Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 16
Rehab Grants Program Appears to be Over • Gunfire Ruins Quiet Night at Home • Coppell Hires Claw Truck to Collect Debris • New Parking Rules Ignored on Ruby Road
This newsletter has added a lot of paid subscribers lately, so this is a good time to remind everyone that you have access to the archive on the Coppell Chronicle’s website, if you want to review any editions that were published before you signed up.
My partners at Substack allow me to create tabs on the website that pertain to recurring topics, including three that will be mentioned this week:
Rehab Grants Program Appears to be Over
The Coppell City Council is not inclined to spend more money on home renovations, in the short term or the long term.
Following the advice of its Future Oriented Approach to Residential Development Task Force, the council in February allocated $100,000 to residential rehabilitation grants. The pilot program generated 651 unique applications, and the money was split among the 13 quickest applicants on a first-come, first-served basis. That left 638 individuals or couples frustrated and disappointed.
“One thing that the pilot program showed is that there is a need and desire in the community for something,” Mayor Wes Mays said Saturday.
The council got together for a retreat on Saturday morning, when the first item on their agenda was a discussion of the grants program’s future. The $100,000 came from the $10.2 million the city received from the federal government under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). A majority of the council did not want to reassign any of the remaining ARPA dollars toward more grants, and none of our elected officials seemed interested in funding the program through local property taxes and sales taxes.
“I’m not hearing much support for using public funds for private purposes,” Mays said.
Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Nevels was the loudest proponent for spending more of the “free money” Coppell received from the feds on rehab grants. Nevels pointed out that the council allocated $2.75 million of those funds toward a pair of programs benefiting businesses, but less than 4 percent of that amount was dedicated to the program benefiting homeowners.
“Why not give a little more love to our citizens?” Nevels asked.
Council Member Don Carroll presented a counterpoint: The ARPA funds were intended to offset the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses were forced to shut down. Carroll also didn’t like putting city staffers in the position of picking winners and losers, and there would still be losers no matter how much money was reallocated.
“We have a hole we can’t possibly fill,” Carroll said.
During their May 28 meeting, the council approved spending the remaining $1.28 million worth of ARPA funds on nearly 30 line items. The most expensive of those is $420,000 for a veterans memorial. The list also includes $50,000 for new lobby furniture at The CORE, $12,000 for a new diving board, and $40,000 for a pickleball feasibility study. Feel free to peruse the list:
If the council had gone a different direction on Saturday, they would have had to undo part of what they approved on May 28. During Saturday’s debate, Council Member Jim Walker said the council should stick with their decision to spend the ARPA funds on projects that benefit the entire community.
“That’s already a huge win,” Walker said.
Director of Community Development Mindi Hurley has proposed spending $1 million from the city’s general fund ($200,000 annually for five years) on residential rehab grants. Until Saturday morning, I thought this proposal would be part of the budget for fiscal 2025, which begins this October; actually, this proposal wasn’t going to begin until fiscal 2026. But that’s a moot point, because the council clearly does not favor that proposal.
In the short term, Council Member Ramesh Premkumar worried that if the council did not fund more rehab grants with ARPA dollars, then the pilot program would be perceived as a failure and the council would be perceived as not listening to their constituents. This was Walker’s response to those concerns: “We’ll just get a hailstorm of criticism no matter what we do.”
Gunfire Ruins Quiet Night at Home
A stray bullet entered a Coppell woman’s home recently.
I spoke to this woman on Saturday afternoon. At her request, I am leaving her name out of this article, because she certainly didn’t ask for such notoriety. The incident happened late in the evening of June 1, when she and her adult daughter were watching TV.