of that. That's an option that may be completely cut out because of this ordinance.
Dstars86@reddit
DPD is the only one that answers your emergency calls when you place a call to 911. The other agencies work the city detention city or county jail, and the train stations or the schools. That’s it. DPD does not receive help with the emergency call load from them.
noncongruent@reddit
Just wanted to note that if what we had was working for us then the backers of U would not have been able to get it on the ballot and it would not have succeeded. When people are told one thing, that U wasn't needed and that everything was doing well, and their actual lived experiences contradict that completely, then they're going to seize on a chance to change things. Dallas leadership should never have created the opening for the Hero amendments in the first place, but they did. From the POV of many people the city council seemed more intent on spending large on amenities instead of necessities. Lots of money for parks, no money for sidewalks.
NotClever@reddit
This was not the message that I heard from the opposing coalition. What I heard was "This proposition places an insane burden on the city budget and unreasonable demands on DPD."
BucketofWarmSpit@reddit
I never said things were going well. In fact, I said the opposite. I just pointed out that it's probably not the reason you think.
And really, I don't think the campaign against these initiatives said that either. It was centered around the collateral damage this initiative would cause.
The petition process got these initiatives on the ballot. Are you saying we shouldn't have that?
noncongruent@reddit
I'm only saying that U happened because the city council created the opening for it to happen. It didn't have to be this way. Too many people are trying to frame it as only the result of an outsider, but the reality is that the city council allowed it to happen through their bad decisions. As a person who has experienced the complete lack of responsiveness of DPD and who has to navigate busted sidewalks and potholes while looking at the city spending hundreds of millions on fancy parks and amenities I fully understand why U succeeded.
majora2007@reddit
Appreciate the comment (everyone else just insulted me lol). I wasn't aware there was some stipulations that we can't decrease the budget, I wonder how that passed.
I can understand not being able to find qualified participants. It's a hard job and comes with a lot of requirements and hate from the public.
DeceasedDerriere@reddit
If you don’t mind, can you share why you didn’t research before voting? To me (and apparently others), it seems like common sense to do your research before voting for/against anything, hence the negative response to your original comment
majora2007@reddit
Don't mind at all. Originally I wasn't even going to vote due but decided last minute to. I usually skip anything I don't fully grasp. From the wording I did decide to vote on a few things.
Personally, I don't know anyone that reaches all these propositions ahead of time, nor do I know where people are even learning (of course I can Google).
In my day to day life, I don't really focus on politics. I only care about a few things, so for me, spending time researching and taking notes to remember when voting what I'm going to vote for is a hassle.
Perhaps I should have not cast any vote at all, I doubt it would have made a difference as I think a lot of people are misinformed about some of the propositions and the wording.
Hope that helps and I don't think it makes me look any better in this situation. I'm actually shocked so many people do the research, as I mentioned, none of my friend groups do.
iwentdwarfing@reddit
This story isn't from Dallas, but it explains why research beforehand is a must: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/31/explain-issue-1-in-ohio-ballot-language-was-written-by-opponents/75936806007/
Tl,dr: partisan groups write the proposition language to steer the vote towards their cause, so you can never trust that what is printed on the ballot actually reflects the change that will happen.
DeceasedDerriere@reddit
I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. It can definitely take time and effort to research, especially with the number of props. But there are resources like vote411.org that simplify the language and give unbiased reasons for/against each item. It took maybe 15-20 min to go through it all, which is well worth it for a big decision (and which people should be able to spare) IMO.
I hear you on not being into politics, but this is the time we can influence policies that actually impact us through elected officials and propositions. I would challenge you to consider researching for future elections and encouraging your friends to do the same!
majora2007@reddit
Yeah I actually reached out to my friends to ask if I was alone in not researching and reconfirmed I wasn't. A few of them did start to do some research and this thread helped me understand that I should at least step it up a bit. This is my second time voting, so I'm not going to claim I'm super experienced or knowledgeable, but I do see now that some prep work is required.
I learned in another comment there is a spring election that is more local, so I'll take this as a growth opportunity and move forward. Again, I really appreciate your demeanor, a message comes off much better than just insulting a person without understanding their perspective or experience.
BucketofWarmSpit@reddit
It passed because the Republicans are unchecked in Texas government. They have full rein to do whatever they want. More so now. So get ready.
Rickleskilly@reddit
Let's lower the already abysmal standards so more stupid and/or violent psychopathic gang members can legally terrorize the community.
Lady_DreadStar@reddit
All they’d have to do to get normal people applying is let them smoke weed off-hours. They only want to hire a bunch of tight-laced church-goers and wonder why they have no applicants. 🙄
PiaJr@reddit
For Prop S... There is a reason the government has immunity from lawsuits. If everyone can sue the government for any reason, it would quickly become an unmanageable situation. The city would have to spend an increasing amount of the budget fighting lawsuits because trash wasn't collected at exactly 8am or Thursday is too close to Tuesday or whatever other reason a citizen comes up with. While people may not win those suits, the city has to defend them. And that's expensive. Sure, they'll settle some to keep costs down, but that will only create more suits. More and more of the budget goes towards attorney fees than providing services.
For Prop U... No one would say we don't need more cops but even the Police Department said this was a bad way to do it. Currently, 30% of the city's budget goes to police protection. Now you've set it at 50%. That 20% increase has to come from somewhere. Other city services will suffer and no matter how much extra revenue the city generates, 50% of it HAS to go to police protection. More cops may not even fix the issues you raise. The real question is why the current police force isn't providing the services you say they should. This isn't adding more training or providing better equipment. It's just throwing more cops at a problem. Prop U is like adding more stoplights because people keep running stoplights. It's wildly expensive, you haven't addressed the underlying issues, and you may have actually made things worse.
These two measures will consume a significant portion of the city's budget, leave less and less money for other services. Prop S will do nothing to improve the lives of the citizens who live here (except the ones who win lawsuits, of course). Prop U sounds good on paper, but fixes none of the actual problems with DPD.
noncongruent@reddit
Prop U does not do this. It does require that 50% of any new revenues go toward cops, but does not take away a single dollar of existing revenues toward existing spending. Also, 50% of any new revenues is free to be spent on whatever the city wants. If revenues increase from $100 to $105, then $2.50 of that has to go toward the PD, leaving $102.50 going toward everything else.
dumasymptote@reddit
Sure that’s great for now or next year. What happens in 10-15 years when now that 50% of “new revenue” actually have the police budget at 50-60% of the overall? It’s ridiculous and will end up strangling the city for no good reason.
noncongruent@reddit
I don't think it's mathematically possible for half of only new revenues to turn into 50-60% of the entire budget.
PiaJr@reddit
Fair correction. My mistake. Thank you.
TCIHL@reddit
Increasing police funding doesn’t mean that there will be additional cops. And even if there are additional cops it doesn’t mean that lawlessness will even decrease.
I’m a normal 41 year old white IT guy. The most privileged demographic. And I’ve never in my life had a positive experience with a cop. Either they are targeting me to give me a ticket or they’re feigning powerlessness. Like when my front door was kicked in in the middle of the night and the cops showed up 2 hours later to take a report. I had to chase the burglars off myself.
While filing the report I could tell they were giving no shits and asked them point blank what the next steps were. They started acting hostile to me!
Optimistiqueone@reddit
One counter argument is that the police department and city asked voters to vote against this.
CommanderSquirt@reddit
Police and Fire: Vote no.
Ignorant voters: But police and fire.
versusChou@reddit
Why would you not research things before you vote on them?
RequirementIll8141@reddit
I voted against NO for all three
S - it will let any citizen bring a lawsuit with the city about anything. This takes away time and resources and can stop and hold up process on the smallest shit just bc someone gets their panties in a bunch about anything. No legal merit now that this has passed
T is about the survey of 1400 ppl if the city manager doing good then a raise and or bonus or fired. This is NOT how civics work in a city with a city mananger. The city manager has the most important job of all bc that person manages our budget. Nobody would even want to take the job we just lost our city manager to Austin due to bickering and petty shit between Major Johnson other council members and them trying to go behind his back to fire him so he pulled the okie doke resigned and got hired with Austin
U has nothing to do with Firefighters and or Police cops. This is Dallas HERO and dummies who signed the petition to say we need more officers (900) and yes we are understaffed for DPD however they just passed for an increase for 250 officers and the dept only has the resources to train about 150-200 a year in addition to the equipment, cars etc. it would cost millions of dollars to do this when they already approved millions to hire 250 more. So now since this passed it’s more millions that comes to us with increased property taxes and anything else they can increase. It said all the city revenue goes to them meaning not to other services
A lot of times folks are just really really really uninformed. I attend meetings and they are always empty folks don’t really pay attn and attend these meetings to know what’s going on in the city
Then get in these booths and vote ignorantly. We are already in a budget deficit in the city it could bankrupt us as a city then what?? We shall see
cride11@reddit
Why would anyone waste their time to give you counterpoints to amendments that have already passed?
You should have asked these questions before voting yes for amendments that you didn’t bother to “…extensively research prior to going to the polls”.
houdinishandkerchief@reddit
There’s no way of decreasing the number. It only goes up and mandates funding the pension. This will bankrupt the city idiot. Maybe research before you go to the poll. Jesus Christ the ignorance 🤦🏼♂️
Working_Succotash_41@reddit
Voting for U screwed the screwed the city, good job.
dfwpopo@reddit
The voters were not misinformed or dumb. They have watched for 30 years the city council and managers kick the can down to road over and over. Police stations falling apart while DFR gets new stations and remodels. Parks receiving tons of funding. The police academy was supposed to be a temporary facility in the early 90s until they could plan a new one. Multiple times the citizens passed bonds to fund a new one and the city didn't take action. The new one the city is begging for private donations instead of just putting the money up. Even then they are half assing this new academy that lacks many things like driving track, gun range, etc.
We suffered through junk squad cars. Our gun range is from the 50s with contaminated tap water. The fire department has a dedicated academy with everything they need. Why doesn't DPD? Ft Worth has a world class facility that the police and fire share. We have a world class dump.
You can feel how you want about policing, but the voters have voiced their want.
Anon_Bourbon@reddit
Fucking rich people
cvsmith122@reddit
What were these props ? I’m in Collin county we did not have any on the ballot at least in my part of Collin county
Onuus@reddit
Woohoo! Can’t wait to have 900 more cops on the road, further continuing to not respond to actual crime and instead write people tickets to pay for their salary.
Fuck yeah!
/s
AbueloOdin@reddit
Maybe we can just park a cop per DART train and bus? Then all these people complaining about safety can't say shit.
caseylain@reddit
This is the one idea I can get on board with.
Vzninja@reddit
Honestly this would deter a decent bit of train station safety issues.
Vzninja@reddit
If you get a ticket from DPD you must’ve murdered (joke) someone or something cause they don’t do anything.
Harisdrop@reddit
Parking violations woot
MC_ScattCatt@reddit
Does this impact the bond money passed last May?
Knetza@reddit
No that is all seperate
RandyChampagne@reddit
cope
Dizzy-Concentrate284@reddit
Corruption in Texas unimpeded
Chicagomarie@reddit
Yeah, who needs law enforcement anyway…….🤣🤣🤣 Let’s vote for no police whatsoever. 🤣🤣🤣
Optimistiqueone@reddit
What happens once we have plenty of police? They must keep hiring more.
Looks like the answer is to run the city so there is no excess.
NotClever@reddit
Not sure what you mean by "plenty of police", but the proposition is pretty straightforward there: We must hire up to 4,000 officers, then maintain the same ratio of police : citizens going forward. So yeah, we have to keep hiring more as the population increases.
The "excess" requirement is based on revenue -- i.e., income. If the city gets more taxes in than it did in the previous year, that's new revenue in excess of the previous year (whether due to tax rate increases, property valuation increases, or new residents).
Optimistiqueone@reddit
The wording of them on the ballot made them sound like good ideas. I knew better so I researched before going.
NotClever@reddit
This is kindof an inherent problem with these sorts of ballot measures. It sounds great to hire more police and give them more money for their pensions. But the ballot can't explain the economic impact of that, and whether it's realistic or not.
CommanderSquirt@reddit
I'd say 80-90% of voters don't research shit.
HoneyIShrunkMyNads@reddit
Not that voters are super informed elsewhere, but Texas has done a masterful job in convincing people that politics doesn't matter and voting is a waste of time.
They've also somehow convinced people that we are a state of freedom when I can't smoke pot, gamble or buy liquor on Sundays.
earthworm_fan@reddit
Look at the ballot measures in the suburbs. There is a high degree of informed decision making going on
HoneyIShrunkMyNads@reddit
Is there any place I can view these?
SlashPurge@reddit
Were these on the ballot? Voted yesterday and only had candidate options. And yes Dallas County.
TwilightGraphite@reddit
Only if you live in the city of Dallas
SlashPurge@reddit
Yeah I'm just got word this is explicity Dallas itself lol. Rip nonetheless.
troutforbrains@reddit
That wasn't an accident.
IHateHangovers@reddit
I’m confused. So we pass Prop R, but now Prop S people can sue the city for not enforcing the state drug laws?
hobby_ranchhand@reddit
I mean, Florida had something like 57% of voters back an amendment to protect abortion access, and 57% also voted for the guys who took away abortion access.
Swimming_Tennis6641@reddit
Prop U is disappointing.
It will be interesting to see how the costs of Prop S are budgeted and allocated. At face value, accountability is always a good thing.
hobby_ranchhand@reddit
I'm against the propositions, but we need to also blame Dallas government. People like to point out violent crime is down, and it is, but the thing people have been screaming for is fixing property crime and our Mad Max roadways. Thankfully, most people don't experience violent crime, but 1 in 22 experience property crime and lots more are experiencing road rage or being terrified in traffic. Those people probably looked around and thought "if this is the help I get from DPD, God help me if I ever actually need the police." Yes, we might have good emergency response times, but numbers don't help when someone already feels let down by the police.
Dallas property crime is worse than similar cities and our roadway fatalities are some of the worst in the nation. The only change Dallas offered recently was an online portal so your property crime can be ignored faster. Maybe they could have sold the online portal better if they cited numbers that it resulted in faster response times, but I certainly did not hear that. For traffic fatalities, DPD has just said "Oh, we don't do that." With that response, can anyone really be surprised people voted stupid and angry?
Personally, I wish we formed a larger traffic task force and started handing non-emergency/non-violent crime response to Dallas-311 and people with digital cameras driving Honda Civics, but that was not an option. I know I looked at 3 squad cars recently responding to a car vs guardrail incident on a residential road and thought "That's a half million dollars in cars and kit to write a ticket and take some pictures."
I might disagree with it, but it is hard to blame people for voting for the bad option when there was no other option given.
steavoh@reddit
Does U account for inflation?
If it doesn’t, it means gradually over time pensions will make up 50% of the budget. The city just becomes a tax farm for retiree benefits. That’s ridiculous.
How long until we can repeal this?
SameSadMan@reddit
U was the worst of the 3, and that's disappointing
ElChiChiPapa@reddit
Happy we get to pay for the police departments stupid handling of the pension fund. Maybe don’t invest the entire pension into a failed commercial real estate ploy.
kwill729@reddit
Get ready for the Park Cities conservative republicans to fuck up your city.
CommodoreVF2@reddit
Great, so we can have more cops that don't do shit.
Skinnieguy@reddit
Voters didn’t vote.
azwethinkweizm@reddit
If they're not going to vote in a consequential presidential election, they'll never vote.
Erick23Polo@reddit
Hopefully, U gets challenged by the fire department and police because it’s not feasible to meet that higher numbers. Plus they can show the courts evidence that they already have passed 11 billion for a 30-year pension plan.
cuberandgamer@reddit
I know S is likely to get challenged in court and fail, but what about U?
DonkeeJote@reddit
S I am less worried about for that reason. It's possibly against state law for the city to forego their sovereign immunity, which makes the whole idea of suing for breaking state law a bit circular.
detox02@reddit
I swear many people are uninformed