A Dallas City Council/TC Broadnax showdown is coming Wednesday, June 15 it appears. The showdown is the culmination of years of infighting between the city council and city manager.
Mayor Johnson has made clear he believes Broadnax should be relieved of his duties.
Johnson and three council members, Blackmon (D9), Mendolsohn (D12), and Willis (D13) have asked that the closed session meeting take place.
Wednesday is typically a staff briefing day.
The mayor’s memo sent Friday says the purpose of the special called meeting is to “discuss and evaluate the performance and employment of Dallas City Manager TC Broadnax.”
In a press statement, Johnson said, “several of my duly elected colleagues on the Dallas City Council have made it clear in recent days that they also believe it is time for a change.”
He continued, “we are ready to move forward and discuss how best to build for the future of our great city and its amazing people, and that is why I have placed the item on the City Council’s agenda for next week.”
There is a long list of accountability issues with Broadnax’s tenure. Some of those include general management accountability including failure to supervise former Police Chief Reneé Hall, the loss of terabytes of city data, and a nonfunctional permit office inhibiting economic growth.
TC Broadnax Showdown: Public Safety
During a June 2002 city council meeting, Mayor Eric Johnson had a lot of questions for Police Chief Renee Reneé Hall during a special meeting about police response to George Floyd protests.
It was later learned Chief Hall deliberately misled the public about police actions. Post event there was no clear accountability for the police.
Before the meeting began two hundred local citizens spoke out about the city’s reaction to ongoing protests. They were almost all outraged about what happened on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
Beyond the George Floyd protests, a legal challenge can proceed against the city. Dallas lost Qualified Immunity by the family of Tony Timpa.
Beyond, Timpa another in custody death happened just over two weeks ago similar to Timpa’s. City police have not improved their response to mental health issues.
Additionally on the public safety front, the city “lost” nearly twenty terabytes of data when an employee deleted files including police evidence from city servers.
TC Broadnax Showdown: Economic Development
Another area of concern for some city council members is economic development. Mr. Broadnax’s tensure shows a race backward in this area.
Broadnax and then EcoDev chief Dr. Eric Anthony Johnson pushed a $3M grant package to a grocer in South Dallas. The grant had no strings attached and left city taxpayers paying the bill. The grocer was a politically connected friend of Broadnax.
While Broadnax was providing millions to connected cronies, his EcoDev staff harasses mom and pop small businesses.
There are also ongoing permitting issues within Dallas.
Dallas permitting can average roughly four months to get a commercial building permit and more than a month for residential permits.
Some say approval times were projected to reach as high as ten to twelve weeks due to staffingg and executive decision making.
One local businessman noted, “No one on staff is invested in making the permit process go smoothly. Least of all TC.”
The issue is further punctuated by Elon Musk’s development outside Austin, Texas. In a recent Elon Musk statementhe said, “in Texas, it took us eighteen months to build a Gigafactory. In California, we’d still be working on the permits.”
Most large Texas cities expedite economic development projects that bring jobs and opportunity to the tax base. Dallas does not seem to show the same interest in doing the same.
There is also no clear city plan is to address homelessness, road maintenance, or 911 call center response.
Broadnax was at a Texas City Management Association conference at a Hyatt resort and spa in Cedar Creek, Texas. Broadnax makes more than $400,000 per year.
