‘Dallas is Broken’: Community Reacts to City Manager’s Departure And The Shade of It All
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It appears Dallas City Hall is imploding, and there’s a lot to unpack.
The turmoil began a while back but lit up last week when City Manager T.C. Broadnax submitted his resignation after seven years at the helm in Dallas City Hall.
Broadnax is expected to receive a severance package equal to 12 months of his base salary, about $423,246, plus a $700-per-month vehicle allowance.
Broadnax was reportedly approached by three council members to resign or be fired. The council reportedly had eight votes — a majority — to fire the city manager. The elected officials purposely kept their plan quiet from Mayor Eric Johnson and other council members who “might blow it up,” according to one official.
Jaime Resendez, a former Dallas school board trustee and a practicing attorney, led the charge.
“After his initial talk with Broadnax on the matter, Resendez spent a week identifying and recruiting a majority of council — one by one — to personally meet with Broadnax to request that he step aside,” reported Jason Whitely with WFAA. “Council members told WFAA that the process was kept quiet and away from Mayor Eric Johnson, so the mayor could not control the narrative and make it appear as if Broadnax was being fired.”
Broadnax got the last word, beating them to the punch and taking more severance than he would have been offered if he’d been terminated.
The council members’ behavior was shady at best, residents have said, and illegal at worst. But what about Broadnax?
“He played us all,” an appointed Dallas board member told us. “T.C. played the council members. He played the mayor. He played us. He is leaving on his terms and still taking his bag of cash with him.”
Broadnax’s last day, according to his resignation letter, will be June 3.
Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins called a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs for 9 a.m. Monday, Feb. 26, to discuss and recommend to the City Council a timeline for naming an interim city manager and discuss candidates for the City Council to consider for interim city manager.
Another special-called council meeting is slated for 1 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27, at which elected officials will discuss the resignation, the potential interim appointment of Deputy City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, and performance evaluations of other council appointees, including City Attorney Tammy Palomino, City Secretary Bilierae Johnson, and City Auditor Mark Swann.
It’s unclear if a quorum will be present at Tuesday’s meeting. Mayor Johnson has said he will not attend and asked via memorandum for the process to be handled through the Administrative Affairs Committee.
Did The Dallas City Council Create a ‘Walking Quorum’?
When Broadnax’s resignation letter was issued Wednesday afternoon, speculation immediately began that a backroom deal had been brokered. Council members are not permitted to gather votes through a “daisy chain” of phone calls or a “walking quorum” of one member passing on information to the next, and so forth.
According to the Texas Attorney General’s Open Meetings Act handbook 2024, it is a “ criminal offense for a member of a governmental body to knowingly engage ‘in at least one communication among a series of communications that each occur outside of a meeting’ and that ‘concern an issue within the jurisdiction of the governmental body in which the members engaging in the individual communications constitute fewer than a quorum of members but the members engaging in the series of communications constitute a quorum of members.’”
In 2005, the College Station City Council fired then-City Manager Tom Brymer in the wee hours of the morning following a lengthy council meeting. The item was not posted on the agenda for discussion. The council later appeared before a judge and was threatened with jail time for the offense.
The dispute ultimately was resolved when the City Council agreed to reinstate Brymer, allowing him to resign and giving him a $177,585 severance package.
The situation in Dallas is different, as Broadnax was forthcoming with his resignation, but some allege that a secret meeting or walking quorum could have taken place in order for Broadnax to see the writing on the wall.
Former Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston broke down the history of Broadnax’s predecessor A.C. Gonzalez departure and how Broadnax was subsequently hired on Episode 106 of Kingston’s “Loserville” podcast that aired last week. The podcaster, an attorney, said he didn’t think it was possible for the council to have a vote on Broadnax, even in closed session, because it hasn’t been posted on an agenda.
“They’re not supposed to walk around and count noses,” Kingston said. “They do sometimes. It’s technically an open meetings violation. I think … the way it read to me, just knowing what I know about what the procedural history is, it read to me like T.C. has figured it out, that he has counted the noses.”
Dallas Cothrum, president of planning and permitting firm Masterplan, said the way it went down is no surprise because Broadnax isn’t a good communicator.
“When he survived last time, he really thumbed his nose, I felt like, at his bosses, the elected officials, in a way no city manager had ever done in the City of Dallas’ history before,” Cothrum said. “And told them he was more important than they were. This resignation is just another example of that. He didn’t work for the council. He worked for himself.”
What Broadnax Did Wrong
Broadnax has had a troubled relationship with Mayor Eric Johnson and several of the council members. He almost got fired in 2022, but some of the council members who originally called for his ouster backed off and even approved a raise to his six-figure annual salary.
“There were always five or six who were completely against him from the time that the botched, silly coup attempt occurred,” Kingston said.
Those who frequent City Council meetings are familiar with the tension that exists when Broadnax interjects his opinion.
The city manager is hired by the City Council and reports to the 15-member panel. It’s not unusual for the top administrator in a large city to depart after a short tenure.
Cothrum outlined many unfortunate situations that have occurred on Broadnax’s watch. The building permit backlog, a 2023 cyberattack, the police and fire pension fund crisis, and a public fight with the mayor and council over bond money for City Hall are just a few.
“I think it’s incumbent on people to leave a job better than they found it and he has absolutely, most certainly not done that,” Cothrum said. “The [Renee Hall] police chief thing was a total disaster. In fact, you can remember, he famously said, ‘When she goes, I go.’ Well, that didn’t happen. The cyberattack, not telling people about the cyberattack, inability to pick up the garbage … We’re 63rd out of 75 cities when it comes to our finances. Despite having been the city manager during tons of federal money coming in from COVID, lots of sales tax, and rising appraisals, he leaves the city looking the worst it has in a really long time.”
Experienced leaders have left City Hall, creating the need for a “huge rebuilding effort” that could take years to complete, Cothrum added.
“This is an opportunity for the council to insist on rapid improvement and delivery of services and expectations, and really, customer service,” he said. “T.C. [made] it OK for employees to not answer the phone and not treat people like customers because he did it. I always tell people he thought he had a non-speaking role, and yet he’s the lead character in our drama. The level of service is so deplorable at the City of Dallas.”
‘Dallas is Broken’
Cothrum said he heard years ago from a former city manager that Dallas was so broken it would take two more regimes to get it back on track.
“I believe that. It’s that broken,” he said.
Mayor Johnson has called for a nationwide city manager search, but some believe Deputy City Manager Tolbert is the heir apparent. Ultimately the council will decide.
“I think they have to do a national search,” Cothrum said. “Things aren’t going swimmingly, where you say, ‘Things are great and we want more of the same.’ It’s a start-over. T.C. brought in so many people … and most of them turned out to be ineffective.”
There’s an opportunity, Cothrum added, to turn things around because Dallas is a desirable region with a huge tax base.
“It’s like when the Dallas Cowboys are bad,” he said. “They always have every opportunity to turn it around quickly because there’s so many resources and so many people believe in it. I think it’s going to require someone really getting under the hood and looking at what doesn’t work, getting rid of some surplus property, doing something with Hensley Field. They’ve got to do something with the pension, too.”
Just one Dallas City Council member, Chad West, offered a statement about Broadnax’s departure to CandysDirt.com. Others said they were skeptical of how it went down and wanted to see how the discussion plays out on Tuesday.
“I want to wish Mr. Broadnax well in his future endeavors,” West said. “During his tenure, he worked with Council to move the ball forward on many matters important to our residents. With his upcoming departure, we must and will keep the city’s momentum going in our housing, economic development, environmental, and parks and trails efforts. Dallas is a city on the move, and I look forward to working with whomever steps up to the plate in the coming weeks.”
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It’s high time this clown is gone. Time to weed out the rest of the incompetent clowns in the City of Dallas. Dallas is a great city and deserves better!