Council Could Remove City Manager T.C. Broadnax at Wednesday Meeting, DBA Leader Says Review is ‘Entirely Appropriate’

In the wake of a highly-criticized city permitting process and other serious issues, the Dallas City Council could fire City Manager T.C. Broadnax as early as Wednesday. 

The council is set to discuss the city manager’s job performance in closed session at the end of a regularly scheduled briefing at 9 a.m. June 15. Then a special meeting is posted for noon, or immediately following the briefing and executive session. During the special meeting, the city’s governing body is posted to take action on Broadnax’s employment, including discipline or removal. The meetings will be at City Hall and streamed live. 

Trouble Brewing 

Broadnax came to Dallas in 2017 after serving as city manager of Tacoma, Washington, bringing a “service first” philosophy to the city, according to his public profile. He oversees 13,000 employees and a $3.8 billion budget. 

“Broadnax has brought a transformational leadership approach to the City of Dallas that focuses on elevating transparency in the public decision-making process, leveraging data to drive resource allocation, and identifying innovative solutions to solving historical and complex problems rooted in inequities,” the profile states. 

But recently, Broadnax admitted to not taking early warnings that an IT employee at City Hall had deleted millions of police files seriously. He was not aware of the gravity of the issue until months later, he said, when the Dallas County District Attorney’s office discovered that vital evidence could be or was outright missing from criminal cases.

Broadnax’s problems as CEO of the ninth-largest municipality in America began in earnest in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when more than 1,000 permits got backlogged and builders and contractors were hindered from finishing jobs in a timely manner. 

Mayor Eric Johnson and council members at the time reached out to the development community, holding public hearings to gather feedback on how to improve the situation. Broadnax, however, downplayed the delays and said the matter was exaggerated by the media and development community.

City staffers said issues could be fixed within months. But instead, Broadnax seemed to blame the city’s elected leaders, developers, and the media for expecting too much and chalked up the criticism over the slow pace of the permitting office to “bad press.”

At a meeting on May 18, Broadnax was actually dismissive of slow permitting process consequences, even disputing an estimate by Linda McMahon, head of The Real Estate Council, a powerful North Texas commercial real estate advocacy group. McMahon says that $31 million of tax revenue is lost for every three months of permitting delays by the city.

Phil Crone, executive officer of the Dallas Builders Association, a group that works closely with permitting, said publicly last month that the permitting crisis was the result of management and the working environment. 

“Also, zoning is a mess in Dallas with hundreds of [planned developments] and other special districts that require many projects to have a meticulous review of often subjective items,” Crone said in May.

Crone told CandysDirt.com on Sunday that the situation hasn’t improved.

“The permitting situation still hasn’t gotten better more than two years since it became a crisis. The only major positive steps that have come, have come at the insistence of the affected industry and council members who have set up third-party plan reviewers and pushed for the building official position to be filled after it was left vacant for 18 months,” he said. ” I am optimistic that the newly-hired building official can bring a new culture to the department. However, it is incomprehensible that this crisis has lingered with this severity for as long as it has. As such it is entirely appropriate for the city council to review the city manager’s performance in light of that.”

Getting Votes

Eight of the Dallas City Council’s 14 representatives have to vote in favor of Broadnax’s removal for it to be approved. 

The city manager issued a public statement Friday which references the performance review but does not acknowledge that he could be fired. 

“Periodic performance review is critical to me and all City employees to demonstrate progress and ensure transparency for our residents, taxpayers, and stakeholders,” Broadnax said in his statement. “I am proud of the hard work which has led to accomplishment of many goals related to the City Council’s eight strategic priorities, and look forward to sharing the R.E.A.L. impact we continue to make to improve the lives of Dallas residents in ways that are responsible, equitable, accountable, and legitimate, together as One Dallas.” 

Mayor Pro Tem Chad West did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

As for other City Council members, four have told NBC-5 they will not support removing Broadnax: Paul Ridley, Carolyn King Arnold,  Jaime Resendez, and Omar Narvaez, who called the timing of the firing suspicious. District 11 City Councilwoman Jaynie Schultz said she was surprised by the call for the special meeting, saying she supported Broadnax and even called him an “outstanding city manager” supportive of the work she has been doing in District 11.

“I think he deserves the opportunity to have a procedure in place that would allow him to grow and improve and be measured upon those needed improvements,” she said.

The Dallas City Manager earns $410,919. annually.