Leadership Quote by Laura Miller

"Dallas is a positive, get-it done city" is political shorthand with a Texas twang: boosterism sharpened into a work ethic. Laura Miller isn’t describing a skyline so much as trying to cue a mood. "Positive" flatters the electorate as emotionally mature, allergic to pessimism, and therefore ready to rally around her agenda. "Get-it done" is the real payload: competence as identity, efficiency as civic virtue. It’s a promise without a policy, a résumé line for a metropolis.

The subtext is defensive. Cities rarely insist they’re can-do unless they’ve been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of being something else: bogged down, divided, or defined by problems outsiders love to project onto big Sun Belt places. The phrase works because it pre-emptively reframes criticism as un-Dallas. If you question the plan, you’re not merely disagreeing; you’re disrupting the city’s self-image.

Context matters: Miller served as Dallas mayor in the early 2000s, when downtown redevelopment, public-private partnerships, and fights over infrastructure and services were central to urban politics. "Get it done" nods to that municipal reality: potholes, policing, permitting, development deals, the unglamorous machinery voters feel but don’t see. It’s also a subtle positioning against ideological theatrics. Don’t ask what team you’re on; ask what you built, fixed, delivered.

As rhetoric, it’s pure civic brand management: a simple mantra that turns governance into attitude, and attitude into mandate.