Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 10
Appraising These Candidates Isn’t Easy • Who Supported Our Local Campaigns? • Council Approves Raise for City Manager • Big Building Has Been in the Works for Years
The polls will be open for early voting until 6 p.m. today and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. If you choose to wait until Saturday, aka Election Day, you can cast a ballot between 7 and 7.
Meet me back here next Sunday to find out who won.
Appraising These Candidates Isn’t Easy
Hey, did you know the Texas Legislature gifted us with a new set of officials to elect? I certainly didn’t know that when early voting started last week.
Full disclosure: When I published my election preview last Sunday, I had not yet taken a gander at my sample ballot. Once I did, I was surprised to see that Dallas County voters are being asked to choose three new members of the Dallas Central Appraisal District’s Board of Directors.
Two of those members, Kendall Scudder and Alexandra Stewart, will be elected automatically due to a lack of opponents. In the lone competitive race, we must choose between P. Wylie Burge and Ekambar Kumar Singirikonda.
Meanwhile, Denton County voters have three choices to make for their appraisal district’s board:
Place 1: Angie Cox vs. Peter K. Mungiguerra Jr.
Place 2: Sophia Anwar vs. Lisa McEntire
Place 3: Rick Guzman vs. Jordan E. Villareal
Because the vast majority of Coppell is in Dallas County, the rest of this article will focus on the Burge vs. Singirikonda race. If these gentlemen have campaign websites, I couldn’t find them. Dallas Central Appraisal District property records indicate that Singirikonda resides in the Irving portion of Coppell ISD; a biography he posted on Medium last month says he’s the Director of DevOps Engineering at Toyota North America. Burge is a podiatrist who resides in southeast Dallas and treats feet and ankles near White Rock Lake.
I tried to get in touch with both candidates, without success. However, a website called D’ville GOP — which describes itself as “your place to get information to help you live and vote as an informed, God-fearing citizen of Duncanville” — managed to get both men to answer a questionnaire.
If I’d been able to connect with these guys, my first question would have been “How were you even aware of the opportunity to get elected to this board?” I like to think of myself as someone who follows the news — political news, in particular — and these newly created positions slipped right past me.
According to the Texas Tribune, the establishment of these positions was approved by voters last November. Do you remember voting to raise your homestead exemption for school district taxes from $40,000 to $100,000? The new positions were an “oh, by the way” portion of the same proposition.
I was able to speak with one of the unopposed candidates, Scudder, and I didn’t need to ask him how he found out; he’s more politically plugged in than the average bear. Not only is Scudder the Texas Democratic Party’s Vice Chair for Finance, he ran for a Texas Senate seat in 2018 and a Texas House seat in 2022.
Scudder believes the elected position he’s about to assume should not be an elected position. “It inserts politics where politics doesn’t belong,” he said. That’s why he encouraged Stewart, a former appraiser, to run for this board. “It’s crucial that we have responsible adults at the table who are not playing politics but willing to do the boring nitty-gritty work of government,” Scudder said.
The elected and appointed members of the appraisal district’s board of directors won’t be able to raise or lower your property valuation. But those eight directors will appoint the 120 people who serve on its appraisal review boards. Those are the folks you deal with if you challenge your property’s valuation.
“A person who knows how to navigate committees and boards could have some significant influence,” Scudder said.
Scudder and Stewart and whoever wins the contest between Burge and Singirikonda will join the five people already on the appraisal district’s board of directors. Three of those five are appointed by the Dallas County Commissioners Court, the Dallas City Council, and the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees. The other two are elected by the county’s suburban city councils and school boards.
Last November, the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees was presented with a lone nominee to represent suburban school districts: Duncanville ISD Trustee Cassandra Phillips. A memo from Coppell ISD Chief Financial Officer Diana Sircar said Phillips was also the lone nominee in 2021 and 2019. Consequently, the Coppell ISD trustees cast their collective vote for her without debate.
In December, the Coppell City Council was presented with two slates of candidates to represent suburban cities on the Dallas Central Appraisal District and Denton Central Appraisal District’s boards. The council declined to take action on either slate, and City Secretary Ashley Owens said that aligned with previous Coppell councils’ practices.
“They didn’t know any of the candidates, or they had very little information about them,” Owens said.
(Elected officials — they’re just like us!)
Because cities’ and school districts’ websites typically host the campaign finance reports for candidates in May elections, I contacted the appraisal district to ask where I could view such reports for Burge and Singirikonda. The unidentified person who answered my email pointed me to a webpage that features documents filed by Scudder and Stewart but bears no information about Burge and Singirikonda.
Good luck, voters!
Who Supported Our Local Campaigns?
Fortunately, voters have access to much more information about the candidates seeking election to the Coppell City Council and Coppell ISD Board of Trustees.
In last week’s edition, I published a questionnaire filled out by Freddie Guerra and Ramesh Premkumar, who are competing for a seat on the council. In case you missed it, here it is again.
Last week’s edition also featured analysis of the campaign finance reports that Guerra and Premkumar had to turn in 30 days before Election Day. They each owed us another report on Friday that detailed their contributions and expenses through Wednesday.
Guerra’s second report details just one contribution of $250 from the Coppell Republican Women club. Across his two reports, Guerra documented $8,205 worth of expenses.
Premkumar’s latest report includes three $100 contributions from Prakash Meduri, Nandakumar Palanisamy, and Pam and Jeff Varnell, all of whom are Coppell residents. Premkumar reported spending $2,300 this year, but he presumably had collateral left over from his 2023 campaign for the council.
Last week’s edition also included Coppell ISD Trustee Nichole Bentley’s answers to my questionnaire, but challenger Eneida Padró didn’t return her answers until two hours after that edition was published. Download this PDF to read both sets of answers.
Bentley’s two finance reports say she spent $5,748 on her campaign. Her latest report details 15 contributions totaling $1,300, all from Coppell residents. The most generous contributors were Bhaskar Ganta and Vari CEO Jason McCann, who each gave $200. Bentley also reported a $150 contribution from City Council Member Jim Walker and his wife, Cherie Walker of cotillion fame. She additionally received $100 from Democratic Party Precinct Chair Vin Merrill and his wife, Betsy Merrill; $100 from Premkumar and his wife, Subhashini Premkumar; $100 from Kate Rumsey, who was a Democratic candidate for Texas House District 115; and $100 from Jeff Varnell. (Pam Varnell’s name doesn’t appear on Bentley’s report.)
Padró turned in her lone finance report last Monday. It says she spent $762 on her campaign, which received no contributions.
Council Approves Raise for City Manager
Coppell City Manager Mike Land received a raise and a contract extension last week.