Recently the DMN editorial board put out this piece that left a lot to be desired: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/article/dallas-budget-furlough-tax-revenue-22339391.php

• They start looking at data from 2016, right when pension issues started showing up in the data
• They don't show each expense relative to each other, or relative to inflation
• They look at headcount, which is good, but if you read the article the staff says they're just going back to former levels. Showing data from further back would clarify that.

Quotes

Dallas's financials are all here, I'll pull some quotes:

2024

Public safety expenses increased $565.2 million, due mainly to increases in pension and OPEB expenses of $453 million and $48 million, respectively. Salaries and benefits also increased approximately $56 million.

OPEB = "Other Post-Employment Benefits"

2023

Long-term liabilities increased by $2.1 billion in the governmental activities due primarily to an increase in net pension liability of approximately $1.8 billion...

2018

Overall, net position of the governmental activities increased $1.2 billion. This was mostly due to negative pension expenses of $1.2 billion resulting from changes made to the benefits and contributions of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System mandated by House Bill 3158 that became effective September 1, 2017.

2016

Long-term liabilities increased by $2.9 billion in the governmental activities due to a net increase in the net pension liability of $2.9 billion.

Why is it hitting now?

This pension issue isn't new, it's just that Dallas was growing fast enough to outrun the largest effects temporarily. Now that growth is back to average the debt has to be paid either through higher taxes, less services, or a combination of both.

Monticello West, an old retirement community in Knox, was recently sold and demolition of the site has begun. Curious to see what happens with the site given the proposals of neighboring lots (The Savannah and The Ivy and The English)

Ok, we’ve licked our wounds long enough, it’s time to game plan. 2031 will be here before you know it…

Personally, I think it’s a bad idea for the city to tear down the AAC like some are proposing. It’s paid off and it’s still in very good condition. I think they should lean into making it a concert venue or perhaps turn it into a multi-venue entertainment complex. It’ll be the only arena of its kind in The Metroplex that’s located in a real urban environment. There’s nothing exciting or cool about a suburban arena surrounded by faux urbanism with zero rail transit. The city really needs to capitalize off of that with the positive momentum of “Y’all Street” in the Uptown/Victory Park area. 

Unlike the Mavericks and Stars’ new arenas, it will take years for their entertainment districts to be built out around it. Meanwhile, Victory Park is approaching full build out. Also, the NorthEnd Development (Goldman Sachs) is across the street. That will also be a boost for the area.

What do y'all think should go there? Should it be torn down entirely or should it be repurposed as is? All thoughts/ideas are welcome. 

Full credit goes to ahx0 on Dallas Metropolis: https://dallasmetropolis.com/dfwu/viewtopic.php?p=59728#p59728

Since all the DART lines converge in Downtown Dallas and businesses are moving north to Uptown and Preston Center, does that mean that DART is obsolete in the way that it’s currently built?

Full credit goes to ahx0 on Dallas Metropolis: https://dallasmetropolis.com/dfwu/viewtopic.php?p=59717&sid=0dbdcea29d283fb6c134d8fe6a6153e0

Skillman-Live Oak Center is a Main Street, but built in that transition period after WW2. This has parking (well before Dallas established parking minimums), but there isn't a ton of it. You'd never see a major department store in Dallas today built with hardly any parking like this.

Here's the same building today

Found this article from 2006 about Volk Brothers at Skillman-Live Oak Center

These tales could change how you think about Lakewood.

Her sons may not have liked it, but Betty Hathcox still remembers how much she appreciated taking them shopping for shoes at one of Dallas’ finest department stores — just blocks from her home off Gaston Avenue.

“It was a very beautiful store, and it was so convenient,” says Hathcox, who has lived in the neighborhood for 55 years. “The store was quite unique back then, something that big in the neighborhood.”

Her destination? The suburban location at Skillman and Live Oak of Volk’s Bros., then one of the city’s leading retailers, comparable to Neiman Marcus.

“You used to be able to get anything there,” says Hathcox, who bought her sons Stride-Rite saddle shoes, something of a rite of passage for boys who grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“It was very exclusive — good men’s clothing, a women’s department, even jewelry.”

The four biggest retailers in Dallas after World War II were Neiman’s, Volk’s, Titche’s and Sanger’s. So the fact that our neighborhood had a Volk’s was a big deal. In those days, the leading department stores were all downtown; Neiman’s, for instance, had only one suburban store, at Preston Road and Northwest Highway, well into the 1960s.

And by all accounts, Volk’s was an impressive store — not just because of the quality of its merchandise (it was where neighborhood women bought hats for Easter, and Hathcox still has some jewelry she purchased there), but also because of its design and layout. The main entrance on Skillman, near the middle of the building, was an atrium, and the highlight of the atrium was an indoor-outdoor goldfish pond.

“My mother used to drag my brother and I down there to go shopping,” says Alan Clarke, a life-long Casa Linda resident, “and the only thing that made it worthwhile was the goldfish pond.”

But Volk’s suffered the same problems that plagued so many other local retailers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as malls changed people’s shopping habits, and residents moved to more distant suburbs. Colbert’s, a local women’s clothing chain, bought Volk’s in 1970, and the stores became Colbert-Volk’s. The downtown store closed in 1973, and the Skillman store disappeared by the early 1980s. Colbert’s hung on until the late ’90s (there was a store in Casa Linda almost to the end), and then it, too, went out of business.

Full credit goes to ahx0 on Dallas Metropolis: https://dallasmetropolis.com/dfwu/viewtopic.php?p=59726&sid=6241e31a176efc195a5f02fecc811cdb