Three things struck me about the budget town hall meeting Tuesday night at the St. Thomas Aquinas school auditorium, which attracted a standing room only crowd. First, that almost all of the 100 or so apparently affluent Lakewood and East Dallas residents in attendance said they would suffer a small property tax increase to prevent some of the worst cuts in the budget, which has a lot of worsts.
Second, that Lakewood councilman Sheffie Kadane said he wanted to find a way to tax suburbanites who work and shop in Dallas to ease the property tax burden on homeowners. And third? That if I have to sit through another mind-numbing city staff PowerPoint presentation, I won’t be responsible for what happens next. More, after the jump:
It’s usually difficult to get a handle on how representative the people are who attend these sorts of meetings. Each local group with a stake in the budget sends some of its people, so there are library and arts supporters and police and fire department representatives. Plus, there are the people who always come to these things, who follow city government the way other people follow the Cowboys. They know the staff and council people who are there and they know each other, and their views often reflect those of the staff and council.
But this meeting did seem a little different. The first audience question: Why doesn’t the council vote a nickel tax increase, which would work out to about $40 a home, to restore cuts to the arts, libraries and rec centers? This was met with a loud round of applause, and when East Dallas councilwoman Angela Hunt asked for a show of hands in favor of the tax increase, about 90 of the 100 people raised theirs. She was a bit taken aback. I was taken a lot aback. It’s the first time in 20 years of doing this that I have seen a group of Dallas taxpayers volunteer to pay more taxes.
Kadane, meanwhile, was as good as I have ever seen him. Better, probably. “The cuts in the rec centers hurt our kids,” he said, “and that’s what I’m concerned about. It’s very important to get that back, that $3 1/2 million, and we’re going to find a way.” He also said that cuts to senior health services needed to be restored.
But Kadane was just getting warmed up. His proposal for what he called a “usage tax” – someone in the audience shouted, “A Plano tax” – was (dare I say?) revolutionary. Kadane said he wants to find a way to tax people who use city services but who don’t pay property taxes because they don’t live here.
“We have been taxed, taxed, and taxed to death on our property,” he said. “That’s wrong. We have to stop beating on the property taxes. It’s as if we don’t even own our property any more.”
Finally, a word about the PowerPoint presentation. Assistant city manger A.C. Gonzalez, who outlined the proposed budget and its cuts, said he wasn’t going to go through the entire 47-page handout. And he didn’t. Forty-five minutes later, he skipped the last four or five pages. Though, to be fair, he didn’t look like he was having much fun. And I suppose it must be as mind-numbing for the staff, which has to do this dozens of times during budget season, as it is for the audience. Which raises the question: Maybe there’s a better way to present the budget information?
