Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 15
Council Raises Cemetery Fees by Thousands • Max Price OK’d for Expanded Justice Center • Funding Secured for 121 Deceleration Lane • City Will Pay for Silver Line Improvements
The Special Olympian who lives in my house and several of his peers have been huffing and puffing at Andrew Brown Park East for the past few weeks in preparation for the Coppell 5K on Saturday morning. Staged by Brad Linder and his team at Get You in Shape, this annual event is the largest fundraiser for Coppell Special Olympics. The Coppell Chronicle is a proud sponsor of the 5K, so I’ll have a booth in the park on Saturday. See you there?
Council Raises Cemetery Fees by Thousands
The price of a plot at Coppell’s cemetery is going way up, especially for non-residents.
The standard price of an in-ground plot at Rolling Oaks Memorial Center has been $2,500, with Coppell residents paying a discounted fee of $2,000. But on Tuesday, the City Council raised those rates to $5,500 for residents and $10,000 for non-residents.
Historically, prices at the city-owned cemetery have been way below market rates. That has led to Rolling Oaks becoming a regional amenity, attracting interest from families with no connections to Coppell.
(See “Coppell Cemetery Filled With Non-Residents” in Vol. 4, No. 49, and “Cemetery’s Policies to be Gravely Revised” in Vol. 5, No. 8.)
As proposed by city staff, the fees would have been raised to $5,500 for residents and $7,000 for non-residents. Those prices were among other changes to the city’s master fee schedule that were part of the council’s consent agenda, which meant they could have been approved without debate. But Council Member Jim Walker pulled the item for individual consideration, because he didn’t think the non-resident pricing was high enough.
Assistant Director of Community Experiences Sheri Belmont said the proposed fees were based on research the staff and a consultant had done since the council’s last discussion in April. She said there are three cemeteries within a 16-mile radius of Rolling Oaks, and their prices for in-ground plots are between $3,000 and $11,000.
When Council Member Ramesh Premkumar pointed out the “huge jump” in the residents’ rate, Belmont went back to the market research. She said a small cemetery near Coppell “with no amenities and no irrigation” charges at least $3,000.
Other council members were more focused on the prices for non-residents. Mayor Wes Mays said the difference between $7,000 and $5,500 wasn’t big enough. Walker and Mayor Pro Tem Don Carroll agreed, and Carroll pointed out that it wouldn't be much different from the established price structure — a 21.4 percent discount for residents instead of 20 percent.
Belmont told the council that non-residents are key to the cemetery’s long-term sustainability, because “we do not have enough residents in the City of Coppell that are choosing Rolling Oaks as their final resting place.” But the prevailing sentiment among the council was that they wanted to stem the tide of non-residents filling up the cemetery while shoring up its finances.
“What I’m hearing is, we’ve been losing money [on] every plot we’ve sold,” Walker said. “With a perpetuity commitment, with a cemetery, we have to recapture that; we have to get ahead of that again.”
All of these comments were made during the council’s work session. During their formal meeting, Walker made a motion to amend the master fee schedule so that the price for non-residents would be $10,000 instead of $7,000. His motion was approved unanimously.
Max Price OK’d for Expanded Justice Center
Coppell’s cops will soon be able to breathe easier in a space with more breathing room.
On Tuesday, the City Council approved a guaranteed maximum price of nearly $5.4 million for improvements to the Coppell Justice Center. Among those improvements will be upgrades to the men’s and women’s locker rooms.
“Both locker rooms do not have adequate ventilation, which causes mold problems, odors, and ultimately, officer complaints,” Police Chief Danny Barton and Capital Programs Administrator Jamie Brierton wrote in a 2023 memo to the council.