Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 3
Survey Says Voters Don’t Want Arts Venue • Fisher Has Second Thoughts on Comeback • Irving to Establish First Homeless Shelter • Coppell Businesses Leave Money on Table
I recently became aware that Substack ranks its newsletters by how many paid subscribers they have. Those rankings are sorted by categories, and the newsletter you’re reading right now is in the News category. Other categories include Sports, Politics, Culture, and [shudder] Crypto.
The first time I checked the News Leaderboard, the Coppell Chronicle was 29th on a list with more than 165 slots. Not bad for a publication focused on one little corner of Dallas County, especially considering that the No. 1 position is occupied by a newsletter about a much larger community: China.
Your favorite weekly email has since slipped into 37th place. I would be tickled if we could crack the top 20. You know what would help?
Survey Says Voters Don’t Want Arts Venue
Coppell ISD’s $321.5 million bond package does not include a new performing arts venue, and some theater parents are dramatically upset about that. However, a survey indicated voters would not support such a project.
On behalf of Coppell ISD, Austin-based Baselice & Associates surveyed 300 people late last year, and the survey language made things plain: “The current auditoriums at Coppell High School and Coppell High School Ninth Grade Center do not meet the program requirements for the campus or district.” Another survey question said, “Coppell ISD does not have a facility with seating for 1,400 people for large fine arts performances, special events, and school assemblies while most of Coppell’s peer districts have such a facility.”
(See “Fine Arts Goals Get Fine Tuned” in the June 15 edition.)
Nonetheless, 59 percent of respondents were against the idea of spending $60 million on a new auditorium after being informed of the facts of the matter. Initially, 69 percent of respondents were against it. Check out the bottom line on this slide.
Baselice’s Matt Gamble explained the difference between that slide’s “initial” and “informed” statistics during the Coppell ISD trustees’ Feb. 6 workshop.
Initial: “We haven’t told the respondents anything about what the bond may include or how it’s gonna benefit the district. It’s just kind of getting their reaction to this ballot language.”
Informed: “We provided just a little bit more information on why they’re being considered, and a lot of times it’s usually in the form of a problem and a solution. So we kind of lay out what the issue is and how this proposition will solve that.”
Although only 48 percent of the respondents said they would support $320 million worth of bonds, 83 percent of them had a positive impression of Coppell ISD while only 12 percent had a negative impression of the district. (The survey’s margin of error was 5.7 percent.) Gamble, who said he’s done about 40 such surveys in the last couple of years, told the Coppell ISD trustees, “This is about the lowest negative I’ve seen in quite a while.”
Gamble also pointed out that various aspects of the bond package enjoyed wide support. For example, 70 percent of respondents said they could get behind new classrooms for career, technical, and STEM courses at Coppell High School, and 64 percent supported new playgrounds at elementary schools. Yet less than 50 percent of the respondents said they would vote for the total package, which will include a renovation of the Ninth Grade Center’s auditorium and the construction of new rehearsal spaces for fine arts programs at CHS and Coppell Middle School North.
“What’s really frustrating for me is something like this, if you have a lot of voters liking the projects that you want to do,” Gamble said. “There’s nothing that you’re looking to do that they don’t like. It’s just the challenge of getting them to actually support the bonds to fund that.”
When Coppell ISD had its last bond election in 2016, only 50.2 percent of voters supported the $249 million package. A mere 22 voters made the difference between approval and rejection. Gamble expects this year’s election to be just as close.
“In our survey, we had a captive audience, and the best we got was a plus-1 support. That’s a little bit harder to replicate in reality and an actual election,” he said. “That tells you communication is going to be very important, but so is voter turnout.”
Coincidentally, Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD also hired Baselice to survey its residents late last year, when 67 percent of the 350 respondents had a positive impression of that district compared to 14 percent who had a negative impression. Initially, 53 percent of respondents said they would support a $670 million bond package. After the respondents became more informed, the level of support rose to 74 percent.
We’ll see if that level of support holds on May 6, when voters in Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD — which includes portions of Coppell and Irving — will be asked to consider a $716.4 million bond package.
As promised, all articles about the bond elections will be outside the paywall, so feel free to share this edition on your social platform of choice.
Fisher Has Second Thoughts on Comeback
Last week was an emotional rollercoaster for people who follow Coppell ISD politics, as Tracy Fisher made a bid to reclaim her former seat on the school board then thought better of it.
Fisher, who was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 2012, had to resign last October due to her candidacy for the State Board of Education. In 1957, the Texas attorney general ruled that trustees of local school districts were not eligible candidates for the state board.
In November, the Board of Trustees appointed Jobby Mathew, the president of the Coppell ISD Education Foundation, to temporarily replace Fisher until the May 6 election. Mathew filed paperwork to run for the Place 7 seat on Jan. 24, the first day of the filing period, and he was the only candidate until Monday, when Fisher threw her hat in the ring at the last minute.
This led to much confusion and angst for people who have voted for Fisher in the past but had already pledged to support Mathew. I’m sure Fisher heard from many such people in the ensuing 72 hours, because she withdrew her candidacy on Friday morning.
“I appreciate the encouragement from educators, parents, and community members to run to finish the term I was elected to serve,” Fisher said in a prepared statement. “Upon further reflection this week, I withdrew my application. At this point, my public school advocacy passion is pulling me in a different direction.”
Speaking of different directions, Friday morning was the second time that Fisher publicly changed her mind in the span of a week. On the evening of March 3, Fisher took to Facebook and Twitter to criticize Board of Trustees President David Caviness for his own social media posts regarding a trip to Austin. Caviness was part of a contingent of Coppell ISD, City of Coppell, and Coppell Chamber of Commerce officials and employees who went to the Capitol on March 2 to meet with legislators. Fisher’s potshots raised a lot of eyebrows because she has a history of sharing photos of herself in Austin doing the very same thing. After a few negative comments on her posts about Caviness, Fisher deleted them.
Although Mathew will be automatically elected as a result of Fisher’s withdrawal, Caviness is facing a challenge from Julie Waters for the Place 5 seat he has held since 2017. Meanwhile, the Place 4 seat held by Neena Biswas since 2020 will go to either Samit Patel, Jonathan Powers, or Ranna Raval.
“I will stay engaged in our community and the upcoming elections,” Fisher said at the end of her withdrawal announcement. “Stay tuned.”
Oh, consider me tuned.
Irving to Establish First Homeless Shelter
Irving officials have been talking about establishing a homeless shelter for months. On Thursday, the City Council officially took what one of their members termed “baby steps” in that direction.
The council’s consent agenda included a resolution authorizing their staff to submit paperwork to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regarding $2.9 million worth of American Rescue Plan funds. That paperwork, which is called an allocation plan, says Irving will allocate the bulk of that money — $2 million — toward a “non-congregant shelter.”
The resolution was approved without debate on Thursday, but the council has been debating it for a while, most recently at their previous meeting on Feb. 23. That’s when Council Member Mark Zeske said to consultant Maureen Milligan, “We’re just kind of taking baby steps, right?”
Milligan deemed that an accurate label: “Your plan is saying, ‘We’re interested in actually receiving these funds, HUD, and we’ll comply with the plan or any amendments to the plan.’ So right now, it’s as specific as HUD requires it to be, but there’s a lot of unknowns.”
Milligan works at the National Development Council, a nonprofit that Irving hired last September to help create the allocation plan. That led to two town hall meetings, a community survey, and a public hearing.
“At the start of our consultations, what we heard pretty consistently was, there are people in Irving who think that homelessness does not exist,” Milligan said. “And I think during the course of this planning process, there has been increasing recognition that homelessness does exist in the city of Irving, and there now is this funding opportunity to address those issues.”
Due to the location of my day job, I patronize restaurants and grocery stores along State Highway 183, and I routinely see homeless people outside those Irving establishments. Council Member Dennis Webb has seen them too.
“As we sit here today, we have hundreds of people who are homeless living in extended-stay hotels in our city — I can take you to the hotels — that will probably be kicked out by Friday,” Webb said. “And they will be living in their cars on the Walmart parking lot, and on my church parking lot, and on other parking lots, because they have no place to go.”
I didn’t see or hear anything during the Feb. 23 meeting about where exactly an Irving homeless shelter would go. As Milligan said, there are a lot of unknowns.
One thing we do know is that the Cozby Library and Community Commons will host a program called “Homelessness in CISD and Neighboring Communities” at 2 p.m. on March 25. Speakers from Coppell ISD, Metrocrest Services, the Assistance League of Coppell, and Christian Community Action will discuss homelessness and ways you can help.
Coppell Businesses Leave Money on Table
Coppell received $10.2 million from the American Rescue Plan, and the City Council allocated more than a quarter of those federal funds to a pair of programs intended to benefit local businesses.
Under a program designed to offset the effects of the pandemic, all small businesses in the city were eligible to receive a $10,000 grant. Under a separate program designed to offset the effects of the reconstruction of South Belt Line Road, certain businesses could get an additional $5,000.
The deadline to apply for these grants was Jan. 31. On Feb. 14, Director of Community Development Mindi Hurley told the council that only 58 percent of the allocated $2.75 million had been claimed. Coppell’s businesses left $1.155 million worth of grants on the table.
“We just did not have as large a response as we thought we would,” Hurley said.
No one can accuse the city of not giving the businesses enough time to apply for the money. The $10,000 grants became available in late May, and the $5,000 grants started in late July.
Due to about $40,000 worth of savings on other projects that the council has opted to fund with American Rescue Plan dollars, there is $1.195 million left to allocate. Here’s a spreadsheet I cobbled together, based on a few charts that Deputy City Manager Traci Leach showed the council on Feb. 14.
Leach said the staff recommends assigning an additional $250,000 to the “creek bank stabilization loan program,” which will be discussed at an upcoming meeting. Assuming the council follows through on that recommendation, they’ll have $945,000 worth of federal funds left to spend.
City Manager Mike Land theorized that some of that money will be needed for the Magnolia Park trail project, which has been delayed by an antiquities survey. I hope to provide more details on said survey in next week’s edition.
Chronicle Crumbs
• This Thursday evening, the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission will conduct a public hearing on developer Chris Collins’ revised proposal for the southwest corner of Bethel Road and Main Street. The commissioners will also consider a demolition permit for the dormant church on that corner.
• A humongous “for sale” sign has gone up in front of the buildings at 616 S. Coppell Road and 618 S. Coppell Road. According to a marker placed by the Coppell Historical Society, these buildings were Coppell’s first fire station and first city hall. Coincidentally, they are between Chris Collins’ in-progress live-work development and the one he’s pitching to city officials this Thursday.
• Todd and Holly Kerr, the couple who own J. Macklin’s Grill, plan to open a second restaurant in Coppell. The space on Sandy Lake Road formerly occupied by Kelly’s Texican will soon become San Daniele Italian Eatery and Bar. There was an Italian restaurant called San Daniele on Grapevine’s Main Street that closed in 2018. Holly Kerr told me that’s just a coincidence.
• Attention, high school seniors (and their parents): Application deadlines are approaching for scholarships offered by a number of local organizations, including the Assistance League of Coppell, the Coppell Community Chorale, the Coppell ISD Education Foundation, and the Rotary Club of Coppell.
• Francine Ly, the Democrat from north Irving who ran for a seat in the Texas Senate last year, has launched a campaign for the U.S. House seat held by one of her neighbors, Rep. Beth Van Duyne. That will be a tough row to hoe. Ly got 39 percent of the votes in her 2022 contest against Tan Parker, while Van Duyne fended off a challenge from Jan McDowell with 60 percent of the votes.
• A firm headquartered in Coppell ISD was the subject of a recent BuzzFeed News article that stirred feelings of nostalgia for multiple reasons: “Chuck E. Cheese Still Uses Floppy Disks To Make Its Rodent Mascot Dance — For Now.”
• Medical Man Cave is a funny name for a medical facility, in the humble opinion of this particular man. Nonetheless, such a facility is coming to north Irving, specifically at the confusing corner of Royal Lane and Royal Lane.
Spring Break Activities
Beep, Beep: Jeeps! This safety event for kindergartners and first-graders, which is scheduled from 9 to 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, is the first of several events that Life Safety Park will host during spring break.
Kids Art Classes: Children ages 6 to 12 can enjoy a different artistic activity at the Coppell Arts Center each day this week starting at 9:30 a.m.
Coppell Junior Historian Program: The Coppell Historical Society invites kids ages 5 to 13 (and their parents) to stop by Heritage Park and earn an official Coppell Junior Historian patch. Activities will be available between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. tomorrow through Friday.
Super STEAM Week — Science of Animals: The Cozby Library and Community Commons kicks off Super STEAM Week with an event for elementary school students featuring live animals from six of the seven continents. They’ll be there between 2 and 3 p.m. tomorrow.
Cozby Cares — Animal Services: Teens can earn service hours by decorating bandanas for the critters at Coppell Animal Services between 4 and 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Cozby Library and Community Commons.
Teen End of Spring Break Bash: Teenagers are invited to stop by the Cozby Library and Community Commons between 10 a.m. and noon on Friday for a breakfast bash featuring a variety of cereals along with games and activities.
Mustang Speedway Power Wheels Race: Speed demons between the ages of 3 and 9 should bring their electric cars to Mustang Park Recreation Center in Irving between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Friday. Registration is required.
Community Calendar
Sunset Socials — Music in Old Town: I assume we’ll hear plenty of hits by Elvis Costello and Bruce Hornsby when The Elton Johns perform at 7 p.m. on March 24.
Carter BloodCare Blood Drive: The City of Coppell invites you to roll up your sleeve and donate a pint of blood between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on March 25 at Fire Station 3, which is at 133 Parkway Blvd.
Ladies’ Choice: The Coppell Community Chorale will perform “our most ambitious concert yet” at 7 p.m. on March 25 at the Coppell Arts Center.
Silver Line Community Update: Representatives from DART and contractor Archer Western Herzog will be at George Coffee + Provisions to answer questions about the Silver Line from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on March 27. If you know people who insist on driving south on Mockingbird Lane, despite the recent closure of the southbound lanes, invite them to this meeting.
Sorority 101: Coppell Alumnae Panhellenic Association will host an online forum from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on March 29. High school seniors and their parents are encouraged to learn more about National Panhellenic Conference sorority benefits and membership. Click the link to register.
I hope that more Coppell citizens become “informed” voters because I want the bond for the school improvements to pass. In the Dallas Morning News today there was an article about the importance of THE ARTS programs to students, especially for their mental health. Coppell ISD has also been very accommodating to citizens by sharing the school facilities for public programs.
I was sorry to hear that Tracy Fisher has decided to withdraw from the election. She has been a wonderful public servant. It’s too bad that many people now want board members to identify with a political party. Our board members have always just worked together to do what it takes to make our schools THE BEST! Thank you, Tracy for your dedication to our schools.
Antiquities survey?…. I’m definitely interested!