By: Michael Watts
The updated budget discussed at the Dallas City Council meeting earlier this week includes a plan to use the increased revenue to address staff hiring and infrastructure needs. On May 4, the property tax revenue was $35.9 million and in June, it went up to $41.4 million at a 7.5 percent growth. Sales tax also increased by 3.6 percent.
The money for the new budget from June 8, will allow the city of Dallas to focus on hiring more police and expanding the use of public service officers. The city can now turn its attention to building maintenance, adding more traffic signals and signs and improving animal services.
The new budget has taken into consideration the citizen’s concerns, particularly surrounding infrastructure, code maintenance and police services. The budget cut will allow an increase in funding for culture, arts, recreation and education.
Some of the public services featured in the budget are aviation services, sanitation services, storm water drainage, water utilities and municipal radio.
The city of Dallas spends $93.9 million on aviation, and $86.5 million on sanitation services. Dallas also spends about $51.4 million on storm water drainage, water utilities funded to the tune of $655.7 million and municipal radio services are slated for $2.1 million.
Council member Carolyn King Arnold had a lot to say about how the citizens and the budget can work together and make Dallas a nicer place.
“Our constituents need to get involved with the community. The budget is the heart and soul of the community. If we want public safety, then we have to pay for it.”
This year, Dallas budgeted $1.1 billion for salaries and benefits and they include uniform and civilian salaries, paid leave overtime, FICA, city payroll temporaries, life and health insurance and workers comp premiums and pension contributions.
As of now, there are 13,326 employees on the city’s payroll.
