Dallas Banks $30 Million for Its Police Academy — and $82 Million Still Rides on Tuesday's Bond Vote
The council accepted the last of the state's $25 million and $17.5 million in private donations for the $227 million training center at UNT Dallas. Whether the building is finished as designed is now a Proposition A question.
The Dallas City Council has put another $30 million in the bank for the police department's long-awaited training academy — and left the building's fate, in large part, to Tuesday's voters. On Wednesday the council accepted more than $30 million in state funding and private contributions for the $227 million Law Enforcement Training Center at the University of North Texas at Dallas, which broke ground last month, and authorized an additional $20 million in construction services.
The pieces are specific. A $15 million state grant is the remaining portion of a $25 million commitment from the Texas Legislature. Private donations from QuikTrip and the W.W. Caruth Foundation total $17.5 million. And officials emphasized a point voters should hold onto: the money accepted Wednesday was already counted in the academy's financing plan. It is not new money, and it does not reduce the amount being sought at the ballot box.
That amount is the $82 million funding gap that remains in the training center's budget — and closing it rides on Proposition A, the $443 million public-safety bond on Tuesday's ballot. Prop A also carries $150 million for police evidence storage and crime lab facilities, $40 million to relocate 911 dispatch and emergency operations out of City Hall, and $22 million to replace downtown Fire Station No. 4. The council chose to bundle the five projects into one measure, a decision that has drawn its own debate — but on Tuesday it is one question, and the academy's completion as designed is part of the answer.
