The Richardson City Council met February 23, 2026. Two of the agenda items are worth covering: DART and the Apollo Middle School rezoning. Both went as expected. The council formally approved the proposed amended governance plan for DART. They also authorized the City Manager to execute an agreement with DART to allow for allocation of DART General Mobility Funds to Richardson. The council also approved the rezoning application by the Richardson ISD to transform Apollo Junior High School into Apollo Middle School.
DART faced crises in three areas: governance, funding, and service. Together, these led six DART member cities to call elections to withdraw from DART. Later Monday night, the Plano City Council canceled their planned election and some cities have said they might, too. At least for now, it appears the crisis at DART has been averted or at least delayed.
DART has proposed a major change in its governing board, increasing the number of seats from 15 to 22. In the new structure, each DART member city will hold at least one seat, with some having a fractional vote less than one. Richardson would have 1 seat and 1.38 votes. Dallas will hold seven seats and 9.90 votes (45% of the total votes, no longer a majority).
DART has also proposed a new funding formula, providing up to 25% of DART sales tax receipts to service area cities, which can only be used on projects that benefit DART or provide complimentary services.
The Richardson City Council approved both of these DART proposals. Everyone is applauding and handing out attaboys, City Manager Don Magner cautioned it is only an "interim" agreement. I think maybe interim "house of straw" is a more apt description. It's not a house of bricks or even sticks at this point. Even if all the DART member cities go along, the revised governance model still requires enabling state legislation.
The bigger problem is going to be with funding. Part of the agreement is to create an independent managing authority for the Silver Line, the A-Train from Denton, and the Trinity Metro from downtown Dallas to Fort Worth. Why does that need to be split off from DART? DART is looking for new revenue sources. Richardson's DART board member Gary Slagel mentioned a new tax on automobiles registered in Dallas, Collin, Denton, Tarrant, Ellis and perhaps more counties in North Texas. Good luck with creating a new tax. Slagel admitted that "the other two transit authorities, DCTA and Trinity Metro, they're not sure this is something that makes sense." I'm sure of that. Denton and Tarrant Counties know exactly what's going on, even if some of the Richardson council members (OK, one) were a little slow in connecting the dots (more on that later).
Even if DART finds a way to offload some of their costs to non-DART cities, there will still exist a challenge of back-filling the funding lost by returning 25% of sales tax to member cities without crippling DART service. The one member of the public who spoke about DART at Monday's meeting asked that the money DART returns to Richardson be devoted to maintaining DART service in Richardson. The council will be sympathetic to this, but will be hard pressed to do this.
So, it's way too soon for attaboys. It's like we have been losing game after game in a seven game playoff series. We were down three games to none. We finally won a game, but we're still down three games to one. All we did was stave off elimination, letting us play another game. I'm confident City Manager Don Magner understands the challenge that remains. And so do some of the city council members. Jennifer Justice described the work remaining as "a Herculean lift." Joe Corcoran took a glass-is-half-full attitude. "Nothing's going to happen as fast as everyone wants it to, but I have full confidence that as long as we're all working in good faith, everyone is going to be happy."
Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider had two concerns. "My largest concern is this independent management authority to assume the regional rail system. I'm not sure I completely understand what the idea behind this is, unless it's the idea that there's another funding source that could possibly pay for the regional rail system." Ding! Ding! Ding! It's not that hard to figure out. There's a simple rule that can explain almost anything government does: it's the money.
Hutchenrider's second concern had nothing to do with the huge lift still ahead of us. Instead, Hutchenrider said, "Later this year, we will have an opportunity to, I believe, cut the ribbon on our new bridge for DART, and I would like to throw out there the idea that we would name that bridge for Mr. Gary Slagel." I'll add, maybe we could hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner from the bridge, too. Once again, Hutchenrider is trying to railroad something past the council without proper consideration. The last time he did this was in 2023 when he tried to get the council to name a park bridge with no inputs other than his own (See "Naming of Parks" and "Bob and Lynn Townsend Bridge"). As I wrote then:
Barrios tried to avoid being railroaded into a snap decision. He said, "I think that throwing names out before we have an established policy is a little cart before the horse."Hutchrider was having none of that. He tried to maintain momentum by saying, "Personally, I don't want to see this get caught up in some big policy."
Dorian, as usual, tried to have it both ways, saying "Since we're really not prepared to make a decision on all that, I think it's good that the City brings us some options for us to look at but it is a good point to recognize the people that we've talked about."
Again, Hutchenrider objected, saying, "I'm going to disagree. Again, this is not a city management function if we have someone that we want to celebrate, we want to honor. That's not for City Manager to say okay, well here's the 47 people that have done something in the past."
Source: The Wheel.
In 2023, Hutchenrider got away with his steamroll because the mayor's gavel at the time was wielded by Bob Dubey. On Monday night, it was Amir Omar running the meeting. He made short work of Huthchenrider's attempted steamroll. "No. It's not an agenda item, so we won't talk about it now." It feels good to have a mayor who understands "Texas Open Meetings Act" and "Roberts Rules of Order."
As this blog article is already too long, I'll save my comments about the rezoning request for Apollo Middle School for a future post.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
"Gary Slagel hints:
Tax cars across whole region.
Engines start to growl."
—h/t ChatGPT
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