Full text of Mayor Johnson's 2023 State of the City Address
The following is the full text of Mayor Eric L. Johnson's 2023 State of the City Address. Please note: Mayor Johnson occasionally deviated from the text as prepared. The recording of the address is available here.
Good evening. This is Eric Johnson — the mayor of Dallas.
I want you to know something about me, and that’s this: I have always yearned for Dallas.
I say that as someone who has always called Dallas home. I was born in this city. I grew up in a family of six in West Dallas and Oak Cliff, bouncing between cramped apartments and rental homes seemingly every year or so. My parents worked hard, doing whatever they had to do to keep us afloat. People in our community always tried to help each other. We all did the best we could with what we had.
When I was 18, I left home for college. God’s plan for my life and hard work took me to the northeast. This allowed me to see faraway places that I had only read about — and to escape the circumstances into which I was born.
Still, I yearned for Dallas – for everything it was and for everything it could be.
When it was time to build a better life for myself – to launch my career, to start a family, and to become part of a community – I knew I wanted to do it all right here in Dallas. Sure, I had family and friends here, but I also saw something greater in my hometown: I saw opportunity.
Tonight, I’m blessed to speak to you once again as the mayor of this great city. Our City Charter requires me to deliver an annual report as to the state of our city, its financial condition, and our plans for the future. It is my privilege and honor to do so for a fifth time tonight.
In past years, we have made the State of the City address an in-person event. But this year, in an increasingly complex world that is fraught with uncertainty, I decided to keep things simple. No stage. No podium. No applause breaks. Just an honest conversation with you about Dallas.
You deserve straight talk, and that’s what I’m going to give you.
There are a few things I want to discuss with you tonight. I want to focus primarily on what I call the four P’s: Public safety. Property taxes. Parks. And potholes.
Now, when we talk about these things, just know that what’s driving our conversation is the fact that America is yearning for Dallas. The numbers prove it. People want what we have to offer. They value what Dallas represents in a world where it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to stay afloat, much less get ahead. In search of a better life, people across this country increasingly want to make Dallas their home. Much like I did many years ago, they all see tremendous opportunity here.
But with this opportunity comes some distinct challenges. Our fast-growing suburban neighbors have been capitalizing on their proximity to Dallas and trying to outdo us. These cities compete with us for the families, the jobs, and the investment that we want to land not just in the North Texas region, but in the City of Dallas specifically.
And in this increasingly intense competition, as long as I’m your mayor, Dallas is going to play to win.
That has been the mantra of my administration over the past four-and-a-half years, even when a pandemic brought our global economy and social lives to a halt. And together, through that time, we have set a course that puts the City of Dallas back on offense. It’s a course that tells the world we refuse to rest on our laurels. It’s a course that puts public safety first, that fights for lower property taxes, and that aims to make life easier for families and for businesses.
We are now beginning to see the benefits of this approach over the last few years. Violent crime is still falling. The number of people living on our streets declined 14% last year as we’ve deployed a more strategic and holistic approach to homelessness. And property tax rates in Dallas are lower than they have been at any time in the past 15 years.
Meanwhile, corporate relocations are increasing. New developments are going up. And new parks are being built across our city.
In light of all of this, I am proud to report that the State of our City remains strong.
However, it’s imperative that we remain on the course that we have set in the last few years. We cannot afford to drift from our direction. We must continue to focus on what really matters: the work that has made people all over the world yearn for Dallas – the work that actually makes our city safer, stronger, and more vibrant.
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It is my philosophy that your city government must be responsive, responsible, and restrained. But the most important role that your city government plays is in keeping you safe.
For two consecutive years coming out of the pandemic, Dallas saw violent crime fall in every major category. That’s something no other top 10 city in America achieved. And our nation took notice: more Americans rated Dallas as safe than they did any other major city in the country in a Gallup poll released just a few months ago.
This year, violent crime will fall again – a remarkable third-straight year of reductions. Aggravated assault, rape, and robbery are all continuing to go down. This means fewer victims of violence in this city than the year before. That is always our goal, and that is a significant achievement.
Our police chief and his team deserve a great deal of credit for working with criminologists and with our community to develop and refine our violent crime reduction plans, which have been remarkably successful over the past three years. The men and women of the Dallas Police Department also deserve tremendous credit, praise, and gratitude for implementing these plans every morning, every afternoon, every evening, and every night.
Still, I want to level with you. It's not 100% good news. That’s because after two-straight years of decreasing homicide numbers, murders are likely to be up this year over last year.
I am not at all happy about this. These numbers represent lives, and it is always tragic when lives are lost to violence in this city. It's simply not something that anyone in any leadership position in this city can or should ever accept or excuse. Period.
Next year, Dallas must intensify its efforts to stop violence. Police recruiting and hiring must improve. We must continue to take steps to shore up the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System in order to retain and attract public safety personnel.
We must also explore every public safety solution, and everyone must be part of it, including our prosecutors, our judges, our faith leaders, and our community organizations.
Our goal is to become the safest big city in America. That’s going to require us to continue to be relentless when it comes to ensuring public safety. You should expect nothing less from your city government.
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Now, let’s talk about your property taxes. Simply put, they’re too high.
The biggest chunk of your tax bill goes to our public schools, and I want to thank Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and the Texas Legislature for prioritizing public school property tax relief. It is going to make a real difference for property taxpayers across Texas.
Here in Dallas, we’ve lowered our city’s tax rate every single year since I took office. Last year, we cut the tax rate by the largest amount in at least four decades. This year, we cut the rate again for the eighth-straight year, and we increased the exemption for senior citizens. I’m proud of that.
The problem, as I’ve mentioned, is that people want to move to our city, and that means your property valuations are going up. That’s great whenever it’s time to sell your home. But for families who want to stay in their homes and raise their children or grow old in our city, it also means a higher tax bill at a time when many people are just trying to get by.
We can and we should be doing a lot more to give hard-working Dallas taxpayers some relief.
City government must be more responsible with your money. Since 2010, the City of Dallas’s discretionary general fund budget has increased by 83%. If anyone tells you that’s all driven by the police budget, they’re wrong. The public safety portions of our city’s budget grew at a slower pace than the rest of the budget, even with a large increase in spending to partially stabilize our police and fire pensions.
That’s because even in an uncertain world, there is one thing you can count on: The wish lists of city government bureaucrats will always grow. There will always be a new program, a new pet project, a new department or office to establish for one reason or another. And your tax dollars will pay for it regardless of whether it works or not.
That’s why I fought this year to cut your taxes even more, and I’m not giving up this fight. And that’s why I will be asking our Government Performance and Financial Management Committee to begin planning NOW for a 2025 city budget that holds spending flat and cuts your taxes.
Ultimately, however, in our form of city government, it takes eight votes on your City Council to give you real tax relief. This year, we had five votes, including mine.
Our system of city government is up for debate right now as our Charter Review Commission will propose changes for voters to consider in an election to be held next year. I encourage every Dallas resident to learn more about their city government and to get involved and to give their input now, before any proposed charter amendments appear on the ballot.
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What will also likely be on the ballot next year is our city’s first bond package since 2017.
This bond package should allow us to make critical investments in our city without raising your taxes.
It should include some long overdue funding for a new police academy that will be located at the University of North Texas at Dallas. And it will likely include millions for critical flood control projects.
But the two biggest allocations in this bond package must be for streets and for parks. That’s what our citizen-led Community Bond Task Force recommended. That’s what the people of Dallas want. That’s what I want as your mayor. And that’s what our city needs.
The Community Bond Task Force was made up of community volunteers who heard extensive public input. Based on this public input, they recommended investing $375 million in streets and $350 million in parks.
The proposed investment in streets is bold but responsible. It’s in line with what we’ve spent so far from the 2017 bond package, which represented a massive investment in streets. And it will allow us to make major improvements to the infrastructure in our neighborhoods in the next few years.
The proposed allocation for parks would be the largest investment ever in our city’s park system. And it will help us to achieve our goal of ensuring that everyone in Dallas lives within a 10-minute walk of a park or a trail.
Unfortunately, but predictably, we have heard from a few loud voices who believe the proposed parks allocation should be cut in favor of more taxpayer-supported housing.
Look: We need more housing in Dallas. But historically, government is simply not good at playing the role of a housing developer. Spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a handful of houses or a couple hundred apartments here and there isn’t the answer here, and it won’t reduce your rent or your mortgage a single cent.
When it comes to housing, we need real scale — the kind only the private sector can provide. Our city government’s role here should be to make things simpler for professional builders. Improving our city’s permitting process and easing our zoning restrictions are where we can make a much bigger difference.
That’s why I want our Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee to develop five new recommendations – not for new programs, but for simple yet innovative ways that we can free the private sector to build more housing in the places where it makes the most sense.
Now, there is one thing that our city government is really good at – and that’s parks and recreation. And we’ve become even better at it in recent years as we’ve partnered with private organizations such as the Trust for Public Land and Parks for Downtown Dallas to build beautiful parks in downtown and southern Dallas.
Parks have an extraordinary ability to revitalize neighborhoods. They encourage private investment. They attract visitors and give our communities a gathering place. And most importantly, parks help us attract and keep families in Dallas.
We have seen this time and time again. When we’re smart about it, we get more bang for your buck with parks and trails and recreation centers than with anything else we do with your tax dollars.
That’s why developers who are building in Dallas have said that they want to build near parks. That’s why our plans for future renovations at Fair Park and the downtown Convention Center include more public green spaces. That’s why we’re building a new deck park that will tie into the Dallas Zoo over Interstate 35 in southern Dallas. And that’s why we must press forward with an unprecedented investment in our city’s parks in the next bond program.
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Parks were vital to my own family when I was growing up in Dallas. We didn’t have a backyard or a swimming pool or country club or gym memberships. We depended on this city’s parks and aquatics centers and recreation centers. They gave us some relief from the daily grind that can sometimes feel overwhelming in a big city like Dallas.
Today, if you go to a Dallas park, you’ll see people from every neighborhood in our city — no matter how much money they make, no matter how old they are, no matter if they are black or white or brown, and no matter whether they’ve had a good day or a bad day.
I would say that, today, parks are to Dallas what Dallas has become to the rest of our nation: a place where we can breathe – and where promise and potential are still within our grasp.
Infact, when it comes to America’s biggest cities, Dallas has come to represent an oasis – a big city where dreams can, and still do, come true.
And, rightfully so. This continues to be our moment. But that makes it even more critical that we keep sight of what we are trying to build here. Right now, there are kids in Dallas and across this nation who are turning 18 and trying to figure out what comes next for them. And whether it’s tomorrow or a few years from now, it will soon be time for these young people to pick a place to live, a place to launch a career, and a place to start a family.
And whether those kids are from here or have never stepped foot in Dallas, I want them to yearn for Dallas. I want them to see opportunity here for years to come.
That means we still have work to do. But it’s work that we will continue to do together – all of us: our entrepreneurs, our faith community, our businesses, our City Council, our neighborhood leaders, and people like you.
Thank you for listening and for being part of tonight’s conversation. I also want to thank WBAP for hosting my State of the City address this year. May God bless you, and may God bless the city of Dallas — the city that America still yearns for. Goodnight, and go Cowboys.
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