DALLAS FORT WORTH | Urban + Suburban P & C - Page 304

llamaorama · #**6061** Posted **Nov 10, 2024, 8:53 PM**

That park project is either dead in the water, or it will kill off the rest of the park system due to a budgetary apocalypse.

This november, Dallas voted for a ballot proposition, prop U, which mandates that 50 percent of all new revenues, as defined only as the dollar amount difference between a previous year's budget and a proposed budget, must go to the police and fire pension. Any leftovers should the pension actually be paid up in full would have to go to police officer compensation increases.

Since inflation dictates that every year's budget will be nominally larger than the last, it all but guarantees that at some point 50% of the entire City of Dallas budget will be consumed by police pensions and salaries. Meaning every other department has to cut their budget in half. Assuming inflation is between two and four percent, this would take about 20 years, but pain would be felt sooner.

Also there's a thought that it may be impossible to repeal, because Texas state law bans cities from reducing funding to law enforcement unless its proportional with an across the board budget cut.

I think it's cooked. "Unnecessary" expenses like parks and recreation and social services represent about 10% of the city's 5 billion dollar budget. Things that are fundamental, like Dallas Water Utilities, take up a lot more than that. I don't think a city can afford to cut its funding to operate its drinking water and sewer system or maintain roadways by what it would take to achieve a balanced budget even if you eliminated all the parks, libraries, social services, and city government went work from home and sold all its buildings and all its employees worked for free and forfeited their own pensions and retirement.

Dallas is, in other words, rapidly heading towards bankruptcy and within about a decade will be in a situation similar to Detroit in the late 2000s or San Bernadino in California.

The guy who promoted this ballot proposition, Pete Marroco, is a billionaire who doesn't live in Dallas at all, he lives in a separate enclave municipality called Highland Park. Also he was photographed at the January 6th 2021 riot. And voters fell for it.

Dallas can die. It's undeserving as a city. The metro will grow without it. The real regional core is DFW airport and there's arguably more office jobs in the Plano/Frisco area than Downtown anyways.

DFW · #**6062** Posted **Nov 11, 2024, 2:45 AM**

Harold Simmons Park is expected to cost approximately $325 million, with funding from both public and private sources. Construction is projected to take about three years.

https://www.fox4news.com/news/construction-begins-harold-simmons-park-dallas-trinity-river

futuresooner · #**6063** Posted **Nov 11, 2024, 4:15 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Dallas can die. It's undeserving as a city. The metro will grow without it. The real regional core is DFW airport and there's arguably more office jobs in the Plano/Frisco area than Downtown anyways.

Really? That's a rather extreme take.

llamaorama · #**6064** Posted **Nov 11, 2024, 7:44 PM**

I mean figuratively, of course.

I just don't see a bright future for the actual City of Dallas. Greater DFW will be fine. It's core is weaker than the other major cities in Texas, and it's split between an affluent northern half which is very conservative and opposed to policies and things that would benefit the city as a whole, and a neglected southern half that is notoriously anti-development, runs on machine politics, and has declining property values and persistently high crime rates. The urbanist middle, that wants the CBD and Uptown to do well and promotes things that enhance quality of life and desirability, doesn't really have enough pull.

Austin is progressive in ways which make the city a desirable place to live, which in turn boosts the economy, which gives it a healthy fiscal footing. Also there's the less politically correct reality that Austin is more gentrified so it has fewer low-income hoods that become crime hotspots and it doesn't have catastrophically bad public schools. Houston sucks but at least has no zoning and is pro-development so the core city inside 610 is blossoming into an impressive metropolis.

San Antonio and Fort Worth have more stable city politics so they don't really face regular existential threats to their budget or deal with occasional catastrophically bad leaders. They can just stay chill and improve gradually over time.

R1070 · #**6065** Posted **Nov 13, 2024, 2:29 AM**

That's a pretty harsh view of Dallas. The city of Dallas has a lot going for it and is a great place to live.

drummer · #**6066** Posted **Nov 13, 2024, 5:14 PM**

I agree. I see a lot of growth there and downtown is more vibrant than it has ever been - I lived up in DFW for several years previously and still travel there frequently.

That said, it's not my favorite city or metro area in the world (that title belongs to Singapore for me personally). But it is making strides in ways that Austin isn't, and despite massive sprawl in just about every direction in the suburbs, a lot of areas are significantly densifying.

DFW · #**6067** Posted **Nov 14, 2024, 5:26 AM**

Dallas Density
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=258661&page=4

Dallaz · #**6068** Posted **Nov 28, 2024, 11:43 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by llamaorama

That park project is either dead in the water, or it will kill off the rest of the park system due to a budgetary apocalypse.

This november, Dallas voted for a ballot proposition, prop U, which mandates that 50 percent of all new revenues, as defined only as the dollar amount difference between a previous year's budget and a proposed budget, must go to the police and fire pension. Any leftovers should the pension actually be paid up in full would have to go to police officer compensation increases.

Since inflation dictates that every year's budget will be nominally larger than the last, it all but guarantees that at some point 50% of the entire City of Dallas budget will be consumed by police pensions and salaries. Meaning every other department has to cut their budget in half. Assuming inflation is between two and four percent, this would take about 20 years, but pain would be felt sooner.

Also there's a thought that it may be impossible to repeal, because Texas state law bans cities from reducing funding to law enforcement unless its proportional with an across the board budget cut.

I think it's cooked. "Unnecessary" expenses like parks and recreation and social services represent about 10% of the city's 5 billion dollar budget. Things that are fundamental, like Dallas Water Utilities, take up a lot more than that. I don't think a city can afford to cut its funding to operate its drinking water and sewer system or maintain roadways by what it would take to achieve a balanced budget even if you eliminated all the parks, libraries, social services, and city government went work from home and sold all its buildings and all its employees worked for free and forfeited their own pensions and retirement.

Dallas is, in other words, rapidly heading towards bankruptcy and within about a decade will be in a situation similar to Detroit in the late 2000s or San Bernadino in California.

The guy who promoted this ballot proposition, Pete Marroco, is a billionaire who doesn't live in Dallas at all, he lives in a separate enclave municipality called Highland Park. Also he was photographed at the January 6th 2021 riot. And voters fell for it.

Dallas can die. It's undeserving as a city. The metro will grow without it. The real regional core is DFW airport and there's arguably more office jobs in the Plano/Frisco area than Downtown anyways.

This has to be satire

IcedCowboyCoffee · #**6069** Posted **Dec 2, 2024, 4:44 PM**

Dramatic to be sure, but the problem posed by Proposition U is seriously gargantuan. It's an absurd pit which voters agreed to fall into and is bad no matter what angle I look at it from. I've been trying to grapple with just how financially bad it can get.

Trying to follow the logic of the wording in the full charter amendment, my best interpretation is it will function like the following series of cascading filters (a lot of which llamaorama already covered):

-> 50% of all new revenue must go towards funding the Dallas Police and Fire pension.

-> Once the pension is funded for the year any of that money remaining has to go towards raising the starting salary of DPD officers. The DPD starting salary just has to be high enough to ensure it is within the top five starting salaries of all PDs within Dallas, Collin, Tarrant, Denton, and Rockwall counties.

-> Any money left over after getting the starting salary in that range then must go towards maintaining a 1:325 officer-to-resident ratio (It is currently about 1:420). If this objective is not achieved--for instance, if they're simply not able to recruit enough applicants, something they already struggle with--then the unspent funds go into a sinking fund to be used again to assist in the same goal the next fiscal year.

-> THEN AFTER ALL THAT, it says any monies remaining "may be reappropriated by the City Council."

So that last bit would sound like an eventual out for some money to eventually find its way to other city departments, BUT, there is that state law which makes it impossible to reduce the budgetary allocation for city police departments. Which means, over time, the city council would not be able to reappropriate any of those unspent funds to anyone else but the PD. So, in practice, they can't actually be reappropriated.

This all would, as llamaorama suggested, mathematically guarantee over a long enough time period that DPD's budget would account for 50% of the city's budget. DPD is currently only about 33~35% of the city's budget I believe, so growing to 50% would guarantee a combined 15% reduction in literally every other city service. You would be hard pressed to find any major city which has 50% of its budget allocated to their PD.
And that allocation literally can never be reduced. Even if DPD were to say it doesn't need that much money they have to accept it and use it. Once DPD's allocation reaches 50% it has to remain 50% of the city's budget in perpetuity or else the state will sue the city.

Combined with the other proposition enabling anyone to sue the city on behalf of anyone else, and the looming battle for transit funding which will go before the state next year, I understand llamaorama's pessimism about the city's financial ability to function properly. I'm maybe not as apocalyptic, but I get it.

IcedCowboyCoffee · #**6070** Posted **Dec 6, 2024, 5:29 PM**

Now that it's topped out, 23 Springs manages to peak out into the skyline from this view on Sylvan ave.

Dariusb · #**6071** Posted **Dec 9, 2024, 12:38 AM**

That's a beautiful skyline shot!

colemonkee · #**6072** Posted **Dec 9, 2024, 3:41 PM**

Probably the best skyline shot I've seen that captures downtown, uptown and Oak Lawn into one contiguous skyline.

IcedCowboyCoffee · #**6073** Posted **Dec 9, 2024, 4:23 PM**

Hey thanks yall! The Sylvan avenue bridge is my absolute favorite spot for snapping the skyline because it really showcases how much it's grown. Plus the more iconic angles tend to ignore the river completely which bums me out.

Here's a full night time shot I got from Sylvan which includes the ball and large marge:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dallas/comments/1h85ypk/night_descends_on_the_dallas_skyline_as_cricket/

My second favorite photo spot is the next bridge further west, Inwood:

DFW · #**6074** Posted **Dec 17, 2024, 5:58 AM**

Two towers going up, featuring a 17-story office tower and a 30-story residential tower for the Dallas Design District area.

https://dallasinnovates.com/2-tower-hi-line-square-coming-to-the-dallas-design-district/

DCReid · #**6075** Posted **Feb 20, 2025, 9:21 PM**

30-story addition would be tallest in The Crescent

https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/...mily-tower-uptown-crescent-advances.html

colemonkee · #**6076** Posted **Feb 20, 2025, 10:35 PM**

Massing for the Crescent Tower looks promising.

eburress · #**6077** Posted **Feb 23, 2025, 2:56 PM**

From DallasMetropolis. It's going to be pretty.

ChiND · #**6078** Posted **Feb 23, 2025, 6:06 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by eburress

From DallasMetropolis. It's going to be pretty.

That's a nice tower. It is a mere vision, or is it about to be built?

TowerSpotter · #**6079** Posted **Feb 25, 2025, 12:16 AM**

Looking for a comprehensive list of developments planned to go up and actively going up to add to my devmaps. Are there any links that can point me to one?

R1070 · #**6080** Posted **Feb 25, 2025, 1:36 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChiND

That's a nice tower. It is a mere vision, or is it about to be built?

Crescent has been delivering on their other promises to revamp/activate their property and this one has just gotten approvals from the city, so we shall see. Hopefully the economy doesn't tank before it gets going.