Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson says city will set up COVID vaccine registration sites

Revised to reflect an announcement from the mayor about vaccine registration hubs.

Hours after South Dallas activists urged elected officials to stop bickering with one another and get the most at-risk residents registered for COVID-19 vaccines, Mayor Eric Johnson on Thursday announced a plan to set up sites where people can sign up for the shots.

The specific locations were still being worked out Thursday night.

The announcement came after six City Council members and Johnson sent dueling memos to City Manager T.C. Broadnax on Wednesday over whether to use city resources to set up spots where eligible residents without computers or internet access could register online to get vaccinations at Fair Park in South Dallas.

Two memos, one signed by council members Adam Medrano, Chad West, Jaime Resendez, Omar Narvaez and Adam Bazaldua and another signed by council member Paula Blackmon, were sent to Broadnax asking for registration hubs to open this week in their districts.

The mayor, however, demanded that their request be disregarded and that data — “not politics” — be used to pick sites for registration hubs.

Residents at the Fair Park vaccination megasite on Thursday said sites dedicated to addressing digital disparities were needed immediately.

“Play politics tomorrow,” said Tabitha Wheeler, a small-business owner and community activist. “Today, lives are at stake.”

Bazaldua, whose district includes several neighborhoods around Fair Park and ones that Dallas County officials say should be prioritized, stood with activists Thursday. They said it was clear that Black and Latino communities that have been underrepresented at the Fair Park site need more vaccine education and chances to register.

Since the Fair Park site — the city’s largest vaccination hub — opened on Jan. 11, about 17,000 doses had been given through Thursday morning. The site’s first week saw mixed messaging from public officials about who could receive vaccine doses there. Though it was set up in the southern part of the city to ensure that heavily populated Black and Latino neighborhoods were receiving the shots, most of the initial vaccine recipients were white Dallas residents.

The two memos from council members to Broadnax requested city staff to help set up registration sites in council districts. City workers would be able to provide laptops for people to register online and give out information about the vaccine. The memos said registration stations embedded in communities are needed to overcome digital disparities, which can be especially acute for older Blacks and Latinos.

“It is evident that the county needs the city’s help reaching out to our hardest-to-reach neighbors,” one of the memos said.

But the mayor told Broadnax to ignore his elected colleagues’ requests. He asked Broadnax to send a city outreach and vaccine registration plan to his office, saying that he planned to make decisions on the city’s response after talking to Emergency Management Director Rocky Vaz.

“Individual city council members have no authority under the law or under the city charter to dictate such actions in a state of emergency, and their request should have been addressed to my office,” Johnson wrote Wednesday. “I trust that you will make this clear going forward.”

Vaz said the city intended to announce how it would proceed on Friday.

“We are looking at data on where it would be most helpful if we move forward on this,” Vaz said.

Council member Casey Thomas said his elected colleagues were asked Thursday to recommend places in each of their districts that could serve as areas where people without access to WiFi could sign up for vaccines.

Thomas, who represents southwest Dallas and is chair of the city’s COVID-19 recovery and assistance committee, said all council members had expressed interest in setting up vaccine registration hubs. He said he wasn’t sure Thursday afternoon how many would ultimately be set up and where.

“Whatever individual differences that exist have to be worked out,” he said. “We all are aggressively working to make sure that our constituents and the residents in the city of Dallas who would like to receive the vaccine can do so.”

Gea Lopez, a barbershop owner and community organizer in Oak Cliff, was part of a group that included council member West that handed out fliers Sunday at the Bargin City Bazaar flea market, urging people to register to get the vaccine.

The area, which has a concentration of Latino residents, needs vaccine information in Spanish. Lopez also wants to make sure they know they can get inoculated without being asked about their legal status.

“There are people in our communities, especially the elderly, who don’t have computers, aren’t tech- or social media-savvy and don’t watch TV, so all of this is still new,” Lopez said. “It’s clear that we have to do old-school, grassroots promotion just to let people know vaccines are available and get them signed up.”

Blackmon, who represents East Dallas and the White Rock Lake area, said there’s ample evidence that the message to sign up for vaccines isn’t reaching everyone.

“We are just trying to get people in line for vaccines and make sure they’re not left behind,” she said.

Calvin D. Johnson, a community activist who ran against Bazaldua for a council seat two years ago, said South Dallas residents don’t want to be in the middle of the political bickering.

“That’s not our problem,” he said. “Our problem is people getting COVID here, getting sick, potentially dying and affecting their family members.”