6 September 18 - 24, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Mayor Paul Voelker, also a former council member, decided not to seek reelection in 2023. Omar felt Voelker had represented Richardson well and didn’t feel the need to run for office. When Voelker chose not to seek reelection in 2023, Omar was more than happy to support “someone I felt would do a good job.” But again, things changed. “That person didn’t win,” Omar says. “I began watching much more closely while also starting to have one-on-one coffees to understand how people felt about our city and their hopes for what the future might look like.” Omar was ready to run in 2025 but wasn’t the only one ready to challenge Dubey. Rich- ardson native and business owner Alan North also filed to run. North had been be- hind the 2012 petition to change the charter to allow for a directly elected mayor. Omar didn’t work directly with North in 2012 to collect signatures for the petition, but says he worked behind the scenes to en- sure that voters could finally elect their mayor. “I was publicly an outspoken advocate for it before the election and was incredibly supportive in every way I could, to inform voters why it was a good thing,” Omar says. “Richardson’s City Council has long been controlled by insider interests that continue to push back against transparency,” North told Community Impact before the 2025 elec- tion. Crime rates are rising, and ticket quotas are illegal. ... Water rates and taxes continue to rise, but residents aren’t seeing results from many city projects or in quality of life.” A novice to governance with no civil track record, North didn’t have near the swell of support as Omar, whom the Rich- ardson Echo called “the right leader for Richardson.” In an April 17 column, the Echo listed Omar’s civic record, professional experience and collaborative style as reasons. It also mentioned the “Tree the Town” initiative and Omar’s lone council vote for a direct election of the mayor in 2012. “This is a clear demonstration that Omar is willing to put citizen rights over politics,” the Echo wrote. Even though the incumbent was indeed a member of the old-guard establishment, Omar didn’t have the same difficulty in 2025 that he did over a decade ago. This time, he won. A New Kind of Future O mar met with about three dozen constituents in the backyard of a cof- fee shop near downtown Richardson for his first official Coffee with the Mayor event. A diverse crowd, young and old, sat at picnic tables and outdoor tables and gath- ered around them this Saturday morning in late June to hear updates and ask questions about their new mayor. Dressed in business casual, Omar strug- gled with the heat despite the shade, but he soldiered through his updates, doing his best to answer constituents’ questions. It was an impressive turnout, especially given the Is- lamophobia currently gripping many Re- publican elected officials. Headlines all year have detailed how multiple state agencies are still investigating the Muslim-planned EPIC City housing development in Collin County, on behalf of Gov. Greg Abbott, for one example. But again, for Omar, 2025 has proven to be unlike years past. “This election, I found things to be con- siderably different [than 2013],” Omar says. “The reception during this campaign was very positive overall. Sure, there was some very isolated push back related to religion, but it wasn’t really a factor in this election.” It also wasn’t a factor for his mostly older white constituents this Saturday morning in June. They listened intently as Omar dis- cussed his concerns for the upcoming bud- get and how the empty commercial buildings could affect it, since the buildings are only worth more in taxes if occupied. Another financial hit to the city was also on the horizon now that small business owners received $125,000 property tax relief, up from $2,500. Abbott traveled to Denton a week before Omar’s first coffee to sign it into law. Mayor Pro Tem Ken Hutchenrider cred- its Omar’s “strong boots-on-the-ground campaign” for securing enough votes to de- feat Dubey. “He went to every corner of Richardson and met with people and inter- acted with different groups and different community members,” Hutchenrider says. Council member Curtis Dorian stresses that the mayor should unite people. Dorian says he wasn’t fond of news outlets making a big deal out of the fact that Omar was the first Muslim mayor in North Texas. He says he is Richardson’s first openly LGBTQ+ council member, but, like Omar, he didn’t make it the focus of his campaign because he feels his lifestyle is normal and just one part of him. “The big issue is you’ve got to be a con- nector and not a divider,” Dorian says Watching Omar connect with his constit- uents is also striking in a time when Pales- tine, his father’s homeland, has been at the center of arguably the globe’s most divisive conflict. Some estimates state that more than 60,000 Palestinians have died in the two years of fighting in Gaza. Some leading health organizations have said that famine has taken hold of the region while the world watches. “I have extended family who live in Gaza that have been impacted in monumental ways, and a great deal of our family in Tulkarm [on the West Bank],” Omar says. “Everyone is affected.” In 2023, Omar and his brother took a trip to the Middle East on the 35th anniversary of their mother’s death. They planned to visit her homeland of Iran, but they “didn’t feel super safe” and decided instead to spend time in Istanbul, a city his mother loved. During the trip, Omar began considering a run for mayor and knew the sacrifices he would have to make if he did so. He talked with his brother about it and came up with the idea of having conversations with resi- dents, which he did with gusto. “Both Mom and Dad were built with a sense of desire to make a difference,” Omar says. “Both of them really shared with us quite often to leave a place better than you find it. For me, it all started there.” Within weeks of returning home, Omar contacted community members from every corner of Richardson with his mayoral goal in mind. Sort of, at least. He wanted to talk with 200 residents. “The question wasn’t ‘would they support me?’” Omar says. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to run just yet. The question was ‘what do they think about things going on in our city?’” This Saturday morning in June was the first of several Coffee with the Mayor events he plans to host at different times and loca- tions across the city, so more constituents can attend. He firmly believes that a mayor should be accessible, with information that residents can digest and “not only know who he is but also what he is doing to help the city.” The onetime outsider is now making things work from the inside for anyone will- ing to join him. “The simple act of sitting with someone new, listening to their thoughts about our city and sharing my vision just creates a last- ing connection,” Omar says. “People want to be heard and they want to understand where you’re coming from. Doing all those coffees helped me understand at a totally different level what residents really wanted from their leaders and for their city.” ▼ CITY HALL PROP U PROBLEM WHEN IT COMES TO POLICE PAY, HIRING, CITY HALL HAS A MESSAGING ISSUES. BY EMMA RUBY O n Sept. 5, one of the nearly 20 mem- orandums issued by the Dallas city manager’s office addressed con- cerns about how police pay raises proposed in the 2025-26 budget compare to the man- dates outlined in Proposition U, the Dallas City Charter amendment that narrowly passed into law in November. It’s one of the city’s most direct acknowl- edgements of the amendment to date, and it epitomizes exactly where City Hall is going wrong on this issue. The amendment ear- marks 50% of the city’s new revenue for po- lice and fire pensions, and calls for additional funds to be spent on higher start- ing salaries for officers and growing the force to at least 4,000 police. (At the end of May, the department sat at a little over 3,200 officers.) When it comes to starting salaries, Prop. U also calls for Dallas to rank in the re- gion’s top five highest-paying police depart- ments. The charter amendment was long and the last item on a very long ballot. On Elec- tion Day, it became clear that many voters didn’t know what they were voting for. Some, as reported by the Dallas Morning News, didn’t realize charter amendments would be on the ballot at all. Others said they were in favor of the “public safety, ac- countability and quality of life” advantages that the organization that pushed the amendment, Dallas HERO, vowed the amendments would bring. Public safety, accountability and quality of life: It’s a message that’s impossible to say no to — and was served up to voters like a package of Skittles at the exact moment you’re craving something sweet. It’s City Hall that’s been left with the toothache. Since the November election, and espe- cially since the start of budget talks, Dallas’ leaders have been playing defense when it comes to the messaging surrounding Prop. U. But in early drafts of the budget, City Man- ager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said city leaders managed to do all that was asked of them in Prop. U, and then some. She proposed Dallas’ starting salary for police be raised 7.7% in the upcoming year — more than what was agreed upon in the city’s meet and confer agreement with the department, and more than enough, the budget claims, to comply with Prop. U. That rubbed Dallas HERO the wrong way. Public safety advocates went to City Hall last Wednesday and accused the council of “gas- lighting” voters by failing to meet the demands of Prop. U. Their main point of frustration is the top-five in the region stipulation. Anyone with access to Google can do their own search of what neighboring municipali- ties pay their officers, and will find, based on the publicly available information, that Dal- las’ new proposed salary would actually put the police department at 12th in the region. That would suggest that the proposed budget is not compliant with Prop. U, as the city has said — at least, not based on what the average Dallasite believes Prop. U says. One would assume that Dallas has a team of lawyers who have read Prop. U backward and forward and know exactly what they need to do to technically comply with the Mike Brooks Dallas HERO won the election-messaging war. Now voters are wondering why what they think they voted for hasn’t happened. Unfair Park from p5
