City Hall Roundup: Parking Reform Takes Shape, Other Highlights
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Dallas officials on the city’s various boards and commissions grappled with some hot button issues this past week, not least of which was parking reform.
Here’s the latest on some of what the full city council will have to deal with before too long:
‘I Think Nobody Wins’
A special called meeting of the City Plan Commission was held to flesh out a “Swiss cheese approach” to parking reform in Dallas.
The question of whether Dallas should abolish parking minimums has elicited considerable input from stakeholders over the last year, which has led to the acknowledgement that a complete elimination of parking minimums was pretty much off the table, as reported by CandysDirt.com.
Commissioners spent several hours on Tuesday considering amendments to the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee’s initial proposal to eliminate parking requirements across the city, essentially adding carve outs for various property uses.
A motion to maintain parking minimums for bars and restaurants but reduce them to one per 200 square feet of covered area, for instance, passed, as did one to eliminate parking minimums for bars and restaurants larger than 2,500 square feet.
Speaking on the bar and restaurant issue specifically, Commissioner Christian Chernock (District 1) said something that could really be broadly applied to the whole process.
“I think what happens most of the time is we end up making a process that’s more complex, and then when we do that, I think nobody wins, because it creates confusion, it creates a backlog in permitting. And then also it just creates opportunities for folks to kind of game the system a little bit,” Chernock said.
Several motions and amendments were acted on, ranging from required on-site customer parking at vehicle service centers to minimum parking requirements for houses of worship.
While tedious and cumbersome, the commission’s piecemeal approach to parking reform may be the only way to appease (however slightly) the residents who find themselves aggrieved by the already existing problem of spillover.
Many supporters of parking minimums think their elimination would only make things worse by enabling builders to trade parking for more profit-generating uses.
Advocates on the other side of the issue, however, claim that parking minimums drive up the cost of housing, pose undue burdens on builders and small businesses, and discourage the use of public transit and other more eco-friendly alternatives to cars.
The next CPC meeting dealing with parking minimums is scheduled for March 20.
Committee Tees Up Pro-DART Resolution for Full Council
On Wednesday, a special called meeting of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee saw the unanimous approval of a resolution in support of fully funding DART.
Several of DART’s 13 member cities have been clamoring to reduce their contributions to the system. Consequently, two bills filed in the Texas Legislature would, if enacted, enable member cities to reduce their contributions by up to 25%.
Council Member Adam Bazaldua (District 7), who does not sit on the committee, attended Wednesday’s meeting and issued a call to action:
“The public needs to understand the implications of what is being proposed and how that’s going to impact the communities that we serve. I would encourage the city manager’s office … to bring in some robust communications and help us disseminate this information out to the public as widespread as possible, because we’re going to need advocacy from the public in addition to the weight behind our bully pulpits as electeds.”
The resolution will be considered by the full Dallas City Council on March 26.
Officials in Rowlett, who had previously been supportive of cutting their city’s contributions, reversed their position after extracting concessions from DART. They rescinded a resolution in support of reducing contributions on Tuesday, according to KERA News.
Park Board Stresses Need for Fee Hike
The Dallas Park & Recreation Board adopted a resolution supporting an increase in parkland dedication fees.
As previously reported by CandysDirt.com, a surprise move by the City Plan Commission amended a proposed ordinance to reduce the park dedication fees that are charged to developers by 50%. Those fees serve as a funding mechanism for the acquisition of land for new parks.
There is currently around $13 million in parkland dedication fees, but fees must be spent in the same parkland zone in which they are collected within 10 years or else the developer gets their money back.
“We’re still at a point where we don’t have enough money within each of the zones to actively go out and acquire a piece of property, so we’re still very much in the position of hoping those fees continue to accrue before the 10 year windows,” staff said.
The board voted in favor of a resolution to support the original language of the proposed parkland dedication fee ordinance devised by staff, which would implement an increase in such fees.
