Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 18
Council Assigns $400K to Storm Cleanup • Coppell’s Federal Funds Likely Spoken For • STAAR Results Released for Spring Tests • Coppell ISD Surveys Voters About Tax Hike
Council Assigns $400K to Storm Cleanup
Coppell will spend as much as $400,000 cleaning up debris from last month’s intense storms.
On Tuesday, the City Council convened a special meeting to consider one item — allocating $400,000 worth of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to a contract with two companies:
Crowder Gulf owns the claw trucks that have been collecting tree limbs from curbs around the city.
Living Earth owns the Lewisville facility where all of those limbs will eventually go.
Prior to Tuesday’s vote, Deputy City Manager Traci Leach updated the council on the cleanup process. She said the initial plan was to hire two Crowder Gulf trucks for five days (at a cost of $36,000), with Republic Services joining the effort on June 17. In the first six days, the two claw trucks collected 140 tons of debris and made 20 trips to the Living Earth facility in Lewisville.
“Round trip drive times were up to an hour and a half and were significantly impacting the amount of time the trucks had available to do pickup,” City Manager Mike Land wrote in a memo to the council. “Some homes had enough debris that filled half of the truck at a time, so pickup was moving slower than we had hoped.”
A third Crowder Gulf truck arrived in Coppell on June 16, and the city also established a staging area in Wagon Wheel Park where the debris could be dumped before being transported to Lewisville. “This dramatically increased the efficiency of the operation,” Leach said. In the six days prior to her presentation, the claw trucks picked up 504 tons — a 260 percent improvement over the first six days.
(Land’s memo said Crowder Gulf prioritized neighborhoods south of Sandy Lake Road, because that’s where most of the city’s mature trees are. If you’re not sure whether your home is north or south of Sandy Lake, keep that to yourself, or I might go off on a rant again.)
As of Tuesday evening, the Crowder Gulf trucks had completed a full sweep of the city. A second sweep was scheduled to begin yesterday. Meanwhile, one of the three Crowder Gulf trucks will focus on hauling the debris from Wagon Wheel Park to Living Earth. Republic’s claw truck — which has half the capacity of a Crowder Gulf truck — will be deployed on July 1 to pick up any stragglers.
The contract approved Tuesday includes $50,000 for Living Earth and $349,600 for Crowder Gulf. Nearly a third of that latter amount is a contingency in case the claw trucks need to be hired for an additional 10 days, but Land’s memo said the staff doesn’t believe that will be necessary. If they’re right, the leftover money will be reallocated to the construction of a veterans memorial. (See the next article for more on that.)
Council Member Don Carroll said the city’s employees deserve a huge “attaboy” for their efforts in the wake of the storms.
“It just goes to show one more time how much the staff cares about this community,” Carroll said. “I don’t think you find that in every community, and you do find it here.”
Many of his peers on the council echoed those sentiments, including Jim Walker.
“There are a lot of people in a lot of other cities in North Texas looking at us and wondering what kind of mojo we’ve got going here,” Walker said, “and I think the mojo is our staff and the attitude y’all bring to the table, and the care and concern that you bring to the table every day to serve our citizens.”
Coppell’s Federal Funds Likely Spoken For
Coppell received $10.2 million from the federal government for COVID relief, and the $400,000 approved by the City Council on Tuesday should be the last major expenditure covered by that money.