Scott Griggs

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Scott Griggs

Prior offices

Dallas City Council District 1

Successor: Chad West

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Elections and appointments

Last election

June 8, 2019

Education

Bachelor's

Texas A&M University

Law

University of Texas

Personal

Profession

Attorney

Contact

Personal website

Scott Griggs was a member of the Dallas City Council in Texas, representing District 1. Griggs assumed office in 2011. Griggs left office on June 17, 2019.

Griggs ran for election for Mayor of Dallas in Texas. Griggs lost in the general runoff election on June 8, 2019.

Griggs was the nonpartisan District 1 representative on the Dallas City Council in Texas from 2011 to 2019.

Biography

Email editor@ballotpedia.org to notify us of updates to this biography.

Griggs holds a B.S. in chemistry from Texas A&M University and a J.D. from the University of Texas. His professional experience includes working as the president of the Fort Worth Avenue Development Group and as an attorney specializing in patent and trademark preparation and prosecution.

Elections

2019

See also: Mayoral election in Dallas, Texas (2019)

General runoff election

General runoff election for Mayor of Dallas

Eric Johnson defeated Scott Griggs in the general runoff election for Mayor of Dallas on June 8, 2019.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Eric Johnson (Nonpartisan)	55.6	41,247
		Scott Griggs (Nonpartisan)	44.4	32,918

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 74,165
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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General election

General election for Mayor of Dallas

The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of Dallas on May 4, 2019.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Eric Johnson (Nonpartisan)	20.3	16,402
✔		Scott Griggs (Nonpartisan)	18.5	14,921
		Lynn McBee (Nonpartisan)	14.0	11,324
		Mike Ablon (Nonpartisan)	13.5	10,878
		Miguel Solis (Nonpartisan)	10.7	8,647
		Regina Montoya (Nonpartisan)	10.4	8,440
		Jason Villalba (Nonpartisan)	6.7	5,444
		Albert Black (Nonpartisan)	5.2	4,210
		Alyson Kennedy (Nonpartisan)	0.6	469
	Submit photo	Steve Smith (Nonpartisan) (Write-in)	0.0	21
	Submit photo	Miguel Patino (Nonpartisan) (Write-in)	0.0	8
		Other/Write-in votes	0.1	107

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source 1 Source 2	Total votes: 80,871
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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2017

See also: Municipal elections in Dallas, Texas (2017)

The city of Dallas, Texas, held elections for all 14 seats of the city council on May 6, 2017. A runoff election, if necessary, was held on June 10, 2017. The filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in this election was February 17, 2017.

Incumbent Scott Griggs defeated Stephen Winn in the general election for District 1 of the Dallas City Council.

Dallas City Council, District 1 General Election, 2017
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Scott Griggs Incumbent	87.24%	2,298
Stephen Winn	12.76%	336
Total Votes		2,634
Source: City of Dallas, "May 2017 Final Election Results," accessed May 8, 2017

2015

See also: Dallas, Texas municipal elections, 2015

The city of Dallas, Texas, held elections for mayor and city council on May 9, 2015. The filing deadline for candidates who wished to run in this election was February 27, 2015. Early voting began on April 27, 2015.

All 14 city council seats were up for election. In District 1, incumbent Scott Griggs ran unopposed.

Dallas City Council District 1, 2015
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Scott Griggs Incumbent	100%	1,843
Total Votes		1,843
Source: Dallas County Elections, "Official election results," accessed July 30, 2015

Campaign themes

2019

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Scott Griggs did not complete Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

The following were found on Griggs' campaign website.

“	Ethics & Transparency Elected officials and staff at the City of Dallas work hard every day to earn the public’s trust. The recent news of the betrayal of this trust is unforgivable and indicative that we must have a plan in place to prevent such corruption. My plan for how we revise ethics, transparency, and accountability in the City of Dallas is a four-part effort to gain trust and to better serve the public. 1. Fix the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Loophole Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects have been a source of much corruption. The recently passed Comprehensive Housing Policy requires that these projects be scored to improve selection, but we need to go a step further. Let’s institute a “no contact period.” When a developer files for a LIHTC project, the developer and City Council are not allowed to have any communication until the LIHTC project is scored by City Staff and presented to the City Council. This will set a high standard for conduct for LIHTC projects. 2. Follow the Money A searchable electronic database should identify campaign contributions, Councilmember conflicts of interest, lobbyist activities, and parties or individuals having a financial interest in a City Council matter. Today, only campaign contributions are searchable but other records are not maintained in a searchable electronic database. Let’s make it easy for the public to follow the money and connect the dots. 3. Who meets Who Both Councilmembers and lobbyists should be required to file reports detailing meetings. We need to know the identities of parties and individuals having a financial interest in a Council matter. These records can be made available electronically to the public as part of a searchable electronic database. 4. Open the Door to Closed Meetings Often, the Dallas City Council meets in closed executive session. There are no recordings of what happens in closed executive session. Let’s increase transparency at City Hall. Under my proposal, all closed executive sessions of the Dallas City Council should be video recorded in entirety. The closed session recordings can then be made available to the public whenever all rationales for closing the session are no longer applicable. When following this plan of ethics, transparency, and accountability, we can hold our city officials and staff to a higher standard, one our city has not seen and completely deserves. Public Safety We have too few police officers and fire fighters. While we’ve added hundreds of thousands of residents, our number of Dallas Police officers has decreased from 3,600 in 2011 to 2,900 today. The collapse of the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System coupled with low pay has decimated our uniform totals. Fewer officers means high priority calls, like Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls, are not being timely answered. Fewer officers means fewer neighborhood patrol officers to build relationships with the community. In 2018, I led the effort to increase police and fire starting pay from $48,000 to $60,000 and provide across-the-board raises. We need to increase the pay further; it’s not enough that we went from the lowest pay in North Texas to average pay in North Texas. We need to have the highest paid first responders in North Texas, and we need to improve health benefits to increase retention and recruitment of the highest quality of officers. As mayor, I will make sure these changes occur. Housing As Mayor, I’ll put the programs, strategies and tools within our Comprehensive Housing Policy into action. When I was elected to the Council in 2011, the City of Dallas did not have a housing policy. As chair of the housing committee for two years from 2015 – 2017, I led the effort to create Dallas’ first Comprehensive Housing Policy with the goals of: Maintaining our existing affordable housing and creating more affordable housing; Offering more choice to residents on where to live; and Overcoming patterns of segregation and poverty through investment. The Comprehensive Housing Policy identifies areas ready for redevelopment, areas to protect from gentrification, and areas of Dallas in need of infrastructure investment. The Comprehensive Housing Policy has programs, tools and strategies for meeting Dallas’ affordable housing needs, which includes the creation of 20,000 units of single- and multi-family housing. A Market Value Analysis (MVA) data driven approach supports the programs, tools and strategies, which benefit renters, single-family homeowners, landlords, and developers. Best practices from across our country incorporated such innovative ideas as utilizing Dallas’ land bank to rebuild neighborhoods, establishing and funding a Housing Trust Fund, protections from source of income discrimination, relocation assistance, first time home buyer assistance, home repair assistance, renter relocation assistance, low income housing placement guidelines, minimum housing standards, and inclusive zoning bonuses, for example. Today, there is no longer a Housing Committee; rather there is a combined, Economic Development and Housing Committee. This has caused a bottleneck at the council committee level on the number of tools, programs and strategies we can implement. As mayor I will implement a new kind of committee structure that will end the bottleneck and allow us to put the tools, programs and strategies to work. Transportation As Mayor, I will implement a City of Dallas transportation policy. For far too long, we lived under the tyranny of DART’s transportation system, where people can’t get to work from point A to point B on time because of the terrible service. We need a transportation policy to set our expectations for the DART board: safety and cleanliness, level of service to get people to work on time, and ridership goals. DART needs to end its sole focus of building the largest light rail system in America and focus on building the best bus system for the City of Dallas. Right now, we are paying $280 million a year to DART — more than half of its budget collected from member cities. And since DART’s creation, the city of Dallas has given DART $5.8 billion dollars. Wages We need to raise the minimum wage for all City employees and contractors to $15/hour. When I was first elected to the Dallas City Council, wages for many positions such as workers at Love Field, sanitation workers, City of Dallas employees, City of Dallas temporary workers, and City of Dallas subcontractors were at or near the federal minimum wage. Through advocacy, your support, and coalition building, we raised thousands of workers to a wage tied to the MIT living wage index. It’s now time for $15/hour. Economic Development On the balance, the City is not performing well when it comes to revitalization and economic development as the majority of the revitalization effort is not self-directed by neighborhoods. The City of Dallas needs to focus on small, neighborhood scale projects and proportional infrastructure spending. Include Small, Neighborhood Scale Projects. In addition to large infrastructure projects, I will continue to encourage and include small infrastructure projects “between the buildings” that benefit people that live and work in a community. Dallas presently has a one-dimensional approach to new infrastructure, which is new infrastructure must follow new development. I support infrastructure-driven redevelopment as well. By way of example, 15 years ago, $2.6M was invested in the Bishop Arts District, which was worth $1.7M at the time. The $2.6M was spent in between the buildings on water improvements, parallel parking, street trees, and wider sidewalks. No money was spent on developer subsidies. Money was only spent on improvements that can be enjoyed by people that live and work in the community. A short 10 years later, in 2013, the same area of land is worth $6.2M, which represents a 13% growth per year. And this remarkable increase in value has continued. Additionally, for some establishments, Dallas now collects more sales tax in one Saturday night than previously in an entire year. The Bishop Arts District was not an accident, but rather a success story waiting to be repeated. During my time on the Dallas City Council, I repeated this success on Jefferson with further improvements planned for Tyler/Polk and Elmwood. This successful strategy can be implemented throughout Dallas from suffering commercial corridors to aging strip shopping centers. Use proportional infrastructure spending to ensure we spend money on small projects. Large infrastructure expenditures should be stepped-down and connected to neighborhood level infrastructure projects, particularly in the Southern Dallas where a focus is stabilizing existing neighborhoods and enhancing existing character. By way of example, the first Calatrava bridge ($182M) was built adjacent to the La Bajada neighborhood. As part of this project, a deck park was built on the decommissioned Continental Bridge ($10M), now the Ronald Kirk Pedestrian Bridge. The residents of La Bajada say that they need a neighborhood park upgraded, an internal street repaired, and a community-center roof rebuilt. Infrastructure spending should be proportional such that when a $182M bridge and $10M deck park are built adjacent to a neighborhood, a small amount of money (e.g., $500K) is reserved for neighborhood level improvements that enhance the existing community and encourage neighborhood buy-in by demonstrating city buy-in of the neighborhood. Property Taxes We should hold the line on local taxes and expand the tax base; end wasteful spending projects that are meant to enhance the postcard of Dallas and focus on projects that will improve the quality of life for the people of Dallas to attract new residents and businesses. We should work to bring opportunities and high-wage jobs and implement the Comprehensive Housing Policy. Examples of eliminating wasteful spending projects include the second Calatrava bridge and the fake white water rapids. Both multi-million dollar projects I opposed. Expensive corporate give ways like the recent $300,000 to ESPN for a football game the day after Christmas need to end. Operationally, the fraud, waste and abuse at VisitDallas needs to stop and we need to use a large portion of the $30 million in annual tax payer money at VisitDallas to improve our city’s arts and culture, rather than as a rental subsidy for holding conventions in the City-owned convention center. Homelessness Housing is the solution to homelessness. I will ensure the funding, governance, and public-private partnerships are present to help individuals experiencing homelessness. We need to ensure funding by continuing our audits of Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA) and the Bridge. A recent audit by the City of Dallas showed we were missing out in millions in federal aid because of a bad data tracking system. On governance, I support the City of Dallas Homeless Commission that comprises Dallas residents including financially disinterested parties. The Homeless Commission should report to the Housing Committee of the Dallas City Council more often and advise the Council on matters of Dallas homeless funding, planning and progress for handling tent cities, and the homeless voucher program, for example. The Homeless Commission should interface and cooperate with regional entities such as Dallas County on comprehensive strategic matters. Lastly, we need to actively look for partnerships with other agencies and non-profits to build on the efforts at the Bridge and other facilities. Education I support public education, and I support Dallas ISD as an independent school district. I will work with DISD to DISD to provide universal pre-K and work with DISD to prevent recapture, which is the approximately $1 billion that ill leave DISD to the state over the next five years. I will not support Home Rule or the closing of our neighborhood schools or the charterization of DISD. I will seek capital improvement partnerships such as the building of parks and libraries, which can be co-owned. An example is the Hampton-Illinois Branch Library.	”
—Scott Griggs

Recent news

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Scott Griggs - Google News

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2019 Elections

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Footnotes

Political offices
Preceded by -	Dallas City Council, District 1 2011-2019	Succeeded by Chad West