Survey Says … It’s Not ‘Touchdown Dance Time’ But Community Priorities Align With Council’s

A survey of more than 2,000 Dallas residents showed that infrastructure maintenance is the No. 1 priority in almost every geographic district of the city, with public safety closely following at No. 2. Traffic management, social services, and code enforcement also ranked high, and about 52% of respondents said access to affordable, quality housing should be among Dallas’ top priorities. 

Consultants with ETC Institute, who have conducted the community survey off and on since 2005, reviewed the results before the Dallas City Council last week. The survey results were released last summer but the Feb. 5 meeting was the first opportunity for council members to discuss with the consultants their methodology for 2024 and plan a new approach for the 2025 survey. 

Mayor Eric Johnson said he viewed the community survey results as “very good news.” 

“People have had various things at various times about how unified this council is or isn’t or a vision being present or not being present,” he said. “I think it’s been pretty consistent and pretty clear what we believe our residents think is important. To see the improvement and how the residents perceive us to be doing on the things we’ve been leaning in hard on … this is overall very good news.” 

The mayor then quoted former Police Chief Eddie Garcia, who used to say, “It’s not touchdown dance time.”

“We don’t do touchdown dances around here,” Johnson said. “We’re old school. We score a touchdown and hand the ball to the referee, and we go line up and get ready to play the next play. I’m not suggesting that it’s celebration time and that we can kick back now and take our foot off the gas on any of these, but I think the overall message here is that the City of Dallas has a city council that is unified around some important priorities for our residents and we are making progress on them. Anyone who can look at this and say we’re going the wrong direction on these issues overall is having to work real heard to spin some data.” 

View the survey results or watch the Feb. 5 Dallas City Council meeting. 

Residents Have a Positive Perception of Dallas

Jason Morado, ETC’s vice president of community research, said the survey shows that, overall, Dallas residents have a positive perception of the city. 

“About two-thirds of respondents rate their neighborhood as an excellent or good place to live,” Morado said. “That’s compared to only 8% who gave a rating of poor. From the 2023 survey to the 2024 survey, the satisfaction rate has increased in 75 out of 127 areas.” 

The top priorities are infrastructure maintenance and police services. “Major problems” in Dallas cited by survey respondents include homelessness, crime, and drugs. 

Customer service, or “courtesy,” from Dallas employees ranked almost twice as high as the national average, Morado said. Councilmember Gay Donnell Willis said she was happy to see those high marks. 

“We all know people come in hot,” she said. “If they’re interacting with a city employee, it may be because they have some sort of issue and they come in a little loaded on how they feel. The fact that courtesy, being able to deal with that in the face of folks who are anxious or mad, rises to the top, just speaks so highly of our city employees.” 

City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said the survey results were used in crafting the 2024-25 budget. 

“We used that in how we crafted the allocation of resources in the current budget,” she said, adding that public safety, homelessness, financial stability, and economic growth are also addressed as priorities in her 100-day plan. 

Council Feedback 

Councilmembers Jaynie Schultz and Chad West expressed frustration that while housing affordability is listed as something that “should be a priority,” it’s not reflected as one of the top priorities because of the way the questions are asked or grouped. 

 “The survey needs to be edited for the future to better incorporate the public perception of access to affordable housing,” West said after Wednesday’s meeting. 

During the meeting, the North Oak Cliff councilman said he assumed housing is not listed as a major city service on the survey because funding comes from private and federal sources. 

“Access to affordable housing is not a question,” West said to the ETC representatives. “Have you ever considered adding that as a question?”

Morado said affordable housing is mentioned in the consideration of priorities with things like healthcare where the city has limited control. 

“I feel like, on affordable housing, we control the zoning and land use. We control most of the subsidies that come from HUD,” West said. “I feel like housing has been grouped up with these things that we have hardly any control over and it should be more fluid throughout the whole survey.” 

Willis noted that there wasn’t much change between 2023 and 2024 on homelessness.

“We know that this is critical,” she said. “We talk about excellence with the urgency of now. Now is the time for now. I don’t want to wait until the 2025 survey to see some action around this. I know that our public is feeling the same way.” 

Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn pointed out that homelessness is rated highest among perceived problems. 

“Seventy-three percent of respondents say it’s a major problem,” she said. “In 2023, it was 60%, so this has gone up 10%.” 

Morado said that’s been a trend nationwide. 

Elected officials said they view the survey as a scorecard of how they’re doing and that it reflects what is important to residents. 

“I want to be the type of elected leader that is responsive to the people and what they want and what they’re telling us,” Johnson said. “It’s always helpful to see some data that suggests … we are not wildly out of line with what our residents want.”