Dallas County's Tax Vote: $102.9 Million a Year, No End Date, and a Contract Nobody Can Read Yet
Proposition A would approve the rate. The contract, the goals and the oversight would all come after the vote. Both sides' numbers are in this story, with the baselines that explain why they differ.
Dallas County voters settle a specific question on Tuesday: whether to approve a county property tax rate of 24.865 cents per $100 of value, which is 2.4 cents above what the county may levy without asking. The county estimates the difference at $102.9 million a year, and the ballot language ties the money to programs that 'measurably reduce homelessness and resolve encampments.' Polls run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. This is the county proposition — not the separate City of Dallas Proposition A, a $443 million public safety bond that city voters will also see.
Start with the price, because the campaigns quote different ones and each is arithmetically sound on its own baseline. County Judge Clay Jenkins says about $5 a month for the average homeowner, which matches Proposition A alone on the median homestead's taxable value of $268,056 — about $64 a year. Barry Wernick, the Republican nominee in Commissioner District 2, gets $107.55 by comparing against what he says was last year's bill, and the county's own court order cites $116.03 on a $350,000 home measured against last year's rate, with Proposition A by itself at $84 on that value. The gap matters because commissioners have already moved the rate from 21.55 cents to the 22.465-cent voter-approval rate — the first increase since 2010, KERA reports. A 'no' vote does not mean no increase: by the Dallas Patriot's arithmetic it leaves the rate about 4.2 percent above last year's, while a 'yes' leaves it about 15.4 percent above.
The terms are the other half of the question. The order of election states a purpose and stops there: it does not name Housing Forward, the nonprofit that proposed the plan, sets no spending allocations, and does not write in the 4,500-household annual goal or the 65-day target from Housing Forward's presentation. The Stewpot, a Dallas provider that takes Housing Forward money, reports that contract terms, performance goals and spending oversight would be settled after the election. KERA describes a minimum five-year contract, NBC 5 reports renewals tied to performance goals, and Jenkins has said the tax itself has no end date, though a future court could end it, with the revenue held in a special fund. The case for the measure rests on a record its supporters can point to: Housing Forward cites a drop of more than 80 percent in downtown street homelessness since 2021, and the January count across Dallas and Collin counties has fallen five straight years, to 3,513 — against about 11,000 people a year entering homelessness in the county, with existing programs helping about 6,000. The ballot lines do not run neatly by party: Jenkins and Commissioners Theresa Daniel and Andrew Sommerman placed it on the ballot in a 3-2 vote, the Dallas Regional Chamber and United Way of Metropolitan Dallas back it, Democratic Commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia voted no, and Republicans Mike Immler and Wernick oppose it while running against Jenkins and Sommerman on the same ballot. Texas Tax Code Section 26.07 is why the question is on the ballot at all. On Tuesday, the rate is what voters approve; everything else is what follows.
