DART fails to pass 2025 budget as appointees disagree on spending

Dallas Area Rapid Transit appointees failed to pass the agency’s budget for fiscal year 2025 Tuesday amid ongoing disagreements on how to approach spending.
Committee-of-the-Whole members diverged Tuesday and during an August meeting about whether to proactively reduce its 1.6% year-over-year budget growth in light of member cities’ desire to reduce sales tax contributions to DART by a quarter. That growth includes a 5.5% increase in the operating budget.
Two motions — one to pass the staff-proposed $1.8 billion budget and one to pass a budget that reduced the operating budget from 5.5% growth to 4.6% growth — failed to reach the required two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass.
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The committee last month discussed capping next year’s operating budget at 3% growth over 2024 and instituting changes to the capital improvement program. Staff originally told the board that would mean eliminating underperforming routes, routes with higher passenger subsidies and popular but duplicative shuttle and GoLink services. Service and frequency improvements would have been halted and other cuts would have included department budget reductions and cuts to pension contributions.
Budget and Finance Committee members in August asked staff to instead bring back a proposal capping operating growth between 4% and 4.7% without cutting service. The committee also sent the original budget to member cities for review.
The 2025 staff-proposed budget includes more than $885 million in capital and non-operating costs, $725 million in operating expenses and $222 million in debt service. That amounts to $19.3 million in reductions from 2024.
Staff presented multiple scenarios to achieve growth caps — several without service cuts — Tuesday.
“What we’re doing is not cutting the budget, we’re trying to limit the growth of the budget,” committee member Flora Hernandez, representing Dallas, said. “I think what this would do is set us up nicely going into the legislative session this fall and into next year because we’re going to face a legislature, and if we can show that we have discipline to to control the growth of our budget, I think that will bode well for us, or better for us, in the immediate future.”
But while some committee members favored options further reducing growth, almost as many opposed any cuts.
“When you take out the increases in contracts…we only went up by 0.2%,” said committee member Enrique MacGregor, who represents Dallas and Cockrell Hill. “Staff identified $19.3 million in savings, and that includes a 1.5% decrease across the board. There’s been a lot of discussion about explaining to legislators in Austin that we are fiscally responsible.
“This budget shows exactly that, and it’s not very difficult to prove.”
The budget will likely come back before the committee for a vote September 24 prior to the DART board meeting that evening.
The committee also heard suggestions from Ernst & Young about how to allocate its operation, capital and debt costs. That included measurements of the contributions and returns of each member city — data officials said they’ve not gotten satisfying answers on from DART staff.
A few committee members said the study didn’t answer lingering questions about contributions versus ridership.
“My concern still is our big question, which is, what is the ridership that each city is getting for the dollars they’re investing?” committee member and Irving mayor Richard Stopfer said. “I think that’s the real key for us as a city, to know where we’re at with that scenario. Because if we’re investing these kinds of dollars and we have less than 1% of our people riding it, we’ve got to figure out, how do we improve that?”
Allocations are expected to shift in the coming years as Silver Line is completed and later when light rail assets depreciate. Committee members said they would revisit the study with further questions for Ernst & Young at a future meeting.