City Hall Roundup: Alley Trash Plan Fight, Eminent Domain, Fair Park Spat
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The end of budget season is just around the corner at Dallas City Hall, with officials scheduled to adopt a spending package and property tax rate for FY 2025-2026 on Wednesday.
We’ll get into what’s ultimately decided in our next roundup, and we’ll see if Mayor Eric Johnson’s budget challenge to council members gets taken up. In the meantime, catch up on some of what went down this past week.
Residents Trash Plan To End Alleyway Garbage Pickup
The ostensibly unilateral move by the Dallas sanitation director to end alleyway trash and recycling pickup for roughly 26,000 households has frustrated residents mobilizing to save the service.
Increasing sanitation worker safety and reducing costs have been cited as the impetus for the transition to curbside pickup for affected households. Officials have said there will be an expansion of support programs for people who need help getting their trash and recycling bins to the front curb.
Explaining the decision, the Sanitation Department said in a notice to residents:
“Today’s trucks are slightly larger and much more efficient at collecting trash and recycling. While they’re cheaper and more effective for the City to use, they do not fit the tight spaces of the City’s narrowest alleyways, sometimes cutting overhead wires or hitting gas meters and other objects in their path, making alley collection dangerous for our crews and costly for the City.”
An online petition against the plan has reached more than 9,700 signatures, and now Council Members Paula Blackmon (District 9) and Gay Donnell Willis (District 13) are calling on the city to delay implementation and explore alternatives that would allow neighborhoods to keep their current service.
In a memo dated September 10, the council members proposed letting residents in affected neighborhoods bring their blocks into compliance with safety standards for alleyway service and pay a higher rate.
“By pairing compliance with choice, we can resolve this decades-long issue in a way that protects sanitation workers, addresses costs transparently, and ensures fairness for our residents,” Blackmon and Willis wrote to City Manager Kimberly Tolbert.
The following day at Wednesday’s city council meeting, dozens of residents turned out to take their concerns to the horseshoe. Speakers brought up the costs residents might be burdened with to retrofit their properties to facilitate curbside trash pickup (so they don’t have to move their bins through the inside of their homes) as well as the difficulties the elderly and people with disabilities could face.
Repeated mention was also made of how wrong it is that a unilateral decision by the sanitation director affecting tens of thousands of residents could circumvent the authority of local elected officials.
“A change of this magnitude to a city service deserves a vote,” said Jeffrey Helfrich. “I urge you council members to pass an ordinance requiring significant changes in city services like this one to require a vote by the elected representatives of the citizens.”
If the city doesn’t change its plans, alleyway pickup will end for roughly 19,000 customers on January 16, 2026, and another 7,000 on July 20, 2026.
City Hall Invokes Eminent Domain To Advance Convention Center Project
While the city’s redevelopment plans for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center appeared good to go after officials authorized the purchase of 186,000 square feet of the old Dallas Morning News headquarters, it looks like a smaller parcel is still needed — and the city hopes to acquire it through eminent domain.
On Wednesday, the city filed suit to take possession of a 36,228-square-foot piece of land near the intersection of Young Street and Houston Street. Defendants in the proceedings include Charter DMN Holdings, DallasNews Corp., and WFAA-TV, among others who have a stake in the parcel.
The move should come as no surprise, considering the city authorized “the exercise of the right of eminent domain, if such becomes necessary” for the parcel back in April when it bought the larger property from developer Ray Washburne’s Charter DMN Holdings for more than $40 million.
According to the court filings, the city made two offers to purchase the parcel that were rejected. Officials had authorized spending up to $6.55 million for the land.
DMN Holdings owns the real estate in question, but Washburne told DMN that he has a ground lease with WFAA that’s still active. Part of the TV station’s parking lot is located on the parcel.
Recriminations Abound as Oak View Group’s Last Day at Fair Park Nears
Things are getting a little ugly between city officials and Oak View Group (OVG), the company that was overseeing Fair Park before its contract was scrapped over purported mismanagement and the alleged misuse of $5.7 million in restricted donor funds.
OVG has allegedly been suggesting to event organizers that the city wasn’t taking up their contracts for scheduled events. City officials, however, claim they’ve been asking OVG for the contracts since January but to no avail. In turn, OVG has said they’ll hand over the contracts when their own expires in a matter of days. It also asserted the city had access to the necessary booking software and calendar information to follow up on scheduled events since August, resources the city claims are insufficient, according to The Dallas Morning News.
“All current agreements remain valid,” said Dallas Park & Recreation (DPR) Director John Jenkins in a press release. “We are excited to continue working closely with clients to ensure their events at Fair Park are a success and continue to bring enjoyment to park visitors. Dallas Park & Recreation will honor all existing contracts for upcoming park events.”
DPR is taking over direct management of Fair Park, however, there appears to be disagreement over when that transfer of power is supposed to go into effect. The city says September 16. OVG says September 25.
“We’re asking for our keys back and there’s been nothing, nothing but frustration,” Jenkins said, according to WFAA. “The least amount of cooperation you can imagine.”
To that effect, Jenkins has reportedly asked city marshals to deploy patrols at Fair Park for OVG’s last days so that the official transition goes off as smoothly as possible.
