Meetings of Interest: Zoned In 📢

Good evening:

At Dallas City Hall, it is not uncommon for major policy matters to wind their way through the system for months or even years.

So when a City Council vote to undo a nearly 40-year-old section of the Dallas Development Code was set with five days’ notice and no advance briefings, it was bound to raise some eyebrows, including two of my own.

Back in June, I wrote a smidge skeptically about a City staff recommendation to abolish a mechanism neighborhood advocates sometimes use to slow down potentially controversial zoning cases (“Zoned Out”).

Under Section 51A-4.701(e), anyone living within a few hundred feet of the property to be rezoned can pay a $150 fee to City Hall and submit a formal letter of request for a delay. The automatic delay must be for at least four weeks, unless the requesting party asks for the case to be heard sooner. The delays can happen once at City Plan Commission and once at City Council.

Out of 1,415 individual zoning cases between 2019 and 2025, City staff reported the paid postponements happened a mere 23 times. Still, City staff and a majority of the City Plan Commission argued the rule lacked transparency and could lead to burdensome costs because it also triggered an additional round of mailings to notify property owners and an additional newspaper ad.

At the June 25 public hearing on the matter, one resident spoke in favor of the proposal and no one showed up to speak against it.

City Council member Cara Mendelsohn took issue with any notion that residents knew anything about it at that time — “unless they get Scott Goldstein’s newsletter,” she said.

(Side note: I initially received this remark as a desperately needed ego boost. However, seeing as virtually no one showed up to that hearing, I am now exploring strategies to increase newsletter readership.)

The ensuing six weeks proved, ironically, exactly why delays can be so powerful. Many more residents learned of the proposal and mobilized against it, by email, on social media, and in person.

On Wednesday, opponents showed up to speak in force and City Council members listened to their cries to leave the tool alone. Council members voted 14-0 against the change.

📖 Table of Contents

• 📰 Highlights From Last Week's Meetings

• 📝 Memos of Interest

• 🤝 Meetings of Interest: August 18 - 22

  • Wednesday, August 20

    • Dallas City Council Briefing & Budget Workshop

    • Landmark Commission Designation Committee

  • Thursday, August 21

    • Dallas City Plan Commission

    • Dallas Park & Recreation Board

📰 Highlights From Last Week’s Meetings of Interest

• Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) may avoid some of the most controversial proposed service changes, including cuts to paratransit, KERA News reports. Cuts are necessary because of a Board-approved General Mobility Program that directs 5% of annual sales tax revenues back to some service area cities.

• On Wednesday, August 13, Dallas City Council members:

  • Approved Items 9 - 23 to set the annual required public hearings at the August 27 City Council meeting regarding the 2026 service plans for all Dallas Public Improvement Districts (PIDs), including the Downtown PID managed by Downtown Dallas, Inc. (DDI) for more than 30 years. Property owners within PID areas agree by petition to pay an assessment rate on their properties for enhanced services, including security, cleanliness, and homeless outreach in the case of Downtown’s PID.

  • Approved Item 44 to allow a 90-day delay for implementation of a proposed Oncor rate hike that would increase the average residential bill using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity by $84 per year. City officials said via memo to City Council members that they need the additional time “to thoroughly investigate the request and make recommendations to the City Council on appropriate action,” including challenging the hike.

  • Approved Item 58, a contract up to $105,000 for security consultant services for the Park & Recreation Department. Guidepost Solutions, LLC, “will evaluate current safety programs and security measures, will conduct threat and vulnerability assessments, and will provide extensive recommendations for improvements to both the safety and security of the Dallas Park System.”

  • Deferred to September 10 Item 75, a host of edits to and repeals of a long list of ordinances that City staffers say are outdated, unenforceable, or redundant (“Omnibusted”). The delay was expected so City Council members can discuss the proposals further at a briefing meeting this week.

  • Approved Item 77, a $4 million budget transfer of funds to support the Park Department’s management takeover of Fair Park from nonprofit Fair Park First. The City notified Fair Park First earlier this year that its management contract was being terminated.

  • Denied the code change outlined in my newsletter intro after holding a Public Hearing to receive input.

📝 Memos of Interest

• Under the City’s 10-year-old living wage policy, all general services contractors (e.g. landscaping, janitorial, and administrative services) must be paid at least $23.06 per hour beginning October 1, according to this memo. That minimum rate has more than doubled since the policy was implemented by a 14-1 City Council vote in 2015 (then-City Council Member Jennifer Staubach Gates was the lone vote against the policy, warning it was irresponsible to set government policy without a concrete idea of the cost, The Dallas Morning News reported at the time). Meanwhile, the proposed minimum wage for City employees for next fiscal year is $21.50 per hour.

• City officials are holding a series of community input meetings about the Trump White House directive that forced Dallas, Fort Worth, and other cities across the country to halt all diversity, equity, and inclusion or risk losing hundreds of millions in federal dollars. Read the memo, which includes the meeting schedule.

• This FIFA World Cup 2026 update memo includes details on upcoming ticket sales, the fan festival at Fair Park, the International Broadcast Center at Downtown’s convention center, and volunteer opportunities.

• There are a couple updates to the budget town hall schedule published a few weeks ago. Check out the updated schedule here.

• The City is folding the Dallas City Marshal’s Office back under Municipal Courts & Detention Services, one of the latest of many org chart consolidations since City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert took over last year.

• Here’s the complete City Manager memo packet for Friday, August 15, 2025.

🤝 Meetings of Interest: August 18 - 22

Wednesday, August 20

Dallas City Council Briefing & Budget Workshop, 9 a.m., Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

• Imagine a Dallas with a simplified and user-friendly zoning process. That could be the Dallas of our future, perhaps as soon as winter 2026, according to this briefing. Read the full Development Code Diagnostic Report here.

• Budget briefings on transportation (not yet posted) and parks are also on this agenda. Former Park Board president Robert Abtahi writes in today’s Dallas Morning News of his support for the plan to close legacy community pools that “are no longer serving the public interest.”

Landmark Commission Designation Committee, 5:45 p.m., Wilson House, 2922 Swiss Avenue, Dallas, TX

• If the beloved Belmont Motor Hotel is to come to life once more, it must first make its way through this committee. Stop by and you might even get to hang with Mary McDermott Cook or Dallas Morning News editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky, who writes of the latest turns in the West Dallas hotel’s journey.

Thursday, August 21

Dallas City Plan Commission, 10 a.m. Briefing, 12:30 p.m. Public Hearing, Council Chambers, 6th Floor, Dallas City Hall

Dallas Park & Recreation Board, 10 a.m., 6FN Conference Room, Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla St.

• The Park Board will be briefed on the White Rock Lake water activities plan, which was in the news last week. I represent District 10 on this board.

🗣️ Quote of Interest

Did I miss anything? Do you have any questions? Just want to talk about meetings and memos and other fun stuff? Hit me up.