Dallas City Hall is an internationally recognized landmark designed by architect I. M. Pei—and it belongs to the people of Dallas.

Rather than demanding a transparent and independent evaluation of every option, Chad shamelessly became the public face of the campaign to abandon and potentially demolish City Hall. He has justified that position using fantasy numbers supplied by consultants whose assumptions and conclusions deserve far more scrutiny.

Dallas taxpayers deserve an honest accounting of the complete cost of demolition, relocation, replacement facilities, financing, and redevelopment. They also deserve to know who stands to benefit if this valuable public property is surrendered for another massive development project.

Chad should be fighting to protect the public’s interests. Instead, he is leading the charge to tear down one of our most important civic landmarks.

The Jefferson Viaduct is more than a bridge. It is a vital transportation connection that Oak Cliff residents have relied upon for generations.

Chad happily gave away the Jefferson Viaduct to accommodate a multibillion-dollar convention center project intended to benefit tourists and developers. He failed to secure meaningful protections for the Oak Cliff residents, workers, businesses, and emergency services that depend on reliable access to downtown.

A District 1 councilmember should have been the strongest advocate for preserving that connection. Chad should have demanded firm guarantees before allowing the viaduct to be absorbed into the convention center project.

Instead, he surrendered a vital public asset—and Oak Cliff will be left to live with the consequences.

In the wake of the May Clyde explosion, Chad has shown little urgency in holding the responsible parties accountable or fighting for the people whose lives were devastated.

Residents needed more than silence and carefully worded expressions of concern. They needed a councilmember who would demand answers, press for transparency, keep the victims’ needs before the public, and ensure that every responsible party was held accountable.

Tragedy is when leadership matters most. The people affected by the explosion deserved a forceful advocate at City Hall. They should not have had to fight for answers alone.

Across District 1, residents have watched developers request more density, greater height, reduced parking, incompatible uses, and zoning changes that can permanently transform established neighborhoods.

Whatever a developer wants to build, Chad seems willing to grant the necessary zoning exceptions. Residents who raise legitimate concerns about traffic, drainage, safety, infrastructure, displacement, and neighborhood compatibility are dismissed, talked over, or silenced.

Responsible development should respect the people who already live in a community. It should not require neighborhoods to surrender their quality of life so a developer can maximize the value of a property.

When developers come asking, Chad listens. When residents object, Chad tells them to accept the consequences.

District 1 residents should be able to depend on fair and consistent enforcement of zoning, permitting, parking, noise, and land-use regulations.

Instead, Chad has allowed friends and politically connected operators to open and operate high-traffic businesses in or near residential neighborhoods—including party stores, social clubs, short-term rentals, and other disruptive uses.

Residents are expected to tolerate the traffic, noise, parking problems, and loss of neighborhood stability. Meanwhile, the people creating those problems appear to receive access and accommodation that ordinary residents and business owners do not enjoy.

City rules should apply equally to everyone. Personal friendships and political connections should never determine who receives protection and who is forced to live with the consequences.

Oak Cliff’s longstanding Hispanic-owned businesses are an essential part of our district’s identity, history, and economy.

Yet Chad has shown that he is ready and willing to use city laws to shut down legitimate businesses while making room for redevelopment and accelerating gentrification. Small-business owners who helped build our community should not be treated as obstacles standing in the way of someone else’s development plan.

Government should help responsible local businesses comply, improve, and remain in their communities. It should not selectively use enforcement as a weapon against businesses that lack political connections.

When established businesses are pushed out and replaced by businesses catering to newcomers, Oak Cliff loses more than a storefront. It loses part of its culture.

Oak Cliff was built by generations of working families, immigrants, artists, small-business owners, and neighborhood leaders. Its culture cannot be preserved if the people who created it can no longer afford to live here.

Under Chad’s leadership, aggressive redevelopment has advanced without adequate protection for existing residents, affordable housing, neighborhood-scale development, and culturally important places.

Rising property taxes, rents, housing costs, and redevelopment pressures are forcing families and small businesses to make impossible choices. Communities are being marketed for their character while the people responsible for that character are being priced out.

Development that displaces residents and erases local culture is not progress. It is gentrification—and Chad’s policies have helped accelerate it.

Dallas leaders continue finding money for enormous projects while residents wait for basic city services.

We have billions for a convention center, but not enough for neighborhood pools, libraries, community centers, maintained parks, dependable streets, or other public spaces that support togetherness and growth.

Residents are asked to accept deteriorating infrastructure, inadequate services, higher taxes, and strained city finances while City Hall continues approving costly projects backed by developers and other powerful interests.

A city government that can finance prestige projects but cannot properly serve its neighborhoods has lost sight of whom it is supposed to represent.