Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 51

Get Informed Before You Vote • Library Retains ‘Gender Queer’ – For Now • Water Tower to Receive Makeover • Venkatraman Remains on Board – For Now

Get Informed Before You Vote

All of these postcards and text messages I’ve been receiving from would-be judges can mean only one thing: Early voting begins tomorrow for Texas’ primary elections.

If you don’t want to wait until Election Day (March 1), you can cast a ballot between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. tomorrow through Friday, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, between 12 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, or between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Feb. 22, 23, 24, or 25.

If you live in the Dallas County portion of Coppell and are a Republican, click here to preview what’s on your primary ballot. If you live in the Dallas County portion of Coppell and are a Democrat, click here.

In an attempt to help voters make informed choices in two races, I sent a short questionnaire to the three Democrats who want to challenge Republican Beth Van Duyne for her seat in Congressional District 24, as well as the two Democrats and two Republicans who are seeking the open seat in Senate District 12. Only one of those seven candidates, Republican Tan Parker, did not respond. Click the links below to see the others’ answers.

• Congressional District 24: Kathy Fragnoli, Derrik Gay, and Jan McDowell

• Senate District 12: Francine Ly (D), Ferdi Mongo (D), and Chris Russell (R)

Thursday was a busy night for politics in Coppell. The Senate candidates — except for Parker — participated in a forum at the Coppell Senior and Community Center, while McDowell hosted a meet-and-greet at a supporter’s home. I didn’t attend either event, because I was covering a Library Board meeting for the ensuing article. Thankfully, a recording of the forum is available.

You may want to consult The Dallas Morning News’ Primary Voter Guide before heading to Coppell Town Center to cast your votes. (That location is for Dallas County residents only; if you live in the portion of Coppell that’s in Denton County, it looks like your closest option for early voting is the Thrive recreation center in Lewisville.)

Meanwhile, the deadline to file a candidacy for most of the May 7 municipal elections is 5 p.m. on Friday. Here’s where things stand with five days to go:

Coppell ISD Board of Trustees: Incumbents Anthony Hill, Manish Sethi, and Leigh Walker are all running for re-election. Only Hill has a challenger, and her name is Carol Lacey McGuire.

Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD Board of Trustees: Three seats will be filled by trustees who will get three-year terms, and only three people have thrown their hats in the ring so far: incumbents Tara Hrbacek and Randy Schackmann and newcomer Ileana Garza-Rojas. If that field doesn’t grow, then an election won’t be necessary. But if a fourth candidate enters the fray, each voter will get three votes to divide among the candidates.

A separate special election will decide who gets to spend one year in the seat currently occupied by Carolyn Benavides. Nobody, including Benavides, has filed paperwork for that one yet, but it has a later deadline: 5 p.m. on March 7.

Irving City Council: A Valley Ranch resident named Kailen Kasky and a Hackberry Creek resident named Brad LaMorgese are among the three candidates for the Place 2 seat, which has no geographic restrictions. The third candidate, J.C. Gonzalez, is using a P.O. box as his official mailing address, so I can’t tell you where he lives.

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Library Retains ‘Gender Queer’ – For Now

A couple of panels from Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Gender Queer is a “graphic memoir,” and that phrase has two meanings in this case. It contains content that is undeniably graphic, but it is also a graphic novel, which is a term for a lengthy comic book. This 240-page volume, which was written and drawn by Maia Kobabe, includes depictions of menstruation, masturbation, and fellatio.

Coppell’s Cozby Library has had a copy of Gender Queer in circulation since January of 2020, and that will remain the case for at least another month. The city’s Library Board was deadlocked on Thursday when considering whether to remove it.

After a lengthy discussion, Martha Garber made a motion to keep Gender Queer in the collection, and Anne Diamond seconded the motion. Only Board Chair Frank Gasparro voted with them, and a motion needs four votes to pass because the Library Board has seven regular members.

Michelle Ostrander then made a motion to remove the book from the collection, and Mathew Ittop seconded it. Only Haridas Radhakrishnan voted with them, so that motion didn’t pass either.

This situation puts Sekhar Katkam — the board’s seventh regular member, who was absent on Thursday — in the hot seat. Katkam will cast the deciding vote when the board reconsiders Gender Queer next month, assuming nobody changes their mind and everybody shows up.

The board has two alternate members, Carly Brenner and Patricia Graziano, who seemed to be in favor of keeping the book. However, the Library Board’s alternate members get to vote only when there aren’t enough regular members present to constitute a quorum. (By a show of hands, who loves parliamentary procedure?)

Thursday’s debate stemmed from a reconsideration request submitted by Pamalee Canterbury, who spoke during the “Citizen’s Forum” portion of Thursday’s meeting. “I will do whatever it takes to get it removed, and I will not be silenced,” she said. In the official staff response to her request, Director of Library Services Dennis Quinn listed several reasons to keep the book, but Canterbury wasn’t satisfied. Hence, Thursday’s debate and votes.

“This discussion we’re having, as you all know, is not unique to Coppell,” Gasparro said Thursday. “It’s happening all over the country.”

Canterbury wrote in her reconsideration request that she learned of Gender Queer via social media. Another Coppell resident who spoke against the book on Thursday, Conor Donahue, said he looked into whether the Cozby Library owned a copy after reading about Gender Queer in the news. He cited an NBC News report in which Kobabe acknowledges that “several of the book’s graphic images may not be appropriate for elementary school children.”

Teen Services Librarian Morgan Green-Griffin said the book’s publisher, Oni Press, markets it as being appropriate for ages 16 and older. However, she pointed out that School Library Journal said in its starred review of Gender Queer that the book is suitable for ninth-graders.

Two other Coppell residents who spoke up Thursday — Alyssa Chi and Elizabeth May — suggested moving Gender Queer from the teen section of the library to the adult section, rather than removing it altogether. During the Library Board’s debate, Quinn said adult graphic novels are closer to the children’s section than teen graphic novels are, so such a move might increase the chances that a younger child could stumble upon the book.

Speaking of unintended consequences, Canterbury’s request has slightly boosted Gender Queer’s sales. I bought a copy in advance of Thursday’s meeting, and Gasparro said he did too. This won’t be surprising to anyone who’s seen the headlines about Maus becoming a best-seller in the wake of Tennessee’s McMinn County School Board voting to remove that graphic novel from its curriculum.

Gasparro and I had to buy our own copies of Gender Queer because the Cozby Library’s pair are unavailable. Green-Griffin said one copy is considered “lost” because someone who checked out it failed to return it. The two copies have been checked out a combined 18 times. As of this morning, there were five hold requests. Under any other circumstances, Green-Griffin said, such demand would prompt her to order another copy.

Green-Griffin also said she didn’t read Gender Queer until late last year. (“There is no person in the library who has looked at every book from cover to cover,” she said when Ostrander asked if other books in the collection had similar content.) After completing Gender Queer, Green-Griffin told Quinn that she thought it belonged in the adult section. They decided to take no action, however, until the Library Board makes a decision on Canterbury’s request.

Rather than provide a blow-by-blow transcript of the board’s debate, here are a few highlights:

• Gasparro: “There were some of the graphics that made me uncomfortable – you know, it was difficult for me – but it was a small part of the book. There were three pages that I selected, when I went back and reviewed it, that I thought were objectionable, out of a 240-page book.”

• Ittop: “This is the first time that I’m reading a book like this, and that gave me a lot of insight on what a non-binary person is going through. … But at the same, the author decided to add some fluff into it, and it is that fluff material that is what’s causing all these controversies.”

• Garber: “I’ve read romance novels that have more salacious wording in them than this book does.”

• Ostrander: “I wouldn’t feel safe sending my kids to the library by themselves, knowing there were things that I wouldn’t want them to see.”

• Diamond: She hadn’t read it, but she opposed “the overall idea of taking a book off the shelf because a few people don’t like this.”

The only board member who didn’t express an opinion was Radhakrishnan, who initially abstained from voting until City Attorney Bob Hager said everybody needed to vote. “That’s why you’re put on the board, is to vote,” Hager said.

The city attorney rarely attends Library Board meetings. We’ll see if he’s in the room when the board meets again on March 10.

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Water Tower to Receive Makeover

The Wagon Wheel Park water tower is about to dry out and go to rehab. On Tuesday, the Coppell City Council approved a $1 million contract with a Hurst-based firm called O and J Coatings, which will strip and recoat the tank’s interior and exterior; install a new roof vent, hatch, and interior ladder; and paint the city’s official logo on the outside.

The Wagon Wheel Elevated Storage Tank (its official name) can hold 2 million gallons of water. It was built in 1998 and has been in service since 2000. The city commissioned inspections of both of its elevated storage tanks in 2014. The one at Wagon Wheel Park was rated as “good,” but the 1.5 million-gallon tank on Southwestern Boulevard was only “fair,” so it was rehabilitated a few years ago. An inspection performed in 2021 lowered the Wagon Wheel tank’s condition to “fair to poor,” so now it needs to be rehabbed.

Director of Public Works Kent Collins told the council this project will be funded through bond proceeds. O and J Coatings submitted a bid of $975,500, but the company’s contract is for $1,005,500 because it includes up to $30,000 worth of incentives for finishing early. Collins estimated the work will take two to three months.

The lowest bid was from M.K. Painting, a firm based in suburban Detroit that said they could do the job for $653,000. However, nobody from M.K. Painting set foot in Coppell until they were identified as the lowest bidder. Once they made the trip down from Michigan and inspected the Wagon Wheel tank, they rescinded their lowball bid.

City Council Member Biju Mathew asked Collins if the city could require bidders to perform on-site inspections before submitting their bids. Collins said that’s possible, but such a policy may limit the number of bidders. O and J Coatings and M.K. Painting were two of six bidders for this project; three of the others were from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Collins told the council that the two elevated storage tanks and the Village Parkway Pump Station are responsible for all of the clean water that flows from our faucets. I could try to explain how water towers work in terms that would make sense to a kindergartner, but a colleague from my Park Cities People days did that quite nicely at the request of a 5-year-old boy’s mom. I recommend you read his report.

The council did not ask Collins where the 2 million gallons of water in the Wagon Wheel tank will go during the rehabilitation, so I emailed him that question on Friday. By that time, the tank had already been emptied.

“The vast majority of the treated water was drained back into the treated water system except for the last few gallons, which were discharged into our storm system,” he said.

O and J Coatings will begin their work on Monday. Meanwhile, here’s a summary of the City Council’s other work on Tuesday:

• They approved a $285,000 contract with Durable Specialties to install traffic lights at the intersection of Royal Lane and Northpoint Drive. The Coppell Fire Department, which has a new station on Northpoint, requested the signals.

• As previewed in Coppell Chronicle No. 49, they amended the city’s signs ordinance so businesses can place up to 12 temporary banners per year; the previous limit was five. Inflatable gorillas are still not allowed.

• They approved an $85,000 engineering and design contract with Kimley-Horn and Associates regarding renovations at Duck Pond Park, which were detailed in Coppell Chronicle No. 39.

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Venkatraman Remains on Board – For Now

One piece of business the City Council did not take up on Tuesday was this agenda item: “Discuss and consider removal of Venky Venkatraman as a member of the Conduct Review Board.” After an executive session that lasted 101 minutes, Mayor Wes Mays announced that item was being pulled, but it would be considered “at a future date.”

Because the executive session ran so long, the council’s work session had to be continued after the regular session concluded. One of the topics discussed during the work session was a “best practices” policy for social media that would cover city employees, elected officials, and volunteers appointed to the city’s boards and commissions. The council also discussed revising the city’s Code of Conduct to incorporate language addressing social media.

During this discussion, a Conduct Review Board member who is very active on social media was seated on the front row and taking notes.

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Chronicle Crumbs

• The Coppell Cowgirls varsity basketball team went 35-1 in the regular season, setting a program record for victories and earning a district championship for the first time since 2011. They will face Allen in the playoffs tomorrow evening. The game will tip off at 7 p.m. at Rock Hill High School, which Google tells me is a Prosper ISD campus located in Frisco.

• A memorial service for Wheelice “Pete” Wilson Jr. has been scheduled for 3 p.m. on March 5 at the Coppell Arts Center. Meanwhile, family and friends of former Parks and Recreation Board member Earl “Pops” Rogers will celebrate his life at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 20 at the Coppell Senior and Community Center.

• I’ve written about a proposal to loosen Irving’s alcohol regulations in Coppell Chronicle No. 46 and Coppell Chronicle No. 48. On Monday, the Irving Planning & Zoning Commission voted to indefinitely postpone that proposal.

• Dave & Buster’s is moving its headquarters to Coppell. Knowing that 7-Eleven has a publicly accessible convenience store within its Cypress Waters headquarters, my 13-year-old suggested that Dave & Buster’s should offer appetizers, video games, and Skee-Ball at its new HQ.

• A banner has been posted on the former Jack in the Box along State Highway 121, heralding the arrival of a drive-thru Indian eatery called Desi Chowrastha.

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Community Calendar

PEROT! American Patriot: Theatre Coppell is presenting the world premiere of a new play by Dallas Morning News columnist Dave Lieber. Performances at the Coppell Arts Center are scheduled for this afternoon, next weekend, and the following weekend.

Frost Fest: The City of Irving will host a winter festival — featuring snow-tubing hills and an ice-carving demonstration — between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday at the Levy Event Plaza, which is at 501 E. Las Colinas Blvd.

Adulting: Healthy Relationships: In recognition of Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, the Cozby Library invites high school students and young adults (up to age 25) to an educational program at 4 p.m. on Feb. 21. Ryan S. Thomas from Hope’s Door New Beginning Center will discuss respect, communication skills, boundaries, and self-awareness.