DART leaders fail to pass $1.8B budget proposal amidst complaints from neighboring cities
DALLAS - DART leaders failed to pass a budget this week over differing views on the financial future of the transit agency.
A split DART Committee of the Whole failed to pass the agency’s annual budget Tuesday. The $1.8 billion proposal includes a 1.6% increase.
Some of the 13 cities using DART are on record expressing extreme dissatisfaction with DART in recent months.
Cities of Irving, Plano, Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Rowlett and University Park have passed symbolic resolutions in favor of cutting DART funding.
"The core program has 19 routes in Dallas and one in a suburb," said Paul Wageman, the Plano rep on the DART Board of Directors. "This isn’t helping my city. This is a status quo budget. It means it’s what we’ve done all along."
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Back in July, a Farmers Branch City Council member expressed concern about the conditions on the trains.
"We’ve got residents in pretty high-dollar townhomes right here in front of a beautiful rose garden area, and there’s nothing but a chain-linked fence between them and all the trash that comes up here on their trains," Richard Jackson said in a July city council meeting.
In the upcoming fiscal year, DART says it’ll see a 12.1% revenue increase mostly because of a sales tax that funds DART. The proposed budget increase is mostly related to operating expenses.
But on Tuesday, there was a motion by those opposing the current budget proposal to reduce operating expenses in the budget from 5.5% growth to 4.6% growth. That motion was unsuccessful.
DART Board Chair Gary Slagel, who voted to approve the budget, believes DART needs to ultimately add service, which will require more money.
"We got a double-edged sword here where the cities are upset with us about not delivering, but we’ve done it to ourselves," he said.
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For now, board members are split between growth and a lesser amount of growth.
"We have a very, very fine budget here right now," said Carmen Garcia, the Dallas rep on the DART Board of Directors. "I thought we were about growth, and that’s what really disturbs me about this."
"What we’re doing is not cutting the budget," said DART Board of Directors Asst. Secretary Flora Hernandez. "We’re trying to limit the growth of the budget."
The board will consider the budget once again on September 24.