Coppell Chronicle Vol. 2, No. 5
Council Debates Pocketbook Issues • This City Has Plenty of Old People • Sign-Ups Trickle in for Portal • Library May Offer Late-Night Hours
The fifth edition of Volume 1 of the Coppell Chronicle was the first one published after the paywall went up. Now that we’ve reached the fifth edition of Volume 2, some of my initial paid subscribers are receiving renewal notices. Thank you to everybody who’s choosing to stick around for more.
If you’re among the 800-plus readers who only receive these free editions on the last Sunday of each month, here are some articles you missed in March:
Library Board Votes to Retain ‘Gender Queer’
Coppell ISD Due for New Bond Election
CISD Trustees Approve $500 Bonuses
Parks Board Prioritizing Projects
Short-Term Rental Rules May be Revised
Council Debates Pocketbook Issues
The Coppell City Council recently had dueling — but simultaneous — discussions about putting more money back in residents’ wallets.
One of the items on the agenda for Tuesday’s work session was “Discussion regarding the Homestead Exemption.” As a baseline for that discussion, Director of Finance Kim Tiehen showed the council these figures for the average Coppell home in the current and next fiscal year. (The figures for fiscal 2023 are preliminary estimates).
Tiehen told the council that if they had increased the homestead exemption from 5 percent to 10 percent during the last budget cycle, the average homeowner’s tax bill would have been reduced by $125.51. In other words, the average homeowner would have been able to enjoy one more family dinner at Ole’s or one more couple’s night out at Victor’s Wood Grill. (I love to keep things hyper-local.)
The same theoretical increase in the homestead exemption would have decreased the city’s revenue by nearly $1.27 million. To put that number in perspective, when I checked the city’s Employment Opportunities webpage this morning, there were seven listings for full-time jobs that included salary information. Filling all of them at the top end of the posted salary ranges would cost $332,000 annually, which is about a quarter of the $1.27 million.
To put that $1.27 million in perspective in another way, the approved budget for the parks project that will extend the Magnolia Park trail while also controlling erosion between Denton Creek and the Magnolia Park ponds is $1.56 million.
Tiehen then showed the council that if they had increased the additional exemption for homeowners ages 65 and older from $75,000 to $80,000 during the last budget cycle, the average senior homeowner would have saved $29 while the city would have lost $68,000. Only one of the aforementioned seven jobs has a salary higher than that.
Tiehen showed the council many more figures, but I’m going to skip over them so as to not risk losing your attention (assuming I haven’t already). Things got interesting when Council Member Mark Hill put a question to two of his colleagues, John Jun and Biju Mathew: “Since you guys are proponents for increasing the homestead exemption, is there anything else you need from the financial team to make your decision?”
At that point, Jun brought up a discussion from previous meetings about providing a one-time rebate to residents. City Manager Mike Land told Jun that his staff had researched whether neighboring cities have done so. The most recent example they could find was from the late 1990s, when Farmers Branch homeowners received what was called a “dividend.”
The discussion then turned to the American Rescue Plan funds that I wrote about in the Jan. 16 edition. Jun wanted to know if any of those 10.2 million federal dollars could be given directly to residents. City Attorney Bob Hager said there are all kinds of strings attached to that money; the city couldn’t simply write checks to everybody in Coppell, because the city staff would have to then track how all of those funds got spent. Land threw out the idea that the city might be in compliance with the American Rescue Plan’s rules if it gave each resident a gift card to a Coppell business. And Mayor Pro Tem Brianna Hinojosa-Smith asked whether it would be compliant to use the federal money on credits toward each household’s municipal water bill.
The city already offers discounts to senior citizens on their water bills. The parallel discussions on property taxes, water bills, and discounts (or rebates or dividends or whatever you want to call them) got so convoluted that Council Member Don Carroll eventually said what I was thinking: “I feel like we’re conflating the two objectives a little bit. We’ve got relief from [American Rescue Plan] funds, and then we also have property-tax relief, or a proxy for it. Am I thinking about this too simplistically?”
From my perspective, no. But I’m just some dude with a newsletter.
In the end, the city manager asked the council to reach a consensus on exemptions and/or rebates by May, because there is a budget-related retreat scheduled for the end of that month. “If you make some decisions that reduces our revenues, we have to take that into account as we make our recommendation for the budget,” Land said.
This City Has Plenty of Old People
People have been saying for years that older residents can’t afford to stay in Coppell because of the property taxes. But there’s data that says otherwise.
During the discussion I just summarized, Director of Finance Kim Tiehen raised some eyebrows when she said the number of households claiming the senior exemption has more than doubled in 10 years. In 2012, that exemption applied to 1,163 Coppell properties with a combined value of $79,978,000. In 2022, it applies to 2,526 properties with a combined value of $190,432,000.
“That’s not consistent with our belief that our seniors are leaving town,” Mayor Wes Mays said.
“That was something that I found interesting too,” Tiehen said in response. “If they were leaving, you would think that that number was going to be going down.”
As part of the Vision 2040 plan, the city recently formed a Future Oriented Approach to Residential Development (FOARD) Task Force. As I detailed in the Feb. 6 edition, that task force has been studying ways to ensure that Coppell seniors can continue to afford to live here.
“Are we trying to solve a problem that may only exist anecdotally with the FOARD board?” Council Member Mark Hill asked. After a few perplexed stammers, Mays said, “I need to think about that a little bit more.” Hill’s reply: “Yeah, me too. Wow.”
Sign-Ups Trickle in for Portal
Friday is the deadline to receive $10 off your utilities bill by signing up for two things: the Citizen Self Service Portal and automatic bank drafts. I signed up for both, because who couldn’t use an extra sawbuck?
During Tuesday’s City Council work session, Director of Finance Kim Tiehen said 3,662 accounts have signed up for CSS and 5,190 have signed up for automatic drafts. She also provided statistics regarding the Justified Automated Collections Kiosk (J.A.C.K.) in the Town Center parking lot that residents and businesses can use to pay their utilities bills.
The record for the fastest J.A.C.K. transaction is 33 seconds, while the longest transaction took nearly 12 minutes. Council Member Cliff Long joked that he was the customer involved in the latter transaction, but it might have been yours truly. I was stumped when the J.A.C.K. screen asked me to enter a “customer number” that is apparently something different from my account number. The phrase “customer number” does not appear on any of my recent bills from the Utility Department.
I eventually figured out that the customer number is the new back half of the account number — the portion after the hyphen. I figured this out only by signing up for the Citizen Self Service Portal.
Library May Offer Late-Night Hours
Cozby Library patrons may soon have the opportunity to do some late-night browsing — as long as they’re comfortable doing so without any librarians around.
For several months, the library’s staff has been exploring the idea of offering extended hours. In this scenario, a patron would be able to access the building after the librarians have gone home for the evening.
“The nature of the demand for increased hours really had to do with the kinds of services that people could do on their own when we’re open,” Director of Library Services Dennis Quinn told the Library Advisory Board on Monday. “That is to say, they’re not looking for extra hours to come in and ask reference questions or to do the kind of things that they would need staff’s help with.”
Self-service activities at the library include browsing, studying, printing, scanning, and sending a fax. You can even check out a book or a DVD without interacting with a librarian. There are kiosks near the door that allow you to check out materials by scanning your library card or just punching in the associated ID number if you left your card at home.
However, possession of the physical card would be a requirement for accessing the library during extended hours. In that situation, you would unlock the door by scanning your card on a security device and then punching in a personal identification number, which should prevent someone else from accessing the building with your library card. Extended hours would be available only to patrons who are at least 18 years old and who opt in to the service by signing an agreement that lays out the patron’s risks and responsibilities.
“The demand for extra hours has not been going away, but we don’t reasonably expect to be able to increase staff,” Quinn said. “So this is in the spirit of looking for a third solution that would meet the demand in a fiscally responsible way.”
Quinn said extended hours are more common in European libraries than American ones. To his knowledge, the stateside libraries that offer them are either academic institutions or library systems that have unstaffed branches in rural locations.
“We would be somewhat unique, at least in our part of the world, in being a single-location public library that’s using this to augment staffed hours,” he said.
The technology that makes extended hours possible is already in place at the Cozby Library; members of the Library Advisory Board successfully beta-tested it last year. It hasn’t been turned on because the library staff hadn’t figured out how janitors could perform their often-noisy duties without disturbing late-night patrons. However, the custodial contract is about to be renewed, which will allow for a change in when the janitors do their work. They will soon start cleaning the building in the morning before it opens for business at 10.
Quinn plans to seek the Library Advisory Board’s formal approval of extended hours in April; a vote by the City Council would follow later that month. Assuming everything is approved, he said, the system could be turned on by June.
Patrons who take advantage of extended hours will be able to don lanyards outfitted with devices that dial 911 when activated; those devices will only work inside the library. Quinn said police will periodically patrol the parking lot after the librarians go home, especially during the final minutes of extended hours.
Quinn said extended hours will most likely end at 11 p.m., but they could go as late as midnight. A board member asked how the library could ensure that people leave the building at the chosen time. Quinn said there’s nothing that could be done immediately, because no staff will be on site. But the librarians will be able to review security footage and identify any patrons who don’t follow the rules. Serial abusers could have their extended-hours access revoked.
That said, based on what they’ve learned from their peers at libraries that already offer extended hours, the Cozby Library staff isn’t expecting the privilege to be abused.
“People have been using these services in very respectful ways because they’re very appreciate of these services,” librarian Jennifer Franz said.
Chronicle Crumbs
• Coppell High School’s varsity soccer teams faced Allen’s teams in a doubleheader on Friday to open the playoffs. Unfortunately, the girls lost by a score of 3-1, and then the boys ended up on the wrong end of a 2-0 shutout.
• The Coppell Chamber of Commerce’s 10-month Leadership Coppell program is designed to “inspire, grow, and unite high-quality leadership in our community.” The 2022-2023 edition begins Aug. 19; the application deadline is April 29.
• I made my sons walk with me to the Farmers Market on Saturday morning. As we were perusing the vendors’ booths, one of them said something that sounded like, “Look, Dad — African big nuts!” I whipped my head around to figure out what on Earth he was talking about. Then I told him, “Those are called beignets.”
(By the way, those Yatab Mandazi beignets were delicious. Go get some.)
Community Calendar
Red Cross blood drives: The Red Cross will draw blood at two Coppell churches this week — First United Methodist between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, followed by Rejoice Lutheran between noon and 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
Ripcord: Theatre Coppell will present David Lindsay-Abaire’s play at the Coppell Arts Center this weekend and the following weekend. Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays.
Coppell Connected — Neighbors Helping Neighbors: On April 23, Coppell residents are encouraged to provide assistance to their neighbors with home maintenance and repairs. April 1 is the deadline to sign up as a volunteer.
Pickle Fest: Whether you’re an advanced pickleball player or you’ve never tried the sport, you’re invited to this April 9 event at the Wagon Wheel Tennis and Pickleball Center.
Dog Days Fashion Show and Adoption Event: Registration is required to have your dog participate in the April 9 fashion show at the Cherie and Jim Walker Performance Pavilion outside the Coppell Arts Center. Anyone can attend for free.
Run to Fund: The Coppell ISD Education Foundation’s 5K race isn’t until May 7, but you can the “early bird” rate if you register this week. The foundation fulfills teachers’ grant requests with money that can’t be recaptured by the state.