The City Council yesterday denied the request by a group of Little Forest Hills residents for a conservation district. We’ve explored the issue at length here at the Advocate and Back Talk.
Judging by many of the comments here on the Dallas Morning News story, a lot of folks are uninformed about how involved and ultimately convoluted this whole thing became — I feel a lot of compassion for all the well-intentioned people who dedicated years of their lives to obtaining this conservation district. And some of the comments —one appears to be from Anna Clark, who we wrote about recently — give a glimpse into the rationale of the opposition.
I think the Little Forest Hills conservation committee was mislead from the beginning, simply because the City didn’t really know how to handle such a thing when this all started started years ago. Over a period of time things just got more confused and the people become more and more frustrated. Once the City learned how to more efficiently deal with neighborhood overlays and such, the people of LFH didn’t want to start over — they’d already invested too much time on this Conservation District path, so they forged ahead, but ultimately to no avail.
You can’t blame Sheffie Kadane for this one — it all started before he was in office. He just wound up with the responsibility of making the ultimate decision — and what ever he decided, he was going to anger a whole lot of people.
Judging by what many other old neighborhoods have successfully done, the Little Forest Hills conservation committee’s best bet is likely to go back to the drawing board and seek a Neighborhood Stabilization Overlay rather than a Conservation District — if anyone there has the energy or the fight left to do so.
