Dallas Will Be Asked Today to Pay Up to $250,000 to Check Petition Signatures — Four Drives, One May Ballot, and a 2018 Audit That Found Signatures Wrongly Rejected

DALLAS — Buried at item 34 of a 46-item agenda, the Dallas City Council will be asked today to spend up to $250,000 on counting signatures. The resolution authorizes an interlocal agreement with Dallas County's Elections Department for assistance and services related to verifying four city petitions, according to the Dallas Patriot's November 10 report, read in full by this desk. It sits on the consent agenda, so it can pass with no discussion. Dallas County's commissioners approved their half of the arrangement 5-0 on November 3: the county supplies staff, software and space, the city pays hourly rates with half up front — and, in the agreement's key line, the city keeps final say over which signatures count and sets the verification standards. A similar agreement in June 2024, covering four proposed charter amendments, carried a $90,000 authorization; today's ceiling is more than two and a half times that.

The workload is real. Dallas has an unusual pile of citizen petition drives running at once, all aimed at the May 2027 ballot. The Save Dallas City Hall Coalition, which filed notice with the City Secretary on October 2, wants a charter amendment naming 1500 Marilla St. as the city's seat of government and requiring a public vote before it moves; the coalition told Axios on October 30 that it had passed 20,000 signatures and was aiming for about 26,000 as a cushion — the organizers' claim until the City Secretary says otherwise. Three former mayors — Ron Kirk, Tom Leppert and Mike Rawlings — are circulating amendments that would let the mayor hire and fire the city manager and city attorney and veto individual budget lines, subject to a two-thirds council override. And two political action committees filed recall notices on October 9 against Council Members Gay Donnell Willis of District 13 and Chad West of District 1, largely over zoning. The resolution does not name its four petitions; the reported drives add up to five measures.

The rules are not gentle, and the resolution's own preamble restates them: a recall needs signatures from at least 15 percent of the voters who were eligible to vote for that council seat at the last general municipal election, and a charter amendment needs 5 percent of the city's qualified voters or 20,000, whichever is smaller. Organizers get 60 days from notice, recalls must be checked within 30 days, and the council must call a May election by February 12. The cautionary tale is 2018: organizers of a paid-sick-leave initiative turned in more than 120,000 signatures, and the City Secretary ruled the petition 871 valid signatures short. The City Auditor's July 27, 2018 report then sampled the review and found the office had wrongly rejected 22 of 392 sampled signature lines in its initial review — about 6 percent — and 21 in a second sample from the final review, while signatures written outside the numbered lines were skipped at first because the county's verification system was set up for only ten lines per page. The office clarified its rules, added a check on rejections and re-examined roughly 36,000 signatures with county staff. Those are sample findings, not a recount — and they are why the standards the city sets under today's agreement matter before the first box is opened.