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Early Voting: October 19 – October 30Election Day: Tuesday, November 3

Vote No.
Bust the Bond.

This November, Dallas voters will be asked to approve a $443,000,000 bond that will cost $629,000,000 to repay. This is new debt, added to the $8.6 billion outstanding debt (Moody’s Ratings, 6/5/2026). We think it’s too much money, with too little accountability. It’s an obvious first step to abandoning and demolishing Dallas City Hall.

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Polling locations and times will be posted in October.

Bust the Bond yard sign: Vote NO on the $629,000,000 bond. Too much debt, no blank check, save City Hall.

Why Vote No?

On November 3, Dallas voters decide whether the city takes on $629,000,000 in new bond debt. That is a serious amount of money and a serious commitment. Residents will be paying this off for twenty years. We think the answer is no.

Before signing off on a package of hundreds of millions of dollars, residents deserve straight answers to two simple questions. Exactly what does the $629,000,000 bond pay for and why is a bond coming now? The first answer was given by the city’s outside bond counsel on camera, the bond does NOT require any specific project and could be used by the city council at their discretion. The second answer is one proposed project is to move the 911 center out of City Hall. This is the first step in abandoning and destroying Dallas City Hall.

  • Too Much Debt

    Bond debt is not free money. The $443,000,000 will get paid back over 20 years as $629,000,000 with interest. Moody’s Ratings Credit Opinion dated June 5, 2026, states the city has $8,610,739,000 (that’s $8.6 billion!!) in debt. City debt has increased 24.7% in 3 years according to Moody’s Ratings. The City of Dallas has the lowest credit rating of the 5 largest cities in Texas.

  • No Blank Check

    $629,000,000 is far too much to hand over on a promise. Unlike prior bonds, no citizen’s commission was formed and no city community input sessions were held. You didn’t decide what is in the bond, and you can’t be sure how the dollars will be spent.

  • Save City Hall

    Dallas City Hall belongs to the people of Dallas. Decisions about its future should be made in the open, with residents at the table, not hidden in a bond proposition called “public safety” that moves the 911 center out of City Hall.

Credit Ratings Comparison

Texas’ 5 Largest Cities

CityS&PMoody’sFitch
AustinAAAAaaAAA
San AntonioAAAAaaAA+
HoustonAAAa2AA
Fort WorthAAAa3AA+
DallasAA−A1AA

Source: Official city websites and budget/financial documents as of August 2026.

Possible Bond Projects

The items proposed by the city for bond funds are merely suggestions and do not require the funds go to the projects. Besides moving the 911 center, the big item is a dual-location police academy. This bond will be the fifth time voters will be asked to fund a Dallas police academy. The first three times it was promised, voters approved, but it was never built. The fourth time was 2024 and funds have been used to start designing the project. This time, you can’t be sure what will happen because of how the proposition is set up. We support the police academy project. Unfortunately, we will say NO in NOvember and wait for new proposition language in May 2027 to ensure the funds go to the police academy only. It’s better to delay 6 months than regret authorizing the debt for 20 years of payments with funds diverted by the city council for the fourth time.

The city is also proposing moving the property room ($150 million) to a property the city council has had at the top of the list to sell for three years. Nobody can explain why the cost to build this project is so high.

The city added in a project to replace an old fire station in an area of downtown that is ready for redevelopment. However, the redevelopment plan is unknown, so it is impossible to know what kind of fire station is needed. Will it need to provide rescues inside 100-story buildings, services at a casino or sports stadium, or perhaps 4-story townhomes like the Farmers Market? The other downtown fire station is already funded and will be replaced, expanded, and moved to a different location downtown. It is possible a second downtown station is unnecessary or could be paid for by another funding mechanism like the tax-increment financing (TIF) funds.

And finally, moving the 911 center from the basement of City Hall. Most people don’t know that when City Hall was designed, it was purposely built to house 911 operations and it is the safest, most secure facility in the city with uniquely redundant infrastructure in case of catastrophe. The proposed location is older, less secure, and has fewer redundancies. Moving 911 out of city hall is the first step in abandoning and destroying Dallas City Hall.

Read the plain-language FAQ

This Is About Fiscal Sanity

A NO vote is not a vote against Dallas or against public safety. It’s a vote for fiscal sanity and a request for the Dallas City Council to send a bond proposition that is smaller and requires funding be spent on a police academy project only. This is a project worth getting right.

  • This is NOT anti-police.

    We want the police academy built. Put it on the ballot on its own and require the dollars be spent only on the police academy, and we’ll campaign for it.

  • This is NOT anti-Dallas.

    We live here and we pay taxes here. Loving this city means insisting it borrow carefully and provide governance representative of the people.

  • This is NOT a permanent no.

    The city council can bring back a smaller, specific bond in May 2027 with accountability in the spending of the dollars. A NO vote in NOvember is how voters ask for a better bond and accountability.

The Poison Pill

You cannot vote for the police academy without also voting to move 911 out of City Hall. The council was asked to separate them. It refused, by one vote.

At the city council meeting, a motion was made to split the police academy funding into its own proposition, so voters could weigh each project on its own. That amendment failed 8-7.

What is left is an all-or-nothing question. Popular projects like the police academy are bundled in with the project the council knew voters would question — moving the 911 center out of City Hall into a less secure facility. Councilmember Mendelsohn called that relocation “a poison pill for this entire proposition.”

This is the choice the city council handed you. It is not a choice voters asked for, and it is not a choice you have to accept. Vote NO, and you’ll send the message to send back a ballot that asks one honest question at a time.

“a poison pill for this entire proposition”
— Council Member Cara Mendelsohn, on moving the 911 center out of City Hall

Take Action

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In the News

Coverage of the bond and the campaign to defeat it. Check back and we'll add stories as they run.