You're along with you every day Monday through Friday year afternoon, drying from 2 to 5. Now I'm not speaking for Mayor Eric Johnson. I'm simply speaking for myself. Um, you've got an opportunity beginning this coming Saturday, may 1st the City Council elections. Um, the city of Dallas, Texas, I think deserves better than a few of the City Council members that are currently sitting in those seats. I know. Um I had a horrible interview with Adam Basil Dua. He wouldn't answer a straight question with a straight answer. And he kept telling me. No, I'm not for de funding the police. I'm for reimagining the place. Well, I'm re imagining new City Council members that actually care about you in the city with me. We don't talk to him very often. We should probably talk more. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. Mary, how you doing? I'm doing great, Rick. Thanks for having me on and I'm happy to come on any time Just invite me. I'll be here. All right. Well, you got an open door policy. So any time you've got something to get out to the public, you just let us know. Um, all right. City Council election Saturday. May 1st I know you're supporting a few folks that hopefully will be out of my put this I'm not gonna be politically correct because that's not me. I don't think that some members of this current City Council are putting public safety first. May I ask you if you share that belief I do. I think you're exactly right and I'll just cut right to it. The stakes could not be higher this Saturday. If you live in the city of Dallas, you need to come out and vote on Saturday. You need to vote. For your safety. Eat to vote for your public safety. You have to take this into your own hands, because in many cases we have members of the Dallas City Council who are willing to play games with your safety. They were playing political games last year when we passed the last budget. Chasing national trends and trying to catch the national wave and make names for themselves And they voted in ways that may our city fundamentally less safe. They cut the police overtime budget by 25%. They tried to apply those The money that they cut to a bunch of pet projects, including solar panels. Funding for theater and somebody's district on electric Vehicle Fleet study. I called him out on it. I took to the streets and through the airwaves and shows like yours and thank God the people got, you know to the council and they change the amendment to actually get this still cut the money from the overtime budget, which was horrible, but at least put it towards something that was, you know, connected to public safety Tonto cover their backsides. The problem is Because they cut that overtime budget by 25% were now out of money for overtime. We we've already spent the money and it's march. You know it incriminated know that way through March, Um they spent all the money essentially that we had for overtime. So now going into the summer, you know, through March through April, we were kind of 90% of the budget expended. I expect when we get the number for May that will be out. So now we're gonna have to go find money for overtime and overtime is what we used to offset the fact that we don't have enough officers in this city. So it's just a big mess completely avoidable. It was totally political theater and How we got here, you know, And when I was interviewing Bassel Dua, um which you know, I have been very vocal about. I don't care from making mouse is running against this guy. Vote for Mickey. When? When I was interviewing him. He took Hey, took opposition with me saying we didn't have enough police officers who told you that? Well, the police department. Well, what's the magic number? I mean, Not on Lee Doo Doo. I think not just him, but a few others do. They put public safety last, but it appears that they've gone off in some Crazy direction in a different reality. I'm not exactly sure if they know what they're doing and being obviously facetious, But you would think you know, Dallas, Texas. We're not talking about Topeka, Kansas. Here. It's a major metropolitan area. You would think that the City Council members Uh to a man or a woman would know exactly what's going on with our law enforcement. Right? Well, you would. But here's the sad part. The sad part is, um they are intentionally. Some of these folks are intentionally misleading people now about what their vote was and what they did, and they're not, and they're being helped out frankly, by the mainstream media. The mainstream media is not reporting. Accurately at all. What really happened? They're engaging in some silly debate about is it? Should we call it the funding? Is it really defunding? I don't care what you call it. I know this We had more murders in Dallas this past year that we've had since 1998 You know, when I was not even old enough to rent a car on my own, That's how long ago that's been And we in the middle of that violent crime Spike decided that we were going to whack the police department's overtime budget. And on top of that, Built into the budget, basically at a reduction in force of about 110 officers, because we are losing more officers than we're able to hire, So we budget it, you know, for basically for the department to strength even more. So, at this point, we're down about 500 officers from where we were in 2016, and we're a much bigger city with mortgage going on. So to say they're putting public safety first and that the pokes at the budget is growing. The growth in the budget is contractual obligations that nobody had to make a decisions about when it came to funding the squad cars and the actual market rate pay increases and the things that attract more officers and the overtime budget that we need to offset the fact that we're short officers..