Melissa Kingston on ForwardDallas Land Use Plan: ‘We’re Just Pissing Everybody Off, and For What?’ 

Dallas plan commissioners spent four hours last week hearing resident commentary and discussing amendments to the city’s controversial ForwardDallas land use plan, but there were several meaningful conversations that weren’t reported in the local media. 

One such discussion was District 14 Commissioner Melissa Kingston’s support of updating the plan’s language to reflect the wishes of neighborhood residents who oppose greater density. 

Within minutes of Kingston’s comments at the July 11 meeting, spectators took to social media to characterize her comments as a “flip flop.” There on Marilla Street, another plan commissioner who has supported gentle density flat-out said the process was being politicized. 

Plan Commissioners Push Back in Lively ForwardDallas Debate, Another Hearing Set For July 25

It’s not unusual for Dallas’ appointed volunteers on the City Plan Commission to run for Dallas City Council, and with an election around the corner and a polarizing land use plan at the forefront of many voters’ minds, some are speculating that CPC members are using the process to launch them into a paid position at the city hall horseshoe. 

Dallas City Council members make about $60,000 per year, and a charter amendment has been floated to more than double that amount. 

Here’s What Happened

South Dallas’ District 4 Commissioner Tom Forsyth made a motion to allow single-family detached homes as the only primary use in the Community Residential and Small Town Residential “placetypes,” meaning duplexes, triplexes, and “everything else” would be secondary uses. 

Kingston helped her colleague craft the wording for the motion and supported it, although it failed to get enough votes to move forward. 

“If we can have a statement in the plan that states that, and if we can get agreement to this, I really do believe that half of the folks who spoke tonight would begin to drop their opposition to this plan,” Forsyth said. 

Later in the discussion, Kingston suggested that the opposition is a lot closer to a compromise than “the language that we’ve been batting around suggests.” 

“It’s become clear to me over the last six months that the city is divided,” Kingston said. “You can’t have good policy and bad politics … As a lawyer, I can make any of this work in a zoning case.

“I know, as someone who’s been doing land use for 20 years, this plan is going to go on a shelf and people are going to cherry-pick it and stick it however they want to fit whatever case they want anyway.”

Kingston went on to say that the CPC is “needlessly creating this divide and this controversy” that’s making it harder on everyone involved. 

“For what?” she said. “We’ve already said in Community Residential that when development of different housing types is proposed, location is an important consideration.” 

The single-family neighborhood residents want some comfort that their communities won’t be “mowed down” with multiplexes, the commissioner added. 

“Truthfully, when those cases come down here, we look long and hard before even putting a duplex [near a neighborhood],” she said. “We’re not going to put an eightplex in the middle of a single-family neighborhood … So what are we fighting about? We’re just pissing everybody off, and for what?” 

Chernock’s Rebuttal 

Commissioner Christian Chernock, who represents District 1 in Oak Cliff, implied that Kingston had changed her position. Kingston, Chernock, and Plan Commissioners Darrell Herbert and Tipton Housewright penned a March 4 opinion column in the Dallas Morning News that says, among other things, “We need more owner-occupied multifamily housing.” 

“And for people who want single-family housing types, we need to develop more shared-access communities, cottage court communities, and smaller lot developments. We cannot continue to mandate that every single-family home built in our city have a minimum lot size of 7,500 square feet (or larger). That is not to say that we must do away with our existing single-family communities, but mandating that all future single-family communities continue to look like the communities of the past is not sustainable.”

Christian Chernock, Darrell Herbert, Tipton Housewright, and Melissa Kingston (March 4, Dallas Morning News)

Chernock suggested that Kingston previously used the phrase, “For what?” in the context that the CPC is wasting time debating the plan if it’s not going to move the needle. 

“Those comments fly in the face of two other times you spoke so eloquently for the complete opposite perspective,” Chernock said. “It’s a bit confusing to have to hear that and digest that when you’ve spoken so eloquently before, completely opposite. This doesn’t have to be political. It only becomes political when you make it political. We’re here to advocate for what we believe is going to be the best practices for land use. Let the politics play at the next level. That’s not our job.” 

Kingston and Chernock did not respond to CandysDirt.com’s requests for comment on this story.