Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 20

Council Kicks Off Budget Season • An Introduction to Our Public Sculptures • Trail Closure Delayed Until August • Van Duyne Draws First Challenger

Jul 12, 2021

Council Kicks Off Budget Season

The Coppell City Council won’t vote on a budget and tax rate for fiscal 2022 until Aug. 10. But the council kicked off its budget season on Thursday by discussing funding requests from a dozen service organizations.

Click here to see how much money each organization is seeking, as well as how much each one received in the three previous years. Please note, however, that the Coppell Arts Center Foundation has rescinded its request for $25,000 since that linked slide was produced.

In advance of Thursday’s budget workshop, Mayor Wes Mays asked the council members to vote on which organizations they would like to hear from the most; the council would have time for only four presentations during the workshop. The winners — so to speak — were the Coppell Arts Council, the Coppell Community Chorale, the Coppell Community Orchestra, and the Coppell Family YMCA. It’s probably not a coincidence that all four are requesting more money for fiscal 2022 than they were allocated for fiscal 2021.

After the presentations, Mays went down the list of requests and asked if the five council members in attendance had any concerns about a particular amount. (Mark Hill and Brianna Hinojosa-Smith were absent.) But the mayor first put things in perspective by noting that the total amount doled out to service organizations typically represents less than one half of 1 percent of the city’s annual budget.

Only three of the amounts sparked any concerns.

Coppell Community Chorale: The chorale is requesting $8,000, and this is the first time the group has asked the city for money. The chorale’s vice president, John Wilson, said half of the $8,000 would be earmarked for providing a series of educational workshops, one of which starts next week. The other half would pay for the streaming of performances, if the chorale decides to pursue streaming; Wilson said a final decision hasn’t been made yet.

Council Members John Jun and Biju Mathew were opposed to the second half of the chorale’s request.

“I don’t feel comfortable funding something they might not go forward with,” Jun said, “just so they can have it, just in case.”

The Finance Department’s staff said they could draw up a contract that says the chorale would get the second half of the $8,000 only if it provided documentation that the streaming actually happened. Council Members Cliff Long and Kevin Nevels said they were in favor of that.

“It definitely sounded wishy-washy about the whole streaming thing,” Nevels said.

However, Jun was opposed to offering the $4,000 for streaming at all. He reminded his colleagues that Wilson said streaming might hurt the chorale’s ticket sales.

“Why encourage them to say, ‘Oh, you know, we’ll have these funds for you if you just go forward with it?’” Jun asked.

Nevels countered that a segment of the population is “still afraid to go out, or has concerns” about attending a concert in person, so having the streaming option “isn’t a terrible thing to do.”

Long pointed out that, in the grand scheme of things, $4,000 is not a lot of money, especially considering this is the chorale’s first funding request.

“If you follow this organization for any number of years, as I have, they’ve poor-boyed it all along, with their members carrying the load for a good portion of the expenses that they have done,” Long said. “And they’re extremely active, in the community, as you know. They haven’t charged, and they’ve always been there when they’ve been asked to be there.”

Coppell Community Orchestra: The orchestra is requesting $14,800, one year after being allocated $10,000. Jun expressed concerns about raising the orchestra’s amount, because he said it will encourage the group to request even more a year from now. But Nevels said the orchestra presented a five-year plan for becoming self-sustaining.

“We should give them at least the benefit of the doubt to try to go down that path,” Nevels said.

Mays said it’s interesting that the chorale and the orchestra are “pursuing two different models for tickets.” The chorale charges for admission to its shows, while the orchestra’s performances are always free.

“I suspect that one of the two groups will merge to the other, and I have no idea which way that’s going to go,” Mays said.

Long asked Mays if he had any insight as to why the orchestra is so adamant about not selling tickets.

“Their view is that they are a community service,” Mays said, “that they are part of the Coppell community, and they want to make music available to everyone.”

Coppell Family YMCA: The YMCA asked for $30,000, which is a 50 percent hike from the $20,000 it received for fiscal 2021. For fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019, the Y received $15,000 each year.

Willie Lees, who is the Coppell Y’s Executive Director/Vice President of Operations, attributed the increased amount to the pandemic, which raised the number of requests the Y received for scholarships or subsidies.

Traditionally, Lees said, the Coppell Y distributes $100,000 annually in scholarships or subsidies. He also said 78 percent of the Coppell Y’s members in 2019 were Coppell residents. (He said 2020 was an anomaly.)

Mays asked if that meant $78,000 out of every $100,000 in subsidies or scholarships was going to Coppell residents. “Yeah, all things being equal,” Lees said as he imitated a scale with his hands.

Jun and Mathew separately asked him for more specifics on that point. Lees didn’t have those specifics, but he said he could get them. After he left the room, the general consensus among the council members was that they needed to see those specifics before they could support the $30,000 request.

Three more budget workshops are scheduled for 6 p.m. on the following dates to cover these topics:

July 20: Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund and Special Revenue Funds
July 22: Debt Service Fund and General Fund
July 29: Final budget review

Click here for more details on the budget process.

An Introduction to Our Public Sculptures

Because I watched Janna Tidwell’s presentation during Thursday’s budget workshop, I have a much better understanding of the public sculptures in our city. Because you’re reading this edition of the Coppell Chronicle, you soon will too.

Tidwell is vice president of the Coppell Arts Council, a nonprofit organization that started several years ago when the Coppell Community Chorale, Coppell Creatives, and Theatre Coppell joined forces. (The Coppell Community Orchestra and the Ballet Ensemble of Texas have since joined the fold.) The Arts Council has spaces for 10 sculptures in Andrew Brown Park East and 10 more throughout Old Town. The sculptures displayed at the two sites are leased for two years, with $1,800 going to each sculptor.

New sculptures are brought into each site every other year. Old Town’s third set is being installed now, with the Arts Council aiming to finish the work by the end of the month. Andrew Brown Park’s third set of sculptures will be installed a year from now.

Each year, the Arts Council asks the community to vote, via Facebook, for its favorite sculpture among the latest batch. The artist of the winning piece gets an additional $500.

Thanks to private donations and the proceeds from its annual Art, Sip & Stroll event, the Arts Council has purchased four sculptures that have been donated to the city or soon will be. Funds are being raised to buy a fifth. Here are details on those five:

King Crow, which is at the entrance to the community garden at the Coppell Senior and Community Center, has already been officially donated to the city. That means the city has responsibility for maintaining the piece by Jeffie Brewer and deciding whether it will ever have a new home. “One of the things I feel I’ve become really good at is negotiating art purchase prices with artists,” Tidwell told the City Council, “because that was a $10,000 sculpture that we were able to acquire for $4,000.”

Red Pony, which is on the lawn due south of the Farmers Market pavilion, was purchased from artist Russ Connell last year for $6,000. Tidwell said the Arts Council plans to offer it to the city this fall after giving it a fresh coat of paint. She said metal sculptures like Red Pony typically need one every seven years or so.

Six Directions, which is at Andrew Brown Park, is in the same situation as Red Pony; it will be formally offered to the city this fall after a paint job. Tidwell said Colorado-based artist Sandy Friedman offered to sell it to the Arts Council for $2,500 – 10 percent of the original price – because the pandemic made picking it up at the end of the lease too difficult. After Tidwell revealed the sculpture’s name, Mayor Wes Mays said, “Thank you for clarifying that, because I’ve always called that the Mickey Mouse one.” Tidwell said the mayor is one of many people who see that resemblance.

Aloft is outside the Biodiversity Education Center near the Coppell Nature Park. Tidwell said the Friends of Coppell Nature Park wanted a sculpture to honor all of the Eagle Scouts who have contributed to the park. The Arts Council worked with the Friends and other donors to raise $8,000 to commission the original piece by Pascale Pryor.

Amos by George Hensley is the fifth sculpture that the Arts Council plans to buy, once the necessary funds are raised. It’s on display at Andrew Brown Park East, but Tidwell said the Arts Council wants the Coppell Arts Center to be its permanent home.

Very few of the sculptures throughout Coppell are accompanied by plaques that indicate their titles or artists. Tidwell told me the first set of plaques were stolen because thieves valued the “higher-end material” used to make them; a second set was vandalized and/or thrown into Andrew Brown Park ponds by teenage knuckleheads (my word, not hers). She said new foolproof signage is in the works that will denote whether a sculpture is temporary or permanent. Meanwhile, Coppell’s sculptures will soon be added to Otocast, an app that serves as a mobile audio guide to points of interest nationwide.

Well, I definitely feel more culturally aware after learning all of that. How about you?

Trail Closure Delayed Until August

City Council Member John Jun recently posted photos on Facebook of signs that said one of the trails under Denton Tap Road — specifically, the one on the south side of Denton Creek that connects Andrew Brown Park Central to Andrew Brown Park West — would be closed starting July 5. Well, that date has come and gone, but the trail in question is still open. And the signs touting the closure for the sake of the “Denton Creek Grade Control Structure” are gone.

Tiffany Anderson, the Community Engagement Manager for the Coppell Parks and Recreation Department, told me construction of the aforementioned structure has been delayed until an undetermined date in August. However, she also pointed me to a webpage that displays detours and alternate routes and says the closure will last about six weeks. If you’re a trail user, you ought to check it out.

Meanwhile, here’s something I didn’t foresee typing when I woke up today. As I walked that trail under Denton Tap this morning, I noticed a taut string. One end was tied to the bridge over the creek, and the other was secured to something under the water. Rather than dive into the creek for a closer look at the wet end, I ambled up to street level so I could examine the dry end. That’s where I found two tags bearing the United States Geological Survey’s logo and slogan: “Science for a changing world.” The tags also said this:

Zebra mussel sampler
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB

If you’re asking yourself, “What are zebra mussels, and why should we care about them?” then the USGS has the perfect webpage for you.

Van Duyne Draws First Challenger

It seems like the 2020 election finished just a few minutes ago, but the 2022 elections have already begun. Derrik Gay, a Marine Corps veteran and attorney who resides in Carrollton, is the first Democrat to officially announce that he is challenging Rep. Beth Van Duyne in the 24th Congressional District. That district includes all of Coppell and Valley Ranch at the moment, but the Texas Legislature has to redraw all of the districts’ boundaries before the 2022 elections, so stay tuned.

Van Duyne, a Republican and former Irving mayor, won her seat in Congress last November, when she bested Democrat Candace Valenzuela, a former member of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD Board of Trustees, by just 1.3 percentage points (48.8 percent to 47.5 percent). The remaining 3.7 percent was divided among a Libertarian and two independent candidates.

Despite her close margin of victory, Van Duyne — who worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump administration — is still aligning herself with the polarizing former president. Check out this video she recently posted on Twitter.

Will more candidates from either party dare to challenge the incumbent? That remains to be seen, but I doubt the 2022 election will be as much of a free-for-all as last year’s was, considering the seat was open then. In August 2019, Coppell resident Kenny Marchant — a former state representative and Carrollton mayor — announced he would be retiring from Congress after the end of his eighth term.

Van Duyne was one of five Republicans who vied to succeed him. Despite having four opponents in the GOP primary, Van Duyne received more than 64 percent of the votes and cruised to the general election without a runoff.

Valenzuela emerged from a field of seven Democrats. She finished second to Kim Olson (41 percent to 30 percent) in the primary but captured 60 percent of the votes in the runoff.