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Hopefuls Address Cedar Hill Growth

May 3, 2007

By JON NIELSEN / The Dallas Morning News

Three candidates are attempting to unseat incumbent Makia Epie for Place 5 in the May 12 Cedar Hill City Council election.

Jason Russell, Wirt “Stoney” Jackson III and Valerie Banks are challenging Mr. Epie, and while all the candidates agree that the city’s growth is the chief issue in this election, each has a goal to couple progress with preservation.

Mr. Russell, a 33-year-old managing partner of Panera Bread, chairs boards to attract and retain retail businesses in Cedar Hill. But while he seeks out commercial development, he doesn’t want to ignore the city’s scenery.

“This is Cedar Hill – it’s not Concrete Hill – and I want to make sure we maintain that distinct character,” he said, pointing out the vast acreage of parkland and cedar-topped hills for which the city is named.

Mr. Jackson, a 41-year-old television news editor, moved to Cedar Hill four years ago. He said the natural landscape attracted him to the area, and now he, too, wants to see that it isn’t lost to development.

“The city is going to grow, but with that growth we can still be responsible; we can still protect our environment,” he said.

Mrs. Banks, an insurance agent, said she wants to increase police and fire protection in the city, and do it with a commercial tax base that doesn’t overwhelm taxpayers’ pocketbooks.

“As we get more businesses to move into the community, hopefully that will help fulfill the gaps we need to be able to hire additional police and fire that we need and not make it a burden on our citizens,” she said.

Mrs. Banks, 50, has served on several city boards and is a Cedar Hill school board member. Although her school board term expires in May 2008, she will be released from those duties if she wins the council seat.

Mr. Epie, a Cedar Hill resident for 18 years, works as a hearing officer for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. In his 12 years on the council – he was elected the city’s first minority councilman in 1995 – he helped institute a long-term plan that will keep the city from growing out of control.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Epie said, he watched neighboring North Texas cities grow excessively.

“We looked at Arlington … on Interstate 20, you waited on the highway to get into the shopping center,” he said.

An independent study foretold of a similar growth explosion in Cedar Hill, which has a current population of about 43,000 but was projected to eventually reach 120,000.

“We did not like the picture we saw,” Mr. Epie said.

City leaders responded by restructuring zoning that will cap the city’s population at about 80,000.

Records show that two Place 5 candidates, Mr. Russell and Mr. Jackson, have had entanglements with the law.

Mr. Russell was 23 in 1997 when he pleaded guilty to a theft by check charge in Denton. He received deferred adjudication.

Mr. Jackson, a former Marine and Desert Storm veteran who attended classes at the University of North Texas in Denton, was sentenced to 18 months’ probation on a 1999 DWI charge out of Denton County.

“Once I got out of college and started working and things like that, my outlook on life really changed,” Mr. Jackson said. “That DWI was a really big wake-up call.”

Records also show that two months before the DWI, Mr. Jackson was arrested in Denton for criminal mischief. He said he did not recall the arrest.

In other council races, incumbent Wade Emmert, 37, is running unopposed for Place 3. And incumbent Mayor Rob Franke, 47, is trying to fend off write-in candidate Phillip Bielamowicz for his fifth term as the city’s mayor. Mr. Bielamowicz’s brother, Mark, was Cedar Hill’s mayor in the mid-1970s.

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