Allen City Council
If you have been keeping up with my other articles, then you will know that I am inquisitive about various fields of science and medicine. What you may not know is that I am equally as intrigued about law and policy. One policy I wanted talk about is DART, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and how it related to the City Council of Allen. DART has many benefits, but Allen is reluctant to join due to budget limitations. To understand why Allen won’t join DART, you must first understand Allen’s processes. Allen is run by a mayor and six council members that serve 3 year terms. They focus on approving annual budgets, setting policies, and establishing municipal law. The City Council works with a city manager, working under a city charter, who handles daily operations.
Revenue for Transportation
The main source of revenue for the city is through property taxes. Approximately 7% of the citizens property value and purchases go into local taxes. These taxes help the city officials function and allows expansion, such as new parks, if the city charter allows. One interesting aspect of the Collin County metroplex is the DART transit system.
DART is a transportation railroad system incorporated in few Texas cities, such as Dallas, but is highly cost inefficient. Addison Texas has been using 1% of all profits in order to accumulate enough money to join DART and build a transit, but after 20 years and accumulating close to 20 million dollars, they still do not have enough profits to start construction, and those revenues were pulled from other sources, such as park creations.
Allen’s current transportation system is very limited, but has no interest in joining DART in the near future due to the lack of funds, and it also has no intentions of adding another high school due to the fact that the city charter only has enough space for one.