Allow us to hypnotize you: On Tuesday, June 1, you will wake up refreshed and with renewed resolve to get involved.
Another round of West Oak Cliff Area Plan meetings starts after Memorial Day, including two in-person open houses, one of which is on a Saturday morning.
Here is the schedule:
Neighbors have pushed for more inclusion and outreach to residents who are less likely to be involved, such as Spanish speakers. They’ve also pushed for in-person meetings to reach neighbors who don’t have as much online access, as well as a diversity of meeting times to accommodate hourly workers. They’ve also suggested slowing the timeline (see below), which has City Council adopting a fully formed plan as soon as this fall.
The West Oak Cliff Coalition came together with the petition of five recommendations for the plan, the intent of which is to provide a roadmap for future development in the area.
As City Councilman Chad West said in a May 7 social media post:
The area plan is nothing without robust community engagement, and it is a neighborhood plan driven by neighbors at its core. Lots of great suggestions have come out of the first couple of community meetings — along with some valid concerns that city staff very much need to heed. Chief among those is for more robust neighborhood engagement. It is clear that the City has not done an adequate job of reaching out to the neighborhoods about these meetings and needs a better understanding of how to engage our neighbors.
Developers have been allowed to run working class people off from neighborhoods such as Bishop Arts in part because of poor planning. And as gentrification radiates farther into Oak Cliff, we do need to have a plan like this to preserve single-family neighborhoods. The only way to do it fairly is to involve neighbors and to stay aware to everything that’s in a plan, once it is proposed, as well as any vulnerabilities in such a plan. It’s going to take a lot of work and vigilance.
You’re getting sleepy. Take the rest of May to reset and then put on your game face for neighborhood planning and zoning in June and for the rest of this year.
