ACTION REQUESTED: Dirt Skirt Hearing
This zoning hearing affects all of our neighborhoods and we need many e-mails and people present. No one wants to live next door to, or back up to, a structure that is now a full one-story higher than is allowed by our zoning codes.
Wherever your neighborhood borders on multi-family, commercial or planned development district zoning, it will be DIRECTLY affected by the outcome of a Board of Adjustment hearing this Tuesday, August 12th at 1:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber. PLEASE MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ATTEND.
Please send emails and letters asking the Board of Adjustment to:
- rule IN FAVOR of the applicant and to find that the building official erred in his determination that this was a three-story (36 foot) building.
- rule that the "grade level" from which the height of this building should be measured is the grade of the actual ground the building sits upon.
We believe the building official ERRED when he decided to measure the height of the building from an artificial "grade level" consisting of the top of a dirt berm or dirt buttress, mounded up against the corners of the building, rather than from the ground level ("grade level") on which the entire structure all sits.
Recap of action requested:
- Attend Board of Adjustment hearing this Tuesday, August 12th at 1:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber
- Email the Dallas Board of Adjustments
- Continue reading this email for further information and material to explain the issue
The basics:
The Board is hearing an appeal of the definition of height – a unique interpretation of it that allows 10, 12 feet or more in height to be added to a building.
Please review the attached files for more information. One is a flyer about the meeting. The other is a draft of "Dirt Skirts 101" trying to show in pictures how this was done. Click here to read an explanation posted on the Lakewood Now.
BACKGROUND: An appeal has been filed by the resident who had this “Dirt Skirt” (actually more like “Dirt Stilts”) building on Oram built behind his house. He now has a three-story building looming over his rear yard, rather that the two-story height allowed by Dallas Code (or so he thought).
While the head of building inspection who allowed this is now gone, and we have been told by Department of Development Services and Building Permit staff in public meetings that this interpretation of “grade” will no longer be used, the Dallas City Attorney’s office will be testifying at this meeting that this is THE LEGAL INTERPRETATION OF GRADE IN THE CITY OF DALLAS.