Texas Budget Source

Six Dallas City Council members introduced a new method in the democratic process—walking out before you have to vote on something you don’t want to vote on.

By doing that they broke quorum, thus business of Monday’s city council meeting came to a theatrical halt. The dreaded vote? Setting a maximum property tax rate for the coming fiscal year. According to the Dallas Morning News, the members who walked out are in favor of a property tax rate increase or are undecided.

Tension apparently started mounting when Mayor Tom Leppert, an outspoken guardian of maintaining the current tax rate of 74.79 cents per $100 in valuation, announced Oncor Electricity Delivery Co. made a $1 million donation to the Dallas Parks Foundation in order for the recreation center to preserve current operating hours: hours that the city staff suggested reducing to close a projected $130 million shortfall in Dallas’ $2 billion budget.

Some council members took this good news as an excuse (and threat) to vote to cap the tax rate.

That vote was never called, and according to Leppert it was a figment of their imagination and was never even mentioned, but somewhere between that announcement and “rumblings” about the tax rate, those six staged a walkout.

Council member Angela Hunt, one of the deserters, called the rumored vote “really premature.”

All very scandalous.

But let’s remain seated and therefore in the room and look at the deserters’ argument here, because it’s one on repeat in cities across Texas. And as of Wednesday it’s putting Dallas council member Dave Neumann into a trance apparently as, according to the DMN, “earlier this year seemed reluctant to raise the property tax” and is now changing his mind.

In brief, the residents aren’t getting what they say they need.

They’re barking up the wrong tree, because private services should “pay for their needs” so to speak, not the government, and especially not the government possibly on the peak of a double-dipping recession.

But there is a more proactive approach to addressing the “more parks more roads more libraries” mobs; Texas city council members calling for tax cuts, like the ones left behind in city hall on Monday, have got to make a personal and ferocious commitment to bettering their communities the right way.

Because when there are roadblocks to reinvestment in the community, what do you expect? Saying “cut taxes” with a record of programs that perpetuate blight of the poorest areas is a catch 22.

Further, when you say “cut taxes” and then turn around and spend wastefully with the money you do have rather than focusing on core services, expect the complaints to reverberate, and watch your council members fold to the masses around you.

In order to be a well-oiled fiscally responsible, small government machine, low taxes really need to be coupled with a commitment to core services, tripled with a commitment to allowing reinvestment to impoverished areas to occur.

You can in fact have a nice, shiny city with high employment rates and beautiful streets and happy people by not hiking taxes by a dime. Hold fast to that idea, defend it, and address your voting records accordingly.