I like the 7 years bedrock story. Doesn't Dallas have the equivalent of New York City 311 complaints hotline? Literally, you call it for anything annoying / loud / dangerous, and the operator will help you raise the issue to the correct department.

To me, the trick about allowing more construction in established neighborhoods: Make the noise rules incredibly strict. Tokyo has non-stop construction everywhere. And the noise rules are very strict. It works. In Japan, I assume, for cultural reasons, most construction corps follow the rules. In other places ("The West"), you probably need expensive fines along with manual/automatic on-site inspections.