Photography by Gabe Cano.
Libraries, city payrolls, municipal courts and 911 dispatches: these are just some of the city services impacted by a May ransomware attack that has cost the city of Dallas at least $8.5 million in the months since.
And now, add Conservation District applications to the list.
According to South Winnetka Heights resident Michael Evans, neighbors are growing nervous as the draft for a Conservation District that will preserve the aesthetic similarities of roughly 95 homes has been delayed due to the ransomware attack.
“We all kind of feel like man, if this would have just been on track, it would have been lining up at the exact same time where we can protect our neighborhood,” Evans said.
Neighbors have been inquiring about Conservation District status since 2019, and became eligible in 2020. Over the course of 10 meetings in seven months with the City of Dallas Planning and Urban Design team, residents discussed parameters of everything from paint colors to parking density to roof form.
According to Trevor Brown from the City of Dallas Planning and Urban Design office, the ransomware attack, staff vacancies and simultaneous work on the Lakewood Conservation District impacted the anticipated timelines of the Conservation District draft.
“The network outage disrupted server access for a month. While we found ways to operate and keep things moving, the interruption created a backlog of plan reviews for Conservation Districts which we were clearing for several weeks after server access was restored,” Brown said.
Evans said he originally expected to have a draft of the ordinance by late summer, with votes from the City Plan Commission and City Council soon following.
The anticipated draft has now been pushed to the first quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. If no further delays present themselves, the department anticipates the ordinance’s ratification sometime in early 2024.
In that time, neighbors worry homes that don’t fit with the aesthetic cohesion of the neighborhood may be able to slip in before the ordinance is made official.
Evans said three homes at the front of the neighborhood are currently going through probate, and conversations with the anticipated owner of the “large chunk” of properties has seemed hesitant to comply with the planned regulations outlined in the Conservation District.
“You’ve got to think we’ve been working on this thing for so long. And then for this large chunk of the neighborhood to possibly get developed in a way that’s in a complete opposite way of what we’re trying to do and trying to save, it’s really concerning to a lot of the neighbors,” Evans said. “They’re kind of panicking, because we probably won’t see this much development in our neighborhood in a while.”
Developments in the South Winnetka Heights neighborhood will not have to conform to the regulations laid out in the Conservation District ordinance if they pre-date the ordinance. Evans said he has heard the probate case for the three properties in the neighborhood is expected to end in September, and the new owner may be able to access permits and begin building before the draft is finally approved.
Once approved, any property that has features that do not align with the ordinance will be allowed to remain, but any future permits or renovations will be held to the Conservation District standards.
Evans said neighbors are scrambling to find ways to try and help hurry the drafting process along, but so far, answers and solutions have been few and far between.
“There are some things we can’t control. Trevor Brown had told us before we even had our last meeting that if anything happened between now and when we go to the final stuff, we don’t have any control over it,” Evans said. “We don’t have any recourse in that. So like I said, a lot of people are panicking and just kind of feel like we did all this stuff, and then we’re not going to be able to use it to protect the neighborhood.”
