Dallas Bond Project Prioritization List Slated For Release in June
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The ballots are counted and a project list totaling $1.25 billion now sits on the desk of Dallas Bond and Construction Management Director Jenny Nicewander. There are more than 800 bond projects that mean a lot to the voters who approved them and their elected council members — and everyone wants their project to go first.
So what’s next?
A May 17 memorandum authored by Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry advises that the Office of Bond and Construction Management has been working with several City infrastructure departments to develop a prioritized list of projects that will be funded and completed within the next five years.
A “priority matrix” and a prioritized project list will be presented to the City Council in June. Elements that determine prioritization ranking may include the following:
- Source of funding
- Overlapping projects or proximity projects with the ability to coordinate or combine construction activities
- Design status: If projects are under design or are already design-completed
- Projects that are focused on equity and will provide benefits to a larger spectrum of community areas
- Projects that have longer design and completion processes, which may take more years to complete
Developing a Bond Package
Nicewander started her career at the City of Dallas in 2010 as an engineer for Dallas Love Field. She later served in the Public Works Department and after a year in the interim spot, she was named director of the bond office in February.
Nicewander’s office manages the facilities portion of the bond — libraries, the police training facility, and “anything above the ground that’s not parks,” Nicewander told CandysDirt.com.
The 10 propositions approved this month are broken down into more than 800 projects identified in a spreadsheet and map on the 2024 Bond webpage.
In a May 14 taping for the Dallas Dirt podcast, Nicewander explained the eight-month process of developing a project list from a massive “needs inventory” via the Council-appointed Community Bond Task Force. Subcommittees were tasked with reviewing each of the 10 proposition categories: streets and transportation, parks and recreation, flood protection and storm drainage, libraries, cultural and performing arts, public safety facilities, economic development, housing, homelessness, and information technology.
“We had a total of 90 people that we were working with for seven, eight months,” Nicewander said. “So there was a lot of work. And I was telling [council members] they should be really proud of the people that they nominated because they’re all very concerned, very entrenched. They really took their jobs seriously.”
Bond projects should have a 20-year life, so, for example, pothole repairs aren’t eligible for a bond program, but street reconstructions are.
“The bonds that we sell, we pay back over a 20-year period,” Nicewander said. “So we want to make sure that the life of whatever it is that we’re building for those bonds will at least live the life of our payback period.”
Housing Proposition in 2024 Bond
The bond office worked closely with the Attorney General’s Office and determined that “what housing meant in a bond proposition was different than what the City of Dallas was talking about for housing,” Nicewander said.
Advocates lobbied for $200 million in the Housing proposition; they got $26.4 million for housing infrastructure, although some projects folded into a $72.3 million Economic Development proposition and a $19 million Homelessness proposition will create housing.
“Housing’s bucket kind of had to be split into some for eco dev and then some just for housing,” Nicewander said. “So right now the intent for the housing bucket of money is to build out infrastructure that would then support developers or the city or whomever would come in to develop that housing. So they would build the streets, the sewers, that kind of thing, to get those lots and land available.”
If a developer then needs “gap funding” that aligns with the city’s housing policy, those dollars come out of the Economic Development bucket, Nicewander explained.
There currently are no specific projects earmarked for housing, Nicewander told CandysDirt.com earlier this month. When specific projects are identified, a Notice of Funding Availability will be issued and money will be distributed through that process.
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