Dallas County Commissioner Mayfield talks budget problems at Cedar Hill town hall

by Brian Allen of Best Southwest Citizen

From the federal government to the local level, everyone seems to be dealing with budget woes, and Dallas County is no different. At District 4 County Commissioner Ken Mayfield’s town hall meeting in Cedar Hill Friday night, he talked about how officials are dealing with a $65 million shortfall. And he warned that things aren’t poised for a quick turnaround.

“Heaven help us, I don’t know what the shortfall’s going to be next year, but it’s going to be worse,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield said the commissioners asked each county department to find ways to trim 10 percent of their budget, while also looking for ways to increase revenue. If a department found a way to make up the 10 percent it added revenues, it didn’t have to make the cuts. And commissioners said if a department absolutely couldn’t make any cuts, they would sit down and try to see what could be done.

Perhaps the most high profile budget protester has been Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. Watkins said further cuts to his department would endanger public safety and that he actually needed 10 percent more money. He offered to withdraw his request for more money and keep the same budget as last year. Commissioners didn’t take that offer.

Watkins, a DeSoto resident, is doing his own slate of town hall meetings to take his message to Dallas County residents. The fight between Watkins and the court has gotten so bad he and Commissioner John Wiley Price aren’t speaking to one another.

Mayfield said Watkins will have to deal with the budget cuts just as every other department head has.

“He is going to participate, along with everybody else,” Mayfield said. “And I can assure you there will not be a reduction in public safety for individuals in Dallas County.”

The commissioner also talked about the status of Parkland Hospital and said homeowners’ property taxes for that facility will go up by two cents. Parkland is building a new facility and Mayfield said as a whole, the hospital is in better shape than it has ever been.

Hospitals came up again as Mayfield took questions. One of the queries was whether the county has any plans to put a Parkland clinic in the South Dallas County area. The commissioner said Parkland officials had discussed the old site of Medical Center at Lancaster, but a close-up inspection determined the building unusable. There has been no further progress on a Parkland location in the Best Southwest or South Dallas County area.

Staying on the subject of medicine, one of the big talking points in this sequence of meetings is a prescription drug program the county has worked out.

Once the program is going, county residents will be able to print out a prescription drug card that can get them 20-25 percent discounts on prescriptions and lab work.

Mayfield will hold a town hall meeting in Duncanville City Council Chambers Sept. 21 at 7 p.m.