From the cover
Plano seeks DART changes, reduced funding
BY COLBY FARR
The setup
How much each DART member city contributes in sales tax collections
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1 Dallas: $407.8M 2 Plano: $109.6M 3 Irving: $102.2M
Contributions under $30M Contributions over $30M
Plano has been a member of DART since the transit agency was founded in 1983. The agency hasn’t added any new member cities while inflation and increasing populations across North Texas have driven a rise in sales tax contributions. “We really believe a quarter-cent reduction over time would not affect [DART’s] ability to continue to provide the services they are doing,” Muns said. Muns also said the agency should consider creating hybrid membership models for other North Texas cities to participate in. Joining the agency becomes a challenge for other communities because they’ve elected to direct their sales tax to something else, Plano City Manager Mark Israelson said. “We’ve had the 1% going to DART,” he said. “The other communities have used that for economic development, community development and other things.” DART’s largest source of revenue comes from sales tax contributions from its member cities. The agency is forecast to collect about $24.9 billion in sales tax revenue over the next 20 years. For comparison, the agency expects to spend $35.1 billion over the next 20 years on a combination of
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4 Richardson: $56.9M 5 Carrollton: $48.3M 6 Garland: $45.2M 7 Farmer's Branch: $24.3M
$834.4M* total contributions
1
4
8 Addison: $16.3M 9 Rowlett: $9.2M
5
6
10 University Park: $6.4M 11 Highland Park: $6.3M 12 Glenn Heights: $1.1M 13 Cockrell Hill: $0.6M
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9
10 11
12 13
7
*FIGURES DO NOT ADD UP TO $834.4M EXACTLY DUE TO ROUNDING
SOURCE: DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT/COMMUNITY IMPACT
route, you’d have to be sitting outside waiting for possibly 30 minutes, if not more.” As DART officials have met with member cities, they’ve learned that each city has expressed different concerns, Molina said. “We know that there’s a huge burden on all of our cities,” she said. “But this would be such a huge impact to the communities that we service.”
operating expenses and debt service payments, according to its fiscal year 2023-24 budget. A quarter-cent reduction would cut expected revenue by about $6 billion, Molina said. That would cause service reductions across the DART system, she said. “We would be looking at service reductions across the entire system,” she said. “For a train, for a bus
What’s next?
Zooming in
DART’s sales tax revenue and ridership
The DART board administration committee met July 8 shortly after Plano City Council members took action. Multiple committee members expressed a need for the agency to work with its member cities. “We need to work with the cities and with those communities to do what we need to do,” board of directors Chair Gary Slagel said during the meeting. “We need to define programs, not reductions.” For the past year, DART officials have met with each member city to develop what they call an area plan, Molina said. Those plans aim to address how DART can be a more valuable asset to its member cities. Officials are in the process of developing plans for each city that aim to address each city’s issues long-term, she said. “We know how important our service area member cities are to DART and making sure they’re a part of the process is the only way that we’re going to continue to move forward,” Molina said.
Written into the Plano resolution is a proposed phase-in process that would reduce the sales tax contribution over time, Plano’s Government Rela- tions Director Andrew Fortune said. The resolution proposes capping DART’s annual sales tax collection at about $870.8 million, the agency’s projected collection total during FY 2023-24, and phasing in a reduction over time, according to the resolution. A quarter-cent reduction would enable the city to redirect about $30 million per year annually to something else, such as infrastructure improve- ments or economic development, Fortune said. “It’s not a reduction—it’s a redirection,” Israelson said. “It would still require the city going back to the citizens to ask, ‘Where would you like to apply these dollars?’” Cities would have to call its own election, and vot- ers can elect to redirect the contribution or continue sending the 1% sales tax contribution to DART. “[The board] would tell the comptroller to reduce our sales tax by whatever percentage they decide and then the cities themselves would have to go to an election,” Molina said.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit has recovered nearly 70% of its prepandemic ridership while sales tax collections have continued to rise.
DART ridership Sales tax collections
FY 2018-19: $621.1M
80M
FY 2022-23: $834.4M
FY 2019-20: $616.2M
FY 2021-22: $791.8M
60M
FY 2020-21: $683.2M
40M
20M
0
2019
2020 2021
2022
2023
SOURCE: DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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PLANO SOUTH EDITION
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