Questions & Answers
The 30-second version
- The City of Dallas wants to borrow $443,000,000.
- Paid back over 20 years, that costs $629,000,000.
- The police academy is bundled with moving 911 out of City Hall. You cannot vote them apart.
- A NO vote is not anti-police or anti-City of Dallas. It is a request for a smaller, specific bond with accountability.
- The City of Dallas has $8.6 billion in debt and the lowest credit rating of the five largest cities in Texas. We should not be borrowing more than what is necessary.
- Vote NO on NOvember 3. Bust the Bond.
Start Here: The Basics
For anyone who just heard there is a bond on the ballot.
What am I actually voting on?
One question. The City of Dallas wants permission to borrow $443,000,000 by selling bonds.
If it passes, the city pays that money back over 20 years with interest. The total bill is $629,000,000. That is the number on our yard signs.
What is a bond, in plain words?
A bond is a loan. The city borrows money from investors today and promises to pay it back later, with interest, out of your property taxes.
It works a lot like a mortgage. You get the house now. You pay a lot more than the sticker price by the time you are done.
Why does $443 million cost $629 million?
Interest. The city borrows $443,000,000 and pays it back over as long as 20 years. The extra $186,000,000 is what it costs to borrow.
Every dollar of that interest is a dollar that does not go to streets, parks, or officers on the street.
I rent. Why should I care?
Renters pay property taxes too — just through the rent check instead of a tax bill.
When the tax on a building goes up, the owner passes it along. Higher city debt means higher costs for the people living in Dallas, whether or not their name is on a deed.
When and where do I vote?
Early voting runs October 19 - October 30th. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. We will post polling locations and times in October.
Where will I find it on the ballot?
It is a bond proposition, so it will be at the bottom of the ballot, after all the candidate races.
Please scroll all the way down to the end. We know people miss questions at the bottom of the ballot all the time, and your vote is important!
Why We Say Vote No
What do you mean it's a “blank check?”
The city has shown slides with a project list, but the slides are not legally enforceable. Bond counsel has stated the dollars do not need to be used for the projects the city has been promoting.
The city council could spend it differently, and nothing in the proposition could stop them. That is the definition of a blank check.
Was there a community process to develop this bond?
No. Unlike past Dallas bonds, no commission was established and no community input sessions were held.
What is the “poison pill” everyone keeps mentioning?
The poison is the project the city council knew voters would not like, grouped into a big pot with the projects they do like. It’s like putting poison in a pot of soup. You have to throw the whole thing out.
In this case, the “poison pill” is moving the 911 center out of City Hall. It’s the first step to abandoning and demolishing the building. Even worse, the location being considered for the 911 center is older, less secure, and has less redundancy than City Hall.
There was a city council amendment to separate the items, so voters could say yes to the police academy but not vote for moving the 911 center. Unfortunately, that motion failed by one vote, 8-7. Don’t take the poison pill. Vote NO and send the message that voters deserve to approve only the projects they want.
Hasn't the city already been given money it hasn't spent?
Yes, voters approved a $1.25 billion bond program in 2024, and the city hasn’t spent all of it. More than $750,000,000 remains authorized but not issued by the city council.
Wasn't there a bond election in 2024, just two years ago, for $1.25 billion face value and $1.76 billion with interest?
Yes. Voters approved the debt, but only a portion of the dollars have been issued. Most projects have not started and few have been completed.
The city has more than $750,000,000 in available debt still to issue.
Why not just fix the proposition instead of voting no?
Voters can’t change the ballot language. The city council voted to lump it all together by a single vote. The deadline for any changes has passed.
The only tool the voters have left is to vote. NO is how you send it back and request a smaller, specific proposition for the police academy only.
What happens if it fails?
The projects the city has been describing do not disappear. Money already committed to the police academy does not go away.
The city council can put a new bond on the ballot as soon as May 2027. We are asking for one that names the project, the amount, restricts funding to that use only, and allows voters to weigh each item separately.
That’s a few months of delay in exchange for twenty years of accountability.
“But Wait” — Straight Answers for Skeptics
I'm pro-public safety. This is a public safety bond. Why would I vote against it?
None of the funding projects are even guaranteed. It could be the city council declares Dallas City Hall a public safety menace and uses the dollars for leaving City Hall instead of pursuing projects that were on a powerpoint. The dollars are a blank check for the city council.
Our police officers were promised a new academy 30+ years ago. We voted three times to make it happen, and instead the city council diverted those funds to other projects. The fourth time, the dollars have started the project. For the fifth time, let’s make sure we deliver on our promise by sending this bond back and getting specific, accountable language.
Dallas residents who are pro-public safety should be focused on the need to pay our officers competitively and the fact that there is no Meet and Confer agreement between the police and fire associations and the city. The agreement expired last year and had to be extended a year because no agreement could be reached. The current extension runs out September 30, 2026. After that, the officers are working without an agreement, which is likely to have a profoundly negative effect on hiring and retention.
Won't a NO vote kill the police academy?
No. The academy is already funded and moving, with money from the 2024 bond, state grants, and committed private donations.
What is on this ballot is the remaining gap — bundled with hundreds of millions of dollars of other things.
Voting no on the bundle is not voting no on the academy. It is asking for the academy to be its own question.
The police chief and fire chief say they need this. Who are you to disagree?
Our fight is not with the chiefs. It is with a proposition written in a way that doesn’t guarantee any of that money goes to the identified needs.
If we wait, won't construction just cost more?
Costs do rise. So does interest, and this bond runs up to 20 years of it — $186,000,000 on top of what is borrowed.
We are asking for a delay of about six months, to May 2027, not a delay of years. Handing over a blank check to avoid six months of inflation is a bad trade.
There is also a cost to getting it wrong. Move the 911 center into the wrong building and you pay for that mistake for decades.
$443 million doesn't sound like that much for a city this size.
The number to look at is $629,000,000, because that is what gets repaid. The voters approved $1.25 billion face value in 2024, and the city currently has $8.6 billion outstanding debt per Moody’s Ratings credit opinion on June 5, 2026.
I don't have time to research this.
The short version is the city wants $443,000,000, will repay $629,000,000, and the proposition doesn’t require any specific project, it is a blank check.
The city already has the lowest credit rating of the 5 big Texas cities, and this will be the 5th time the city asks voters to fund a police academy. Three of those times the dollars were diverted, which can happen again. Vote NO in NOvember and request a smaller, specific bond with accountability for the police academy in May 2027.
Still have a question?
Email us and we will answer it here. If enough neighbors are asking it, it belongs on this page.