Another Election Cycle Begins This Week
If you’re thinking about running for office, get your rear in gear. Wednesday is the first day that candidates can file paperwork to compete in this year’s municipal elections. I’m expecting a flurry of activity on the first day and some last-minute moves on the filing period’s final day (Feb. 17), with nothing much happening in between.
Election Day will be May 6. Here’s a look at who holds the seats that voters residing in Coppell and/or Coppell ISD will see on their ballots.
COPPELL CITY COUNCIL
Every Coppell voter gets to vote for every council member.
Place 1: Cliff Long, who is completing his third term, has never needed one vote. He was unchallenged in 2014, 2017, and 2020.
Place 3: Don Carroll won this seat in 2021 by defeating Davin Bernstein in a runoff, 55% to 45%. Bernstein had led the three-candidate field in the general election with 37%, followed by Carroll’s 34% and Meghan Shoemaker’s 29%.
They were vying to complete the unexpired term of Wes Mays, who’d given up the Place 3 seat to run for mayor. In the pandemic-delayed election of November 2020, Mays had fended off a challenge from Bernstein, 55% to 45%.
Place 5: John Jun won this open seat in December 2020 by defeating Jim Walker in a runoff, 60% to 40%. In the general election, Jun led a three-candidate field with 47%, followed by Walker’s 33% and Erin Bogdanowicz’s 20%. (Two years earlier, Jun lost to Biju Mathew in a runoff for the Place 6 seat, 57% to 43%.)
Place 7: Mark Hill has announced he plans to seek a fourth term in this seat, which he won in 2014 by ousting incumbent Aaron Duncan, 64% to 36%. (Two years earlier, Duncan had been the only candidate to complete the unexpired term of Karen Hunt, who’d given up the Place 7 seat to run for mayor.) In 2017, Hill squeaked by Maggie Lucas, 50.5% to 49.5%, but he was unchallenged in 2020.
COPPELL ISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Every voter in Coppell ISD gets to vote for every board member.
Place 4: Neena Biswas won this seat in November 2020 by ousting four-term incumbent Thom Hulme, 51% to 49%.
Place 5: David Caviness won this open seat in 2017 by defeating Vara Kuppam, 66% to 34%. Caviness was unchallenged in 2020.
Place 7: Two months ago, the Board of Trustees appointed Jobby Mathew to complete Tracy Fisher’s unexpired term; Fisher had to resign because she was a candidate for the State Board of Education. This seat will be on the ballot again in 2024, when the winner will secure a full three-year term.
IRVING CITY COUNCIL
A big chunk of Coppell ISD is in the City of Irving.
Mayor: Valley Ranch resident Rick Stopfer, who was a member of the Irving City Council from 1998 until 2012, was elected mayor in 2017, when he earned 67% of the votes despite having three opponents. In 2020, he defeated Olivia Novelo Abreu, 54% to 46%.
District 3: Mark Zeske won this open seat in December 2020 by besting Abdul Khabeer in a runoff, 55% to 45%. His district includes the Parkside West neighborhood that is within Coppell ISD.
District 5: J. Oscar Ward won this seat in 2014, when he edged incumbent Rose Cannaday, 52% to 48%. Ward overwhelmed Abdel Elhassan, 84% to 16%, in 2017, and he was unchallenged in 2020. His district includes the Parkside East neighborhood that is within Coppell ISD.
CFBISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Coppell’s Riverchase neighborhood and about half of Valley Ranch are within the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, which uses a unique method of conducting elections called cumulative voting. There are two seats on the ballot this year, so each voter will get two votes. You can give both of your votes to a single candidate or divide them among two candidates.
The two seats are held by Carolyn Benavides and Les Black. In November 2020, Black and Juan Renteria were the winners in a three-candidate field. Renteria resigned less than a year later, and the other trustees appointed Benavides to serve until May 2022, when she was unchallenged in a special election for a one-year term.
DALLAS CITY COUNCIL
Cypress Waters is in Coppell ISD but also the City of Dallas.
Mayor: This seat was open in 2019, and nine candidates threw their hats in the ring. Eric Johnson defeated Scott Griggs in a runoff, 56% to 44%. Johnson got 41,247 votes in the runoff, and Dallas had a population of 1.3 million in 2019, so the mayor was supported by only 3% of his constituents. Despite that math, he should be a shoo-in for a second term. The Dallas Morning News recently reported that it’s been at least 90 years since a Dallas mayor lost a reelection bid.
District 6: Omar Narvaez has represented Cypress Waters and West Dallas since 2017. He won a third term in 2021 with 56% of the votes despite having four challengers, one of whom was his predecessor, Monica Alonzo.
LEWISVILLE ISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES
The Coppell Greens neighborhood is in Lewisville ISD, as are some homes in Coppell’s East Lake and Westhaven subdivisions along State Highway 121.
Place 6: Kristi Hassett won this seat in 2014. She was unopposed in 2020, but she fended off three challengers in 2017 with 68% of the votes.
Place 7: Tracy Scott Miller won this seat in 2014. He was unopposed in 2020, but he fended off three challengers in 2017 with 54% of the votes.
LEWISVILLE CITY COUNCIL
A smidgen of Coppell ISD is in the City of Lewisville.
Place 1: Bob Troyer won this seat in 2017 by defeating Carolyn Wright in a runoff, 68% to 32%. They were among five candidates competing for the open seat in the general election. Troyer was unopposed in 2020.
Place 3: Ronni Cade won this seat in 2021 by defeating Penny Mallet, 53% to 47%, in a special election. They were vying to replace TJ Gilmore, who’d given up the Place 3 seat to run for mayor.
I’d hate to think someone contemplating a run for office around here was not already a Chronicle subscriber, but just in case …
Trustees Open to Widening Open Enrollment
As I said in the previous article, there are parts of the City of Coppell that are not within the boundaries of Coppell ISD. However, under the district’s Open Enrollment program, schools that have extra room will accept students from those Coppell neighborhoods.
During a workshop on Monday, the majority of the Board of Trustees expressed interest in broadening their Open Enrollment program to students who don’t live in the City of Coppell.
“If we truly value the entire district of Coppell ISD, we have to get away from this rule of 75019,” Trustee Manish Sethi said. “Whatever the alternate is, I’m completely open, but this rule has to change.”
The trustees were discussing Open Enrollment as a potential means of generating revenue. The state provides funding to school districts based on their average daily attendance (ADA), so low enrollment in Coppell ISD’s elementary schools is one of its major financial problems.
As of October, only 84 percent of the seats in the district’s elementary schools were filled. Collectively, the 11 campuses had room for 1,092 more students. The district’s demographer projects that CISD’s elementary population will be 1,496 students below capacity six years from now.
CISD’s eight “footprint” schools — so labeled because of their identical architecture — were designed to accommodate five sections for each grade level, or 30 classrooms per campus. These stats raised my eyebrows: Those eight campuses collectively have 29 unused classrooms; the only grade levels with five sections this school year are Denton Creek’s fifth-graders and Valley Ranch’s third-graders.
As I wrote in the Nov. 20 edition (“Where Are All the Kindergartners?”), demographer Bob Templeton attributed the dwindling enrollment to three factors: a lowering of the national birth rate, the pandemic-fueled expansion of home schooling, and increased competition from charter schools.
“We are competitive,” Trustee Leigh Walker said Monday. “Why are we limiting our customers? The whole state is opening up to public schools being competitive, so why hamstring ourselves, when everyone around us — charter schools, et cetera — are doing that?”
The trustees didn’t specify how far they’d be willing to open the district’s borders; they asked the administration to crunch some numbers and get back to them. Assistant Superintendent Kristen Eichel said that will take some time, so the earliest any changes could take effect would be the fall of 2024.
Neena Biswas was the only trustee who didn’t seem gung ho about the idea of expanding Open Enrollment. She expressed concerns about the potential effect on traffic in Coppell and the fact that people would be able to send their kids to Coppell ISD schools without paying Coppell ISD property taxes. Regarding the latter point, Trustee Nichole Bentley had a counterargument for any concerned Coppell ISD taxpayers.
“I would rather have these additional kids coming through Open Enrollment, and we keep everything in place — or more things in place — than turn away people because we’re getting their student, their ADA revenue, but not their tax dollars,” Bentley said. “To me, if it lets us keep doing what we’ve been doing and continue a great product, that’s a good tradeoff.”
Like any business, if Coppell ISD can’t figure out a way to generate more revenue, then it will have to start reducing expenses. Hence, the predominantly open attitude toward expanding Open Enrollment.
“If you’re talking about cuts, and you’re being serious about it, then you kick the tires on every revenue-generating option that you have,” said Jobby Mathew, the board’s newest trustee. Anthony Hill, the board’s senior trustee, said this moments later: “We’ve tested this. We’ve kicked the tires. We’ve fine-tuned the process of how to do that.”
When Coppell ISD started Open Enrollment in 2011, it was for elementary students only. In 2018, the trustees expanded it to freshmen and sophomores at New Tech High. Three years later, they broadened it to all grades on all campuses, but eligibility remained limited to Coppell families.
Eichel said the district consistently gets Open Enrollment inquiries from Irving families, and therein lies a problem: “Their interest is to come to schools in Irving, and right now, with the way we’re zoned, we don’t have the space or capacity” in Irving schools, she said.
City Losing One of its Leading Volunteers
When the Coppell Parks and Recreation Board got together for their first meeting of 2023, one of the initial items on their agenda was the election of officers. Ed Guignon, who has chaired the board for a few years, immediately took himself out of the running.
“My personal philosophy is, I like to put a set of self-imposed term limits on,” he said Monday, “because I like to give people opportunities to step up into leadership roles.”
Once Nick Paschal and Maureen Corcoran were unanimously elected as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, Guignon revealed that Monday’s meeting would be his final one. After 13 years on the Parks and Recreation Board and 39 years as a Coppell resident, Guignon and his wife are moving to Colorado, where their three children all live.
“It’s with a heavy heart to have to move on, because this really is an important part of my life,” Guignon said, “and the biggest thing I’ve enjoyed is all the people I’ve met over the years.”
Over those years, Guignon has also served on the boards of Living Well in Coppell, Working Well in Coppell, and the Coppell Arts Council. Additionally, he was one of the key players in the volunteer effort to rebuild the Kid Country playground. Parks and Recreation Director Jessica Carpenter said the City Council will honor Guignon on a date to be determined, when the feelings will be mutual.
“I have a high level of appreciation and respect for people who volunteer and give back to the community, because we all have busy lives,” Guignon said at the beginning of Monday’s meeting, before revealing his big news.
Paschal echoed those words when he addressed Guignon before adjourning the meeting: “You’ve always set a great example for the board. I appreciate all of the years and time you’ve put into this.”
‘Discover Coppell’ Campaign to Continue
The “Discover Coppell” advertising campaign, which officially launched in November, will continue for at least the next several months.
“We’ve spent all this money to build the machine, so we need to fuel it at least for a while to see if it works,” City Council Member Mark Hill said Tuesday. Two of Hill’s peers, Kevin Nevels and Brianna Hinojosa-Smith, verbally agreed before he could finish that sentence.
Last February, the council approved a $165,000 contract with the Coppell Chamber of Commerce to develop an ad campaign promoting the city, and that contract expires at the end of this month. On Tuesday, the council informally approved spending another $224,000 through September.
All of those dollars stem from hotel occupancy taxes, and state law says funds raised from such taxes can only be spent on enhancing and promoting tourism. Chamber of Commerce President Ellie Braxton brought two employees of Belmont Icehouse — the Dallas ad agency receiving most of the allocated money — to Tuesday’s meeting to field questions she was not able to answer last month. (See “Council Wants More ‘Discover Coppell’ Data” in the Dec. 25 edition.)
“The worst thing you want to do is, like, put all this money into developing a campaign, and then it sits on the shelf,” Belmont Icehouse’s Erica Page said Tuesday as she won the council over. “So we want to make sure that it at least gets leveraged and used, and then we can make some informed decisions on where to go.”
Before Page spoke, Director of Strategic Financial Engagement Kim Tiehen briefed the council on how much hotel taxes the city has raised and spent. Even after accounting for an extension of the “Discover Coppell” contract and the increased Coppell Arts Center staffing that the council approved in November, Tiehen estimated the city would have nearly $800,000 worth of such money when the fiscal year ends.
“You have a source to make decisions,” Tiehen said after Mayor Wes Mays asked her whether the hotel taxes fund was healthy.
In the end, the council tasked City Attorney Bob Hager with drawing up a contract extension, with one important caveat: The contract needs to spell out that all of the photography and associated branding dreamt up by Belmont Icehouse belongs to the city, not the Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t want to put on my lawyer hat right now,” said Hinojosa-Smith, who is an attorney, “but I will say I would love for our lawyer to revisit that.”
Chronicle Crumbs
• The Irving Police Department announced on Friday that two fugitives had been arrested and charged with capital murder. A 20-year-old male, whom the police did not name, was fatally shot early Tuesday morning at an apartment on Cowboys Parkway in Valley Ranch. Amoni Jamison, 19, and Luisa Murillo, 20, were arrested Thursday in Fort Worth.
• The City of Coppell announced on Friday evening that it’s accepting applications for the position of Director of Public Works. That got me wondering about Kent Collins, who has held that title for nearly five years. A source tells me an announcement about a promotion is imminent.
• Perhaps prompted by a nudge in last week’s Chronicle Crumbs, City Council Member Kevin Nevels spoke up during a public hearing on Tuesday to ask which restaurants we can expect to see in the Victory Shops at Coppell. The only tenant mentioned Tuesday that was not listed in the Dec. 18 edition was Starbucks, which is so boring that I almost nodded off while typing this sentence.
• Speaking of coffee offerings at the corner of South Belt Line Road and Dividend Drive, the QuikTrip down there will soon feature a caffeinated café called “Coffee Wow,” according to a form filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
• If you’re looking for something stiffer than a cup of coffee, you should know the Irving City Council on Thursday voted unanimously to allow Politano’s Pizza & Pasta to serve alcohol at 8704 Cypress Waters Blvd.
Community Calendar
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 Monday at the Coppell Arts Center.
Cyber Threat Awareness: New Tech High senior Maya Mata will present three opportunities to learn about protecting yourself and your devices from online threats — at 4 p.m. on Thursday via Zoom, at 5 p.m. on Jan. 25 at the Cozby Library and Community Commons, and at 4 p.m. on Feb. 3 at George Coffee + Provisions.
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.
Thanks, good stuff, Dan.
PS. I read somewhere (CFB or ND) that our DQ has new ownership- some folks out of E.TX?
..."which is so boring that I almost nodded off while typing this sentence." 🤣🤣🤣. I love your bits of humor!