Coppell Chronicle Vol. 2, No. 46

Youth Football League Prioritizes Safety • Alcohol Sales OK’d at Farmers Market • City Designing New Service Center • Coppell Officials Set Legislative Priorities

Are you familiar with George Santos, the enigma who was elected to Congress after lying to New York voters about his education, career, and heritage? The Washington Post recently published an article highlighting how “A tiny paper broke the George Santos scandal but no one paid attention.” That article included this quote from Robert Zimmerman, who lost to Santos in November: “This experience has shown me just how important it is for everyone to support local media.”

Thank you, subscriber, for supporting this local media outlet.

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Youth Football League Prioritizes Safety

Football has long had a reputation for being more dangerous than other sports. What happened to Damar Hamlin on Monday night only intensified those fears.

Weeks before that nationally televised incident, Coppell Youth Football Association President Samuel Rickords said some reassuring words: “Player safety is number one, period, end of story,” he told the Coppell Parks and Recreation Board last month.

Medics are required to be on site during all CYFA games, and Rickords said referees have told him that’s a rare rule for youth football. Nonetheless, it’s the standard for all games in the North Texas Football League, an umbrella organization for the CYFA and its peers in several nearby communities such as Grapevine, Colleyville, and Southlake.

The CYFA is also affiliated with USA Football, the national governing body for amateur American football, which CYFA Vice President Chad Brown said is changing the way young players are coached to tackle and block.

“The way that we block now gets our head up and out of the way when you’re pushing on somebody instead of drilling into them,” Brown said.

The North Texas Football League has kindergartners and first-graders play flag football together, and second-graders also play flag. Tackling is introduced in the third grade, and that’s typically when the participation numbers dwindle. Rickords said Southlake had 40 flag football teams last season but only three teams for third-graders.

“Once you get to tackle, I think parents get a little squeamish,” Rickords said. “At that point, it’s who wants to go tackle and who doesn’t.”

However, Rickords believes there can be long-term benefits to starting tackle football at a younger age.

“When you’re in middle school and high school, you’re a lot bigger, you’re a lot stronger, you’re a lot more built, right? And if that’s when you’re starting to play football, you may lack the skills that it takes to be safe,” he said. “We’re teaching them at a young age how to develop the proper skills so when they are more developed, they already intrinsically know not to do certain things and don’t get injured.”

The connection to the Coppell High School football program goes beyond proper blocking and tackling techniques. Rickords said CYFA players volunteered as servers during the varsity program’s senior dinner.

“We build the program around what the high school is doing, all the way down,” Brown said, “so we have continuity with what they’re hearing, what they’re learning — how to be the right kind of player.”

The CYFA had about 125 players in the fall, which meant they were able to field eight teams: two for K-1, two for second grade, and one for each of the other grades. “I thought that was a big win for us,” said Rickords, whose major goal when he became president was to fill out a team at every level.

Rickords and Brown said they had enough players last season for additional kindergarten/first-grade and third-grade teams, but not enough adults stepped forward to coach. They said the CYFA could also use more volunteers to sell concessions and do the announcing at Lesley Field during games.

“We’re trying to create this really special experience for the community of Coppell, but it takes a village to do it, so we really just need more hands,” Rickords said. “Many hands make light work.”

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Alcohol Sales OK’d at Farmers Market

The Coppell Farmers Market’s Saturday sessions will soon be boozy affairs. Last month, the City Council voted to allow vendors to sell beer and wine there.

To be clear, nobody should be imbibing while strolling around Old Town on Saturday mornings. The new policy lets vendors sell bottles that customers can consume later at home. During the council’s Dec. 13 work session, City Manager Mike Land clarified for Council Member John Jun that the ordinance change allows for the sale of bottles but not open containers.

“They’d have to have a whole permitting process involved with that,” Land said.

A memo to the council said the change was initiated after a Coppell resident inquired about the possibility of selling bottles of wine. The memo did not name this resident, and I’m too curious not to ask. It turned out to be Mark Smits, who was a candidate for the City Council in 2021. His Descarado wines are bottled from grapes grown at his winery in Milano, a tiny town between Temple and College Station.

“We’re so excited to be able to add locally made wine (and someday beer) to our carefully curated list of farm-made products,” Coppell Farmers Market Director Amanda Austin said.

The Farmers Market will be back in operation this Saturday after a three-week break, but Smits doesn’t expect to start selling wine there until Feb. 11.

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City Designing New Service Center

We’re getting close to the second anniversary of the snowpocalypse that will forever be freezer-burned into our brains. Most of us hunkered down under layers of blankets during that winter storm’s power outages, but some municipal employees had to work around the clock.

During such extreme events, city staffers who don’t live in Coppell have resorted to sleeping on office floors. However, a renovation of the city’s Service Center will create emergency sleeping quarters for employees of Coppell’s Public Works and Parks & Recreation departments.

The Service Center occupies an 11.5-acre site that is east of Life Safety Park and south of the Coppell Senior and Community Center. Under a plan informally approved by the City Council last April, the Service Center’s main building, which was erected in 2002, will be remodeled to support field staff through break rooms, crew rooms, locker rooms, and open bench space.

When briefing the council in April, Capital Programs Administrator Jamie Brierton explained that locker rooms with showers are a necessity for the workers doing the city’s dirtiest work. “I don’t know if you’ve seen when the sewer guys come in [after a shift], but you don’t want to wear that home,” she said. Mayor Wes Mays thanked Brierton for that visual, as do I.

A separate structure will be built to house offices, work rooms, traffic management space, and other meeting spaces. The project will also incorporate design themes from Old Town, which didn’t exist when the Service Center was established.

Last month, the City Council formally approved a $526,000 design contract with Parkhill, one of 10 architecture firms that submitted bids. The estimated total budget for this project is $5 million.

A Dec. 13 memo to the council said the $526,000 would come from the General Fund’s undesignated fund, then be “reimbursed in accordance with the approved Reimbursement Resolution of a proposed 2023 bond sale.” That got my attention — does the city plan to have its own bond election this year to coincide with the ones we expect from the Coppell and Carrollton-Farmers Branch school districts?

Chief Communications Strategist Hannah Cook assured me I hadn’t missed a council meeting regarding a bond election. She also reminded me that the council approved a resolution last April that calls for up to $38,350,000 worth of reimbursements IF bonds are issued.

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Coppell Officials Set Legislative Priorities

The Texas Legislature will convene for its biennial session this week, and our elected officials here in Coppell have some guidance for our elected officials in Austin.

Last month, the Coppell City Council approved a seven-page list of legislative priorities. As you might expect, given the city’s lawsuit against Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, the entire first page of that document is about sales-tax sourcing.

During the council’s Dec. 13 work session, lobbyists Jennifer Rodriguez and John Kroll said multiple bills have been filed regarding the issue of origin sourcing (Coppell’s preference) versus destination sourcing (Hegar’s preference). They cited a specific bill filed by Rep. Mike Schofield, a Republican from Katy, that would tie sales taxes to the city where a product was stored immediately prior to shipment or delivery.

Speaking of sales taxes, do you remember voting on a pair of ballot propositions in November? One of them authorized the City of Coppell to keep using one-fourth of 1 percent of sales taxes on crime-reduction programs for 10 more years, while the other authorized the city to keep using the same amount on street repairs for only four more years. Coppell’s second legislative priority is getting permission to ask voters for a 10-year extension on the street repairs next time. Rodriguez said a bill on this topic has been passed by the House twice, but it has failed to gain traction in the Senate.

The third priority on Coppell’s list is being allowed to spend revenues from hotel occupancy taxes on parks improvements. Under the current statute, those funds “may be used only to promote tourism and the convention and hotel industry.” Hence, the “Discover Coppell” campaign that the council will revisit this Tuesday.

The Coppell ISD Board of Trustees approved their legislative agenda in October, and their top priorities all concern how schools are funded. The trustees would like to see the Legislature base districts’ basic allotment on total enrollment instead of average daily attendance, reinstate the Cost of Education Index to help districts in major metropolitan areas deal with inflation, and increase funding for special education students, including adding funding for diagnostic services.

Rodriguez said legislators started filing bills on the Monday after the November election, and they can continue to do so until March 10. Debates will begin after that, unless the governor designates something as an emergency item.

“By that time, we can kind of know the universe of what we’re going to be dealing with in that regard — what our opportunities and our threats are for the City of Coppell,” Kroll said.

If you want to do your own lobbying, here’s who you need to know:

Coppell and Coppell ISD were shifted into a new Texas Senate district during the last round of redistricting. We are now in District 12, which is represented by Republican Tan Parker. Because he was in the House before winning his Senate seat in November, Rodriguez described Parker as “House-trained.”

Democrat Julie Johnson, who is about to begin her third term in the House, represents most residents of Coppell and Coppell ISD, with these exceptions:

• Residents of the Denton County portion of Coppell are represented by newly elected Republican Ben Bumgarner.

• Coppell ISD residents who reside south of State Highway 114 are represented by veteran Democrat Terry Meza.

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Chronicle Crumbs

• Tuesday’s Coppell City Council meeting will include a public hearing regarding the Victory Shops at Coppell development on Belt Line Road. I hope a council member will follow the Planning and Zoning Commission’s lead and ask for an update on which restaurants the developers are pursuing.

• If the aforementioned Damar Hamlin incident inspired you to consider taking a CPR class, Coppell’s Life Safety Park can oblige you. The facility offers three-hour classes, free of charge, on a monthly basis. The class scheduled for this Thursday evening already has a wait list; the next one will be from 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 11.

• Banners heralding the arrival of Fellowship Coffee and Tea have been hung at the former site of Kess Kravings on Denton Tap Road.

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Community Calendar

New Year, New Friends Ice Cream Social: Middle school students are invited to celebrate the new year with ice cream and cocoa at 5:30 on Wednesday evening at the Cozby Library and Community Commons.

Coppell Drill Team Dance Intensive: If your middle school or high school student is interested in joining the Silver Stars or Lariettes drill teams, they may want to attend this workshop from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday at CHS9.

MLK Day of Service Drive-Thru Shoe and Clothing Drive: The Coppell Community Chorale will accept donations to Soles 4 Souls between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Jan. 16 at the Coppell Arts Center.

Meditative Drawing: Adults are invited to stop by the Cozby Library and Community Commons between 2 and 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 to learn about neurographica, a creative method of stimulating new neural pathways by combining art and psychology.

Lions Club SPOT Screening: The Coppell Lions Club will provide preliminary vision screenings for children 6 months to 5 years old, or any child with special needs, between 11:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. on Jan. 25 at the Cozby Library and Community Commons.

Teen Craft — Canvas Bag: Teenagers are invited to decorate reusable canvas bags with fabric paint between 5:30 and 7 p.m. on Jan. 25 at the Cozby Library and Community Commons.

Coppell Chamber of Commerce Members’ Choice Awards & Community Gala: Metrocrest Services CEO Tracy Eubanks has been named the recipient of the Cliff Long Leadership Award. Other winners will be announced after 6 p.m. on Jan. 28 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Grapevine.

Mamma Mia! The Coppell High School Cowboy Theatre Company will stage five performances of the ABBA-inspired musical between Jan. 28 and Feb. 5.

Be Mine Valentine Dance: The whole family is invited to the Four Points by Sheraton DFW Airport North for an evening of fun between 5 and 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 4.

State of the City: Mayor Wes Mays will review the 2023 vision for our fair suburb during a luncheon scheduled for 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 9 at the Coppell Arts Center. (Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer will address the state of his city at 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 26 at the Irving Convention Center.)

Coppell Lions Club Pancake Breakfast: The 36th annual fundraiser is scheduled from 8 to 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 11 at the First United Methodist Church of Coppell. Tickets are $5 per person, with $20 being the maximum charge for a family.

Frost Fest: This free festival for families will feature a variety of snowy activities, no matter what the actual weather looks like on Feb. 18. It’s scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Levy Event Plaza in Las Colinas.