Featured Citizen Action

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  • Dear Mayor Eric Johnson, City Council and City Staff,

    I am writing to urge you to VOTE YES on allowing city staff to hire an unbiased consultant to evaluate 2600 Singleton Ave and 7910 South Central Expressway. For decades, the residents of West Dallas and Joppa—two of Dallas’s historic Black and Latino neighborhoods—have lived in the shadow of industrial pollution. The fight to remove both of these facilities began more than a half a decade ago and finally will be discussed by the City Council. This process needs to be treated fairly by Council and staff.

    GAF and TAMKO have been nonconforming uses for over 40 years, that means the City of Dallas already decided in the 80s that these facilities were not in the long term vision of the West Dallas and Joppa communities during the 1987 code update. Currently, the amortization of both GAF and TAMKO follow the recommendations laid out in ForwardDallas, the City of Dallas’s CECAP, Racial Equity Plan, the Trinity River Corridor Plan, and the 1999 West Dallas Land Use Plan. This isn’t a new issue. These facilities became nonconforming in 1987, and their eventual closure has been anticipated for decades. Now is the time to finish the process of separating heavy industry from residential communities.

    As reported by KERA and the Dallas Morning News, there is currently no formal agreement in place to shut down either plant. The City should proceed with full transparency and acknowledge this reality—there is no binding commitment for these facilities to relocate or close.

    We also implore the City Council to not let the rhetoric of astronomical numbers for amortizing these properties deter this process from moving forward. We know that Joppa and West Dallas residents suffer higher rates of asthma and COPD as compared to the Dallas County Average. People’s health should not be bargained against a "perceived economic benefit” for those who do not live in Joppa or West Dallas. You have the ability to reverse the long history of discrimination and segregation that created this issue.

    Now is the time for action!

    Vote yes to giving staff authority to hire a consultant to evaluate both factories!

    Sincerely,