Officials Authorize Due Diligence on Potential Dallas City Hall Relocation Sites
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Another special meeting of the Dallas City Council pushed the ball forward on the relocation front Wednesday, approving up to $3 million for due diligence on potential alternative sites for City Hall and emergency dispatch operations.
Council members authorized City Manager Kimberly Tolbert to negotiate pre-acquisition agreements and perform further analysis on up to four potential City Hall sites and four potential emergency operations sites.
Voting broke down 9-5, with council Members Laura Cadena (District 6), Paula Blackmon (District 9), Bill Roth (District 11), Cara Mendelsohn (District 12), and Paul Ridley (District 14) voting against and Council Member Adam Bazaldua (District 7) absent for both.
“This deliberate process is designed to give the City the information it needs to make a sound, fiscally responsible decision that better serves residents, supports staff, and supports Dallas’s long-term growth,” Tolbert said in a statement following the vote.
Multiple amendments were proposed by Mendelsohn and some of the other no-votes over the course of the meeting that would have imposed additional requirements on sites under consideration, including provisions related to building age, parking availability, security measures for 9-1-1 dispatch employees, and continuity-of-operations protections.
Supporters said the amendments would ensure employees, particularly 9-1-1 dispatch workers, would not end up in a facility that offered fewer protections or amenities than their current workspace.
Tolbert appeared to take some offense at the insinuation they’d move to an inferior facility.
“We would never start working to negotiate anything that would be less than what we have,” she said.
All the proposed amendments were shot down by a majority of council members.
Earlier in the meeting, during the public comment portion, resident Carol Bell-Walton read from an open letter purportedly written by current and former City Hall employees calling on the city council to opt against relocating from 1500 Marilla St.
“We keep reading in the news that you are [considering relocation] for us, yet we’ve never been asked,” Bell-Walton read. “What we are asking of you is to lead our city in a plan to restore both downtown and Dallas City Hall, not to abandon who we are. To seek our opinions about how best to restore and beautify this irreplaceable space.”
Bell-Walton said the approximately 500-word letter, which had been distributed to preservation advocates and media outlets as a JPG image, had been scrubbed of its metadata by its authors out of fear of retaliation. CandysDirt.com has not independently verified the letter’s authenticity, authorship or the claim that it represents current and former City Hall employees.
Supporters of relocation have argued that decades of deferred maintenance have made City Hall increasingly difficult for employees to work in. Between out-of-service bathrooms and occasional system failures, Council Member Zarin Gracey (District 3) and some others have raised employee satisfaction as a consideration in the debate over City Hall.
CandysDirt.com reached out to the city and asked if it has conducted any internal polling of City Hall employees regarding their attitudes toward 1500 Marilla St., whether in the context of the relocation or not. This article will be updated if a reply is forthcoming.
Staff said the due diligence process could include environmental reviews, engineering studies, parking evaluations, and space-planning analyses. The goal is to create what officials described as an “apples-to-apples” comparison between repairing City Hall and relocating elsewhere.
“As I have said from the beginning, making the right decision on this important matter requires facts,” said Mayor Eric Johnson in a statement. “Multiple outside experts have publicly briefed the council on the costs of renovation, and the council has been briefed in executive session on relocation options and the associated costs. We already know that relocation would be far more affordable than renovation. … Now, as a result of today’s vote, the City Council will be receiving even more details in connection with our relocation options in order to better understand what our future City Hall could be.”
Last week, the same majority of council members voted against immediately authorizing a phased repair strategy for City Hall. Staff and consultants estimated corrective repairs could run between $531 million and $611 million, not counting swing space, modernization, and finish-out. Bond funding would add at least $450,000, but if the city decided against borrowing, drastic spending cuts or a significant property tax hike would be necessary to pay for the project.
That vote followed a state district judge issuing a restraining order against officials taking up certain agenda items that would have authorized similar work as that approved on Wednesday, albeit allegedly without proper notice or detail and in violation of city rules and the Texas Open Meetings Act.
Bazaldua, Blackmon, and Mendelsohn filed the initial suit requesting a restraining order, but Mendelsohn ended up dropping her name from the litigation. Now, it appears the remaining plaintiffs are petitioning Judge Eric Moyé to determine whether the defendants (the city, Tolbert, and City Secretary Bilirae Johnson) and Council Member Chad West (District 1) should be held in contempt for allegedly reviving one of the items in the repair denial resolution that was ultimately adopted.
West was brought into the complaint because he made the motion to amend the resolution. Officials have since responded to the accusation by contending that the resolution, which directed the city manager to “explore options for the disposition of City Hall,” was simply a reiteration of work Tolbert was already authorized to do back in March.
A hearing over the restraining order is scheduled for Thursday, June 18.
