Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 29

Little Free Libraries Keep Sprouting • To Every Street, Turn, Turn, Turn • Business is Booming for CBD Shops • Mask Exemption Numbers Posted

Little Free Libraries Keep Sprouting

I love the Cozby Library and Community Commons, and the wide array of the services it provides, but sometimes you’re just looking for a free book. Fortunately, our community is home to many Little Free Libraries.

For example, I recently checked out one of the Cozby Library’s copies of Paulette Giles’ award-winning novel News of the World. (Yeah, the guy who writes news of your town wanted to read News of the World.) But I didn’t finish it by the time it was due back. Luckily, I noticed a copy of the same book in the Little Free Library outside Jacaranda Gift Shop. That copy is now on my bedside table, where it will remain until I read the last page, no matter how long that takes.

That Little Free Library is one of several in Coppell. In 2016, Meghan Bauer established three in public parks — Allen Road Park, Duck Pond Park, and the Kid Country Playground — for her Girl Scout Gold Award project.

“One of my older siblings had a Little Free Library on their street where they lived when they were in college, and this was the first one I had ever seen,” the former member of Troop 2543 told me via email. “With my passion for reading, I wanted to bring the gift of Little Free Libraries to Coppell, where books could be easily accessible, and people could easily share books with each other.”

Bauer graduated from Dallas College with an associate’s degree in culinary arts last May. She lives in Waxahachie now, but her parents are still Coppell residents.

“My mom regularly checks on the libraries, and through donations, ensures the libraries are always stocked,” she said. “They have been damaged several times through acts of vandalism, and people in the community have taken it upon themselves to fix them each time.”

According to the map at LittleFreeLibrary.org, there are libraries in front of at least five Coppell homes, and the map says three of those libraries have popped up in the last two years. My favorite is the one on Cribbs Drive because it’s the only Little Free Library I’ve ever seen with separate sections for adults and children.

Photo courtesy of Debbie Spray

The woman in the photo is Louise Pontius, a former elementary school librarian who also goes by “Library Anne.” She manages the Little Free Library in front of her home with help from her neighbors Debbie and Scott Spray.

“Debbie is my go-to-person for adult lit choices, and Scott is our installation expert,” Pontius told me via email. “The three of us are a team.”

Because their multipronged library is along many families’ route to Moore Road Park, Pontius said, they have seen much interest, use, and positive feedback since the first portion was installed in June of 2020.

“Children are meeting neighbor children, and adults are passing along mysteries, nonfiction, biographies, and the like, which makes a community of readers,” she said. “The next addition will be a bench or two, which is needed since two parents and a child were seen sitting in the sidewalk, sharing a book.”

The aforementioned online map says Coppell has 10 Little Free Libraries, but I know of another one — at the Coppell Farmers Market — that isn’t listed there. Pontius said there are at least 13 “book sharing locations” throughout the city. If you have one that isn’t registered with the Little Free Library organization, please remedy that so your fellow book lovers know where to find it.

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To Every Street, Turn, Turn, Turn

If you’ve driven on Denton Tap Road recently, then you’ve probably noticed that new turn lanes are being added to several intersections. (If you haven’t noticed this, then I question whether you should be driving on Denton Tap or any other roads; you may have vision issues.)

I reached out to Kent Collins, Coppell’s Director of Public Works, to get details on the scope of the project designed to ease the flow of traffic on one of Coppell’s major thoroughfares. Here’s what is in the works, starting at the north end of the city’s stretch of Denton Tap.

State Highway 121: The city is adding a right-turn lane that northbound drivers can use to go east.

Parkway Boulevard: The city is adding three right-turn lanes — southbound to westbound, eastbound to southbound, and westbound to northbound — in addition to a left-turn lane for northbound drivers.

Sandy Lake Road: The city is adding a right-turn lane for southbound drivers.

Bethel School Road: The city is adding three right-turn lanes — southbound to westbound, westbound to northbound, and northbound to eastbound.

Southwestern Boulevard: The city is adding a left-turn lane for southbound drivers.

One of my subscribers asked me to look into why — from her perspective — the city’s street improvements near schools always coincide with the start of classes. Well, when I look at the city’s list of current road projects, it says these Denton Tap intersection improvements began last spring and are scheduled to be completed next spring. That same list says the reconstruction of Plantation Drive, which is near Wilson Elementary, began over the summer and should be finished by the spring of 2022.

Road projects take time, and schools are in session for most of the year. So there’s always going to be some overlap between construction and classes. The best we can do is encourage more students to walk, bike, or ride a bus to school, thereby reducing the number of vehicles on the roads.

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Business is Booming for CBD Shops

Another subscriber asked me whether Coppell has more than its fair share of CBD businesses. “It seems odd that while we tout our ‘family-friendly’ city, we would allow so many of these establishments,” she wrote.

By my count, there are five such shops in Coppell. Jetstream Vapors on Denton Tap Road has been around since at least 2016. In the past couple of years, it’s been joined by three others along Denton Tap — 121 Smoke Shop, CBD American Shaman, and CBD Pros USA — plus Urgent CBD, which is on the State Highway 121 service road, just west of MacArthur Boulevard.

I’ve never been in any of these shops. (As you might have guessed, the guy who decided to launch a weekly newsletter about municipal affairs is a straight-up, straitlaced nerd.) I had to turn to the Internet to find out that CBD is an abbreviation for cannabidiol, a chemical derived from cannabis or hemp. It is commonly used to address anxiety or insomnia.

CBD and the other products sold in these shops — vape pens, hookahs, etc. — are obviously legal and conform to the city’s zoning ordinance, or they wouldn’t be here. Just to be sure, I reached out to Mindi Hurley, Coppell’s Director of Community Development.

“CBD shops are an allowable use in a retail building,” she said. “We do not have any specific use designated in our zoning ordinance for CBD.  Therefore, they are allowed by right.”

In the end, the free market will determine whether five CBD shops in Coppell is more than our fair share. The same goes for our six doughnut shops, our 10 nail salons, and our seven offices for Edward Jones investment advisors. (Yes, there are seven of those in Coppell.)

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Mask Exemption Numbers Posted

Families can request exemptions to Coppell ISD’s latest mask mandate for medical, religious, or philosophical reasons, and a breakdown of the requests has been posted on the district’s COVID-19 Protocols webpage. As of Wednesday, the grand total of requests was 614, which represents about 5 percent of the district’s in-person students.

Not surprisingly, the schools located outside of Coppell had the fewest exemption requests; those campuses also had the fewest in-person students during the 2020-2021 school year.

The three elementary schools outside of Coppell — Valley Ranch, Lee, and Canyon Ranch — had three, four, and seven exemption requests, respectively. At the other end of the spectrum were Cottonwood Creek (33 exemption requests), Wilson (32), and Austin elementaries (31).

Coppell Middle School North and Coppell Middle School East each had 60 exemption requests. Coppell Middle School West had only six.

Coppell High School had 192 exemption requests, not counting the 63 requests at the Coppell High School Ninth Grade Campus.

The Coppell ISD Board of Trustees is set to revisit the mask mandate during their regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 27. They also have a special meeting scheduled for 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 22, but the agenda for that meeting isn’t posted yet.

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Chronicle Crumbs

▪ In Coppell Chronicle No. 8, I wrote about the trustees having a special meeting to discuss Landon Goesling, who quit his job as an assistant basketball coach at Coppell High School (his alma mater) so he could vie for a stranger’s heart on The Bachelorette. I didn’t tune in, but it turns out he got just seven seconds of screen time in the season premiere before being booted. As they say on The Ticket, “Bad decision, Coach.”

▪ When I published last week’s update about the sales-tax lawsuit filed by Coppell and other cities against Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar on July 13, I didn’t know when Carrollton joined the list of plaintiffs. I’ve since learned that happened on Aug. 9.

▪ My first article about the lawsuit said the Coppell City Council approved a deal with Amazon in 2016 that called for the city to make 20 annual payments to the online retailer representing a portion of the sales taxes it generates each year. Hannah Cook, Coppell’s Chief Communications Strategist, has since confirmed what one of my subscribers told me after that article was published: The city has made no such payments because Amazon has not conformed its tax-collection software to certain standards required by the comptroller.

▪ Last week’s article about temporary signs misidentified City Council Member Kevin Nevels as a former president of the Coppell Chamber of Commerce. Nevels is a former chair of the chamber’s board of directors; its president and CEO is Ellie Braxton-Leveen.

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Community Calendar

Coppell ISD Education Foundation Classroom Grants: Tomorrow is the deadline for the district’s educators to submit their grant applications. Individuals can get up to $3,000; grade-level or department teams can get up to $7,500. Make sure your kids’ teachers know about this.

Clear the Shelters: Animal shelters nationwide are waiving their adoption fees this week. That link will take you to a list of dogs and cats in the care of Coppell Animal Services who all need new homes.

Keller Williams DFW Preferred Car Show: The annual event formerly known as the Coppell Car Show is scheduled from 2 to 6 p.m. on Sept. 25 at The Sound at Cypress Waters. Proceeds benefit the Coppell Solar racing team at Coppell High School.