Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 7

Oh, the Places You’ll Go … Once the Council Makes a Decision • Council to Discuss Term Limits • Who Paid for All These Campaign Signs? • Multiplex to Add Multiple Amusements

Oh, the Places You’ll Go … Once the Council Makes a Decision

Both of my sons attended Denton Creek Elementary School, and the older one went to its next-door neighbor, Coppell Middle School North. I had to drive them there for years, but many students live close enough to walk or bike to those campuses.

Some of those students live in Magnolia Park, a neighborhood on the west side of Denton Tap Road. They can safely walk or bike to school because a trail that runs through their neighborhood’s namesake park goes under Denton Tap, thereby allowing them to avoid traffic on that busy thoroughfare.

Further to the west are two more neighborhoods, Eastlake and Westhaven. Someday, students from those neighborhoods will also be able to walk or bike to school via an extension of the Magnolia Park trail. But first, the City Council has to decide where to place that extension. Discussions on that topic have been going on for years. Here’s a timeline that Park Projects Manager John Elias shared with the council during their March 23 meeting:

“We just can’t take another step until this body gives us the direction on what they would like us to do,” City Manager Mike Land told the council. “And we’re happy to sit and wait until you’re ready to do it.”

There are two ponds in Magnolia Park (the park, not the neighborhood), and the existing trail runs south of one of them. The extension will take the trail around the other pond, after the council decides on one of these designs:

Design Alternative A would go south of the pond and would cost $984,000, according to the city’s consulting engineers at Halff Associates. It would run between the pond and Denton Creek (the creek, not the school). There used to be a trail between those two bodies of water, but it was washed away by a flood in 2015. (Click here to see drone videos of the effects.) Because of that history, Design Alternative A includes an elevated boardwalk.

Design Alternative B would go north of the pond and would cost $371,000, per Halff, which is much cheaper than Alternative A. But it would be between the pond and the houses in Magnolia Park (the neighborhood, not the park). And that’s where the Magnolia Park Homeowners Association enters the equation.

The HOA really wants the council to choose Design Alternative A. Its leaders spoke during two council meetings in March and during the Parks and Recreation Board’s meeting in February, when that board voted to recommended that the council choose Design Alternative B. These HOA leaders have expressed concerns about erosion control and a potential levee breach, and they have advocated for a single project that would address those concerns as well as the trail extension.

However, my ample gut tells me that their primary concern is how close the extension will be to their backyards. That’s an odd thing to be worried about, in my opinion, because sidewalks already line their front yards.

“They have the regular concerns that homeowners where trails go by typically have, which is security issues, visibility into their yards, things like that,” Parks and Recreation Board Chair Ed Guignon told the council on March 23. “We’ve had to deal with that a number of times over the past few years.”

However, this HOA broke new ground by hiring their own consulting engineer to offer a second set of cost estimates. Elias, the park projects manager, told the council that was a first for him, and he’s been a city employee for 20 years. But Mark Meyers, president of the Magnolia Park HOA, told the council he knows of several times when Halff’s estimates have been twice as high as their competitors’.      

On March 9, the council told Elias to set up a meeting so that Halff engineers and city staffers could compare notes with the engineer hired by the HOA, Jeff Crannell of CCM Engineering. That meeting happened on March 12, and Elias briefed the council on March 23. Bottom line: Crannell believes the extension could be placed south of the pond for about $488,000, which is less than half of Halff’s estimate. But a large portion of that difference can be attributed to Crannell’s proposal to build the entire extension “at grade,” without the proposed boardwalk.

“We’ve never said that this option couldn’t be done at grade all the way along there,” Elias told the council. “Our concerns all along were for the longevity of this trail and the sustainability of it, and that we would like to do this one time and have it last, and know that it will last, as opposed to potentially having to come back and do repairs, should we have a flood event like we had in 2015.”

The prevailing sentiment among the council members was that they are open to more input from the HOA. When that will happen is unclear, but it probably won’t be this week; there is no mention of Magnolia Park (the park or the neighborhood) on the council’s April 13 agenda. What form that input will take is also unclear, but here’s what the HOA wants, according to a letter that was read into the record during the council’s March 23 meeting:

• They want a “proper” work session that would last “several hours,” involving everybody from the March 12 meeting, plus an HOA representative. “The outcome we should ask of this team is to provide a high-level feasibility as to what a combined project will entail.”

• After that, they want a joint session of the council and the HOA that would include a Q&A. “The outcome of this Q&A should provide the City Council with sufficient data points to make an intelligent decision as to which solution is the correct one.”

• Once the decision is made, they want the Parks Department to solicit their input on how to make the trail aesthetically pleasing and to maximize security for homes along the trail.

“We would involve them with the design,” Elias told the council on March 9. “That’s what we’re trying to do. If we can get a direction on which side to go with, we would then work with the HOA on the design.”

I don’t know Elias at all, but I can tell from watching his recent presentations to the council that he is exasperated by this project. I predict one of two things will happen when it’s eventually completed: He will either swear off ever looking at this trail again, or he will resolve to ride his bike on it every day, even if that means buying a bike.

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Council to Discuss Term Limits

That was a really long story, so here’s a short one to cleanse your palate. Although the agenda for this week’s City Council meeting does not mention the saga of the Magnolia Park trail extension, the Work Session portion of the agenda includes this: “Discussion regarding term limits for city council members.”

Ooohhh! How interesting! I got really excited when I saw a “Term Limits Memo” attached to the agenda. “Let’s see what this is all about,” I thought as I clicked the link for the memo:

All righty then!

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Who Paid for All These Campaign Signs?

The Texas Ethics Commission asks candidates and office holders to file semi-annual campaign finance reports, plus additional reports 30 days and eight days before an election. Our municipal elections are scheduled for May 1, so the 30-days-out reports were due on April 1.

Shortly after 1 p.m. on April 6, I noted on Facebook that four of the 11 candidates for the Coppell City Council still had not filed their 30-days-out reports. A friend of mine asked what happens to people who miss such deadlines. I replied, “Other than some blowhard with a hyperlocal newsletter pointing it out to his subscribers? Nothing.”

It turns out I was wrong about that. A source pointed me to documents on the Texas Ethics Commission website regarding penalties for not filing such reports properly. Ron Hansen, a three-time candidate for the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees, was fined $250. Former Irving Mayor Herbert Gears was fined $5,000.

Given that information, all of our current candidates should heed the deadline for filing their eight-days-out reports: April 23.

Here’s a quick look at when the candidates for the Coppell City Council and the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees filed the reports that were due April 1:

I included the “Period Covered” column because there was so much variety among our candidates. For the record, the Texas Ethics Commission’s 2021 Filing Schedule says these reports were supposed to cover a period ending on March 22 and beginning on one of three dates: Jan. 1, or the date the candidate appointed a campaign treasurer, or the day after the final date covered in the candidate’s previous report.

If you want to peruse these reports yourself, you can find the City Council candidates’ reports on this page. They’re the ones labeled “COH-30 Day.” For the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees candidates, visit this page. Each candidate’s hyperlinked name will have all of his or her filings in a single document.

Here’s what I found interesting about the contents of their reports:

Coppell Mayor

Rob Anderson contributed $5,000 of his own money to his campaign. (The only other candidates to list themselves as a contributor were City Council Place 3 contender Don Carroll and Coppell ISD Board of Trustees incumbent Tracy Fisher.) Anderson’s second-biggest contribution was the $500 he received from one of his neighbors, Bonnie Foss.

Wes Mays received $500 from former Congressman Kenny Marchant, who used a Carrollton business address on Mays’ paperwork even though Marchant lives in Coppell. Mays also received $500 from Jason McCann, the CEO of Coppell-based Vari, formerly known as Varidesk.

McCann is the only contributor whose name appears on three candidates’ reports. He also gave $400 each to Fisher and to City Council Place 4 hopeful Kevin Nevels.

Three other contributors appeared on a pair of reports: Daniel Frey gave $500 to Fisher and $100 to Anderson, Kim Mobley gave $100 to Mays and $50 to Nevels, and Brad Snyder gave $50 each to Fisher and Nevels.

Coppell City Council Place 2

Incumbent Brianna Hinojosa-Smith reported no contributions. Her $1,547.43 worth of expenditures all came from personal funds.

Raghib Majed is the only City Council candidate who has not turned in a finance report.

Coppell City Council Place 3

Davin Bernstein, who ran for this same seat last year, reported just $40 worth of unitemized contributions since Jan. 1. But his cover sheet says his total contributions for this year were $0, which can’t be possible if he received $40 worth of unitemized contributions.

Don Carroll reported $3,000 worth of contributions, and he contributed $2,000 of that to himself. His largest contribution from someone not named Don Carroll was the $500 he received from Jason Cassity, one of his Bank of America colleagues.

Meghan Shoemaker reported only a single contribution of $325, which came from Amelia Anderson, the wife of mayoral candidate Rob Anderson.

Coppell City Council Place 4

Amit Dharia reported just $220 worth of contributions: $200 from Dr. Achal Dhruva, whose address was listed as simply “Austin, TX,” and $20 from a Coppell resident whose name was left off the form. Dharia has loaned his campaign $1,500. (Loans are listed separately from contributions.)

Kevin Nevels declared $3,100 worth of contributions on the cover sheet of his report, but when I entered each of his contributions into a spreadsheet, they added up to $3,300. (I double-checked my spreadsheet entries against his reported contributions.) Nearly a third of his total came from his wife and his mom, who each contributed $500.

(When I ran for the school board three years ago, my biggest contributions were from my parents and my in-laws. I couldn’t convince my wife to cough up any cash, so Nevels has me beat there.)

Coppell City Council Place 6

Incumbent Biju Mathew raised $450 from just three contributors, one of whom — Barb Schmidt — is his campaign treasurer. He also loaned his campaign $1,000.

Mark Smits reported no contributions. His report says his $4,693.39 worth of expenditures were made by credit card.

Coppell ISD Board of Trustees Place 7

Incumbent Tracy Fisher declared $7,228 worth of contributions on the cover sheet of her report, but when I entered each of her contributions into a spreadsheet, they added up to $7,332. (Again, I double-checked my work.) She contributed $2,000 of her own money to her campaign.

In an interesting bit of bipartisanship, Fisher — who was once a Republican precinct chair — has three of Coppell’s Democratic precinct chairs among her contributors: Terry Barker ($500), Daniel Frey ($500), and Taria Greenberg ($100).

Another interesting tidbit: Fisher received $250 from Lucy Billingsley, the developer of Cypress Waters.

Sonal Tandale filed a very confusing report. She has the same amount ($4,689.50) written in three fields: total contributions, total expenditures, and contributions balance. If you raise $4,689.50 and you spend $4,689.50, then you can’t have $4,689.50 left over.

Things get a bit clearer on the ensuing (and final) sheet of her report. It says she brought in $375 worth of monetary contributions and spent $4,300 of her personal funds. It also says she put $14.50 worth of expenditures on a credit card. My trusty calculator tells me $375 + $4,300 + $14.50 = $4,689.50.

Sam Wellington did not file a 30-days-out report, but he did file a Modified Reporting Declaration, which says he does not intend to accept nor spend more than $930. (Wellington didn’t just pluck that random amount out of thin air; it’s the threshold set by the Texas Ethics Commission for skipping the 30-days-out and 8-days-out reports.)

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Multiplex to Add Multiple Amusements

The Fun Movie Grill, a 16-screen multiplex in Valley Ranch that shows a mix of Hollywood and Bollywood films, wants to sacrifice some of those movies so it can add more fun. Last week, the Irving Planning and Zoning Commission considered a request “to expand the footprint of amusement activities.”

“It sounds like fun, but it could be too much fun,” longtime planning commissioner Jack Spurlock said during the April 5 hearing. “Anyone want to tell me what you’re planning with amusement? I know if you drink enough, you can have a lot of amusement, but what are you getting an OK for?”

(With comments like that, watching videos of Irving Planning and Zoning Commission meetings can be considered a form of amusement.)

Spurlock — whose first stint on the commission began in 1980, the same year that I finished kindergarten — must have missed this statement on the extensive memo prepared by the Irving city staff: “The owner has a prospective buyer for the property who would like to further remodel the existing facility to eliminate nine of the theaters and convert that space to an indoor amusement zone that will include an indoor race car track and pit, a bowling alley, laser tag, axe throwing, private party rooms, a food court area, and an arcade.”

Wow. Spurlock may be on to something here; that could be too much fun for a building that size. Check out these architectural renderings that were part of the aforementioned memo:

These proposed changes would make Fun Movie Grill a competitor to Pinstack on the other side of Interstate 635. The chief difference between the two properties would be the proposed race track, which — if I’m interpreting these renderings properly — would go OVER the bowling and axe-throwing lanes. That might be a tad distracting as you try to convert a 7-10 split.

Nevertheless, a few commissioners spoke enthusiastically in favor of these changes, with Spurlock casting the lone dissenting vote. He seemed to think that “amusements” meant the rides you see on the Midway at the State Fair.

“We had a bunch of amusement up at the mall recently, and there were lots of complaints, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” he said.

The zoning change is still subject to the Irving City Council’s approval; that vote is scheduled for April 15.

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Community Calendar

The first sign that you’ve launched a successful community publication is when people start asking you to promote their upcoming events. Click the links for more information.

Grief and Healing Support Group: Twice a year, First United Methodist Church in Coppell offers a six-week support group for those who have experienced the painful death of a loved one. The next series begins at 3 p.m. on April 18.

Aggie Muster: Former students of Texas A&M University will meet in Coppell on April 21 for the annual Aggie Muster ceremony to honor Aggies who passed away within the last year. Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp is scheduled to speak. The ceremony will happen at The Falls at Wagon Wheel Park, which is the official name for the courtyard next to the barn by the Wagon Wheel soccer fields.

Run to Fund: The Coppell ISD Education Foundation has turned its fundraising 5K race into a virtual event over the course of May 1-8. There will be daily themes, including Star Wars on “May the Fourth Be With You” and Tex-Mex on Cinco de Mayo.

Humvee Challenge: Claymore Operations, a Coppell-based nonprofit that helps veterans adjust to civilian life, will raise funds via a unique competition on May 8 at First United Methodist Church. If you think you and seven friends have the combined strength necessary to pull a Humvee across the church’s parking lot, sign up ASAP. The registration fee is $10 per person.