When Dallas Planning and Urban Design Director Julia Ryan announced her departure from the city, speculation swirled that all was not well on Marilla Street.
Ryan's resignation was announced in a memorandum from City Administrator TC Broadnax, in which Dallas City Council members were informed that Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Director David Noguera was also resigning.
The heads of both departments were vocal experts in their fields and at times clashed respectfully with elected city council members and the public.
Both left to pursue better jobs in other states, Ryan as a transportation planner at a consulting firm in Arkansas and Noguera with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Miami.
After that, an opinion column dated October 14th was published. dallas morning news By Dallas Coslam, president of Master Plan, a planning and permitting consulting firm in Texas.
The title of the column is “Dallas' planning department is terrible. Here's a chance to turn things around.”
“City of Dallas asks everyone to wait in line”
Coslam pointed to a backlog of zoning cases and an inefficient process that Ryan himself acknowledged in a 2022 interview with CandysDirt.com.
“In a recent citizen satisfaction survey, the Planning Department ranks second-to-last among city departments,” Coslam wrote. “He found that 41 percent rated the department as poor (the lowest category), compared to just 5 percent who said the department was excellent. Thought it was ok.
“Land use experts may argue that the score is not low enough,” he continued. “The city has a backlog of unresolved cases. Meanwhile, we have a long-range planning group with a large number of employees working primarily on the ForwardDallas plan. If this were a business, management would say the future is now. When city leaders call more Checkers to the front lines, it's as if they've never been to the grocery store. The city of Dallas insists that everyone wait in line.”
He's not wrong that the department faces challenges. Now, with Interim Director Andrea Gil at the helm, all eyes are on planning and urban design to see if the implementation of Forward Dallas' Comprehensive Land Use Plan will get the railroad back on track.
Ryan responds to ministry criticism
In a LinkedIn post in October, Ryan pointed out that the problem with all the criticism is the negative attitudes and unreasonable expectations people have of government officials.
“The public is not talking enough about the harms faced by public sector workers,” Ryan wrote, referring to a Cosram editorial. “This is a good (bad) example of a self-serving article by an author who runs one of his paid rezoning companies in Dallas. Partly because of this toxicity (from developers and residents) It led me to leave the public sector.”
Local governments are facing a talent shortage, with a limited number of high-quality applicants for key positions such as senior planners, Ryan added.
“Then we heard angry residents, business owners, [and] Appeal to politicians on policy issues that are out of our control,” she said.
Mr. Ryan's involvement in the post was limited, except for Dallas civil architect Justin Moeller, who asked the former planning director more about his views. Current city officials and council members did not want to speak on the record about the issue, but they noted that it is difficult for city officials to offer professional opinions and be publicly criticized if they go against policy. several people acknowledged.
It seems no coincidence that Ryan resigned immediately after proposing an unpopular opinion at a June City Council meeting that short-term rentals should be regulated by the city's registration ordinance, noting that the issue was not a land use issue. did. Code compliance issues.
Several city council members suggested at the time that Ryan's opinion was not sought or supported.
Other councilors asked for a formal written recommendation from the Department of Planning and Urban Design at the same meeting after being advised by City Manager TC Broadnax that they might not like the outcome. Ultimately, the City Council chose to treat the issue as a land use issue and ban STRs in residential areas. The city is being sued by the Dallas Short-Term Rental Alliance, and enforcement is expected to begin next month.
Ryan did not mention STR in his LinkedIn post, but alluded to pushback from residents and developers over zoning issues that are beyond the control of city officials.
“For residents, the status quo is what they have accepted, and they will fight (dirty and loudly) against seemingly innocuous ordinance changes, such as how to measure height,” she wrote. “Toxicity is increasing exponentially and spreading like cancer. As a recovering public servant of over 16 years, we need to talk more about how to professionally confront and contain this kind of toxicity. Yes. If we don't, good public servants will flee to the private sector, and what will happen to our cities?”
