Dallas Could Curb Residents’ Ability to Delay Rezoning Hearings

The Dallas City Council is going to consider eliminating a mechanism residents currently have to automatically delay rezoning cases.

In Dallas, any rezoning request triggers mandatory public notification of property owners within a range of 200 feet of the project to ensure community awareness and participation in the development process. That notification comes in the form of mailouts by the city and publication of the notice in a newspaper of record at least 10 days before each public hearing of the rezoning request.

However, the development code allows for a stakeholder (the developer or a property owner in the notification area) to pay a $150 fee and send a letter of request to the city for a second round of notifications. That second round is currently automatically granted and effectively pushes the hearing date.

According to city staff, this provision in the development code has led to some issues they would prefer to do without.

“This often leads to extended timeframes for zoning cases and confusion within the broader community, which can be particularly impactful on large-area zoning cases where months of community meetings have taken place and expectations for a proposed timeline have been established,” wrote Assistant City Manager Robin Bentley in a memo.

He went on to point out that taxpayers end up footing the bill for the difference between the $150 fee and the second round of mailers, which he claimed cost at least $1.03 each.

“In addition to concerns about timing and cost, the current process lacks transparency, as postponement requests are granted administratively without any public discussion or vote,” Bentley wrote. “This has meant that a request from a single property owner within the notification boundary can result in a deferral, regardless of the scope of engagement conducted beforehand or whether the [City Plan Commission] or the City Council would have supported the request.”

Staff proposed that rather than being automatic, a second round of notifications should be up to officials on the CPC or the Dallas City Council, who could decide on the merits of a request for a second round of notifications during their first public hearing. This proposal was passed unanimously by the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee and by a majority of the City Plan Commission and will be considered by council members on Wednesday.

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Curiously, the final push to eliminate the provision is happening in the middle of a series of public engagement meetings on zoning reform.

The provision’s elimination would mark another blow against neighborhood activists who have mobilized against particular developments and the city’s pursuit of housing density through ForwardDallas 2.0 and parking reform. Critics of the policy orientation have claimed officials have been running roughshod over neighborhood opposition in a lot of cases, favoring developers’ rezoning requests over the concerns of project opponents.

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“Forward Dallas is certainly a problem but the more immediate issue is the vote on Wednesday that will severely limit our ability to object, delay, and obstruct, which, let’s be honest, is one of the only significant powers we still have as community,” wrote one resident on social media.

Obstruction is indeed a tool residents have considering how much money it can cost a developer for their project to be delayed (carrying costs, etc). Interestingly enough, only 25 projects since 2021 have been delayed due to someone paying the $150 fee, according to Scott Goldstein’s Meetings of Interest newsletter.

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This statistic reportedly led City Plan Commissioner Melissa Kingston (District 14) to state, “We hear hundreds of zoning cases a year, and if we’re talking about a handful of those being postponed, then I don’t see a reason why the public can’t pay a fee in order to do that.”

Perhaps more importantly, Senate Bill 840 became law on Monday. Starting in September, developers can build multifamily housing and residential-heavy mixed-use projects on most any land zoned for commercial use without securing rezoning approval.