The stars, the sun, and the moon are aligned. Look quickly, because you may never see it again. Dallas now has the strongest and most effective City Council in two decades. How can anyone say anything good about a group whose members have been accused of self-dealing (by the FBI), gangsterism (by a legislative special committee), and ward-heeling (by me)? The answer is, it’s not easy. But let’s look at the facts.
In 2003, newly elected councilman Gary Griffith somehow convinced his colleagues to agree on their five major priorities for the city. Looking back, I can say that the early, hard-won consensus was the beginning of a turnaround in how City Hall operated. Over the next three years, the council began to apply the priority tool with more and more discipline, until this year City Manager Mary Suhm could reorganize the city’s $2 billion budget so that every action item fit within one of the council’s priorities. If it didn’t fit, it wasn’t included. Next came the bond issue proposal, up for vote in November. Again, Suhm organized it by priority, and again the council signed off on it without a hitch.
But the real test, to my mind, came with the comprehensive plan proposal in June.
Neighborhood activists were aghast that the city would even consider tampering with the bloodily won accord of 20 years ago that gave neighborhood groups control over growth (they wanted none), development (only according to their measurements), and zoning (do not touch). City planners not only tampered with it; they drove a bulldozer right through it.
The neighborhood activists screamed and cried and bullied the City Plan Commission into gutting the plan. Activists are loud, they are confrontational, and they know how to turn out votes. Those tactics are why many parts of our city are stagnant and in decay. The comprehensive plan was the planners’ counterattack—and the City Council backed them up.
Let me explain why their stand was important. When I left Dallas for New York in 1982, Oak Lawn was a cool, if slightly moldy, little neighborhood. Folks were determined to keep it that way, and I was all for it. In New York and in other cities, I got the chance to see what happened when gays and young people moved into older parts of cities and refurbished them. When I returned to Dallas 14 years later, I expected Oak Lawn to be a thriving, funky, really cool neighborhood. Instead it was mostly a dump.
In the intervening years, the preservationists and activists had gotten it named a planned development district, then imposed regulations so strict that the neighborhood ossified. With all the red tape, nobody was willing to invest in it. Many affluent gays decamped for Oak Cliff, and young people opted for hipper Uptown. Ten years later, because of building restrictions that allow nothing else, Oak Lawn is turning into a condo-ized version of Preston Hollow.
The lesson of Oak Lawn is that if you want a neighborhood to be funky and cool, don’t put a committee with a tape measure and a plot map in charge of it. For years city councils—elected in single-member districts from those very neighborhoods—regularly acquiesced to the busybodies as our neighborhoods slowly died. By standing behind their own staff, this City Council demonstrated that rarest of all qualities: political courage.
This is a City Council determined to shape the city’s future. That’s the kind of leadership so many of us have argued for. We ought to celebrate it while we’ve got it.
