Dallas will furlough more than 4,200 city employees for three days to counteract a $30 million budget shortfall expected this year, city officials said Tuesday.
The state’s third largest city has seen higher-than-expected costs this year as its revenue fell short, driven by a drop-off in expected sales tax revenue. Overtime for police officers and firefighters and increased health care costs for employees, including higher medication costs for treatments such as GLP-1s, helped drive costs beyond what the city had planned, Dallas officials said in May.
To help bridge the gap, about half of the city’s civilian employees must take off work without pay on July 10, Sept. 4 and Sept. 28, city officials announced. A group of city executives must also take another two unpaid days off sometime before Sept. 16.
“Furloughs are not our preferred solution,” Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said in a statement. “However, they enable us to reduce expenses, protect jobs and employee health benefits, and continue delivering services to our residents.”
In a statement responding to the furloughs, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called on the city council to “thoroughly examine every part of our City government for opportunities to reduce spending and improve efficiency.”
“Dallas literally cannot afford to maintain the status quo,” Johnson said.
Police officers, firefighters, paramedics and city employees who staff 911 dispatch centers are exempt from the furlough days. The order also doesn’t apply to workers at Dallas Love Field Airport, in the city’s sanitation department or the city’s Water Utilities department.
Dallas already had taken steps to counteract the crunch in its current budget, like enacting a hiring freeze and getting rid of overtime for non-uniform employees.
Furloughing employees is a dramatic step. Dallas last furloughed city employees at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Texas cities in recent years have increasingly faced budget strain as a result of a stagnant economy, slowing sales tax revenue, inflation, rising public safety costs and strict limits on property tax revenue growth. That pain looks primed to continue as cities draw up their upcoming annual budgets over the summer, with Dallas, Austin and San Antonio each expecting revenue shortfalls.
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