City’s New Website
December 15, 2007
The City of Cedar Hill has a new website! The new site is more visually appealing and highlights the natural beauty of Cedar Hill.
It also is organized in a way to make it easier for you to find what you are looking for.
In fact, you don’t even have to look. Just click on the Notify Me link and you can sign up to receive emails on important events in the city.
3 Cities Weigh Options For Cedar Hill Animal Shelter’s Future
October 12, 2007
At the last City Council meeting, we were briefed on different options for addressing the shortcomings of our current animal shelter.
Before drafting plans, Quorum assessed the shelter based on professional analysis as well as comment from staff and residents. The firm initially recommended tripling the shelter’s size, at a cost of $4.14 million, but city officials balked at the price. All four designs cut the first proposal’s space and cost by nearly half.
Source: Dallas Morning News.
Cedar Hill Microchip Rule Aims To Reduce Lost Pets
October 7, 2007
An interesting article about some of the new changes we are making at our Animal Shelter. These changes are in response to the growing desire among residents to increased animal control.
From now on, if Fido gets caught roaming in Cedar Hill, Duncanville or DeSoto, he’ll be required to carry ID – between his shoulder blades.
The Tri-City Animal Shelter, which serves the three cities, on Monday joined the growing trend of requiring impounded animals to have identifying microchips implanted before owners can reclaim them.
Source: Dallas Morning News
Community Wide Clean Up
September 22, 2007
Keep Cedar Hill Beautiful is sponsoring a Community Wide Clean Up.We need you to help clean up litter along roadways in Cedar Hill at this event.Saturday, October 20, 20079:00 AM – 11:00 AMThe event starts at City Hall, 502 Cedar Street.A hot dog lunch provided by Rotary of Cedar Hill follows this event, starting at 11:00 AM.This is a great event for students to receive community service hours. For more information, contact Stacey Graves at (972) 291-5100, Ext 1094.
Welcome to Cedar Hill
June 28, 2007
I had the opportunity to attend a block party this past weekend in one of Cedar Hill’s neighborhoods. The folks who lived on this block sat out chairs, set up tables and cooked hot dogs. An ice chest contained bottled water and soft drinks. Children played outside with each other as the adults visited.
I really enjoy those events. It is nice to see neighbors making an effort to get to know each other. This type of community spirit is refreshing.
It also gave me the opportunity to talk with residents about any concerns they had about Cedar Hill. Most people I talked to were pleased with Cedar Hill and its direction. But one concern was repeated by several of the neighbors — code enforcement. Read more
The Problem of Foreclosures
June 13, 2007
Yesterday, I attended a Foreclosure Summit sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The summit was entitled, “Preserving Homeownership: Addressing the Foreclosure Issue” and it provided a lot of good information.
Foreclosure and mortgage fraud are two separate issues — both of which are a concern to cities. The truth is that most foreclosures occur without any fraud. Changes in employment, personal issues or a change in the economy all contribute to foreclosures.
The widespread use of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) have also contributed in recent year. It is almost becoming an epidemic and it is not limited to Texas.
Drilling Operations North of Wildwood Subdivision
March 30, 2007
In mid-March, many Wildwood residents received an offer from the Harding Company and Petrocasa Energy to lease the homeowners’ mineral rights. It appears that the preferred drilling site is just north of the western portion of Wildwood.
The prospect of drilling near residences has caused understandable concern among some of the residents. I wanted to address some of the issues involved to help keep those affected informed.
Cedar Hill Ordinances
Simply put, current Cedar Hill ordinances prohibit drilling in residentially zoned areas. Drilling is only allowed in three zones:
- Commercial zones
- Industrial zones; and
- Industrial Park zones.
Before any drilling can be conducted in those zones, the operator must go through a permitting process through our Planning and Zoning Department. To date, neither the Harding Company or Petrocasa Energy have started the permitting process.
City Ponders Hows, Whys of Saving Trees
January 25, 2007
By LOYD BRUMFIELD / Today Newspapers
It sounds easy on paper, crafting a tree ordinance. But as the city of Cedar Hill is finding out, ironing out the details and putting it into practice will be a long, time-consuming chore.
The city council and other members of the city’s staff held a workshop Jan. 18 at the Cedar Hill Recreation Center in an effort to get educated on the hows, whys and do’s and don’ts of a protective tree ordinance - something that many residents have long called for.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people in other cities, and each one tells me, ‘If you’re going to do this, you’re going to need a full-time person to monitor it,’” Planning Director Rod Tyler told the council.
Council member Wade Emmert asked him if he was going to include that suggestion in his next budget request, and Tyler said he was hoping the Parks and Recreation Department would hire an arborist.
The Jan. 18 meeting was held basically to get council members familiar with the language involved, the purpose of the ordinance and the path to get it approved.
Tyler and his staff constructed a purpose statement for the ordinance that calls for protecting a “diminishing natural resource (native and adapted trees), to balance the needs of land development with the goals of preserving mature trees, encourage the planting of trees to replace those lost due to land development and provide a means to ‘mitigate’ the loss of Protected Trees due to land development.”
Council members and Mayor Rob Franke were receptive to the creation of an ordinance, but many worried about the longterm costs.
“What I’ve seen so far seems too restrictive,” Council member Greg Patton said. “Overall I like it, but I’m concerned about the cost, because that’s going to be passed on to buyers.”
Tyler did not try to sugarcoat things.
“We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars (for developers),” he said. “And if your lot is particularly big, it could get into the hundreds of thousands.”
Protected trees are defined as any species of tree that is 8 inches or more in diameter, measured 4 feet above the ground and don’t belong to a few species of trees that have undesirable characteristics such as weak wood, are generally short-lived or have destructive habits, such as wild-growing, invasive roots systems.
The 8-inch number is just a rough figure and the city can change it to whatever it wants, Tyler said.
“How about 30 inches?” Patton said, drawing laughs.
Trees that branch out immediately from the ground, rather than sprouting a trunk and branches, would generally not be protected, Tyler said.
“Then the question is, is it a tree or a bush?” he said.
Developers would have several mitigation options in order to protect trees, Tyler said, including transplanting protected trees, planting smaller trees, preserving groves of smaller trees and cash payments to a reforestation fund for the city to use to replant trees.
“What if the transplanted tree dies?” Public Information Officer Corky Brown asked.
Tyler said it was doubtful very many developers would choose to transplant existing trees.
“Transplanted trees need a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of people to move it,” Tyler said. “The older the tree, the bigger its root zone, so I don’t think you’ll see this option a lot because it will be expensive.”
But if developers opt for replacing bigger trees with smaller ones, they’d have to do it “at a rate that is twice the total caliper inches of Protected Trees to be removed.”
If developers replace bigger trees with so many smaller ones that a congestive situation is created, some of those trees can be given to the city for planting on other lots, Tyler said in reply to a question raised by Council member Makia Epie.
Smaller trees to replace bigger ones must be described as a “large canopy” tree as listed in the city’s landscape ordinance and must be a minimum of 3 caliper inches, although the city can adjust those numbers when it sits down to craft the ordinance, Tyler said.
If the developer chooses to pay cash to the city’s reforestation fund, the city must come up with an appropriate fee, Tyler said, saying that his figure of $150 per caliper inch of protected trees removed was something he “picked out of the air.”
Developers would be asked to submit a tree protection plan when they platted their land, and it would have to be approved before any work or land clearing could start.
In order to ease costs for developers, no tree survey would be required, Tyler suggested, because it would save them from having to hire engineers and surveyors.
“I can tell you that it does get expensive,” said Franke, an engineer.
Instead of a tree survey, developers would simply have to list the trees on their property and say which ones would be protected, which ones wouldn’t and how they plan to mitigate any destruction of protected trees.
“I have competing opinions,” Council member Wade Emmert said. “On the one hand, I want to preserve our natural beauty as much as possible, but I’m also concerned about landowners’ rights. Generally speaking, everybody says they want to preserve trees until they’re the ones who have to do it.”
Emmert added that he was appreciative of the work the staff and Mayor Pro Tem Cory Spillman have done in working to construct an ordinance.
Franke supported the idea of a tree ordinance.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “We don’t want the city to become, as people have called it, ‘Concrete Hill.’”
Tyler emphasized that any city ordinance would be largely aesthetic in nature rather than environmental, and Patton wondered about preserving trees that may be hundreds of years old.
“It seems like you’re not really saving Old Granddad you’re just replacing it,” he said.
Franke said any ordinance would not be geared toward stopping development.
“If Old Granddad is in the middle of where Dillard’s wants to go, then Old Granddad’s out of here,” he said.
Council Optimistic About Cutting Sign Clutter
January 25, 2007
By LOYD BRUMFIELD / Today Newspapers
Signs, signs, everywhere a sign, blocking out the scenery - generally causing consternation among citizens and officials alike.
The Cedar Hill city council expressed interest in doing away with those temporary signs drivers see every few feet along streets and highways, advertising everything from homebuilders to get-rich quick schemes.
In their place, the council hopes to craft an ordinance that implements a kiosk-style sign program in which temporary signage is displayed in professionally designed structures at different locations around the city.
Code enforcement officer Stacey Graves presented a program on kiosks at the Jan. 9 council meeting and had a receptive audience.
Any proposed ordinance would prohibit so-called directional signs in favor of free-standing structures that can promote local businesses and city events, Graves said.
The city would contract with an advertising company to construct the kiosks, install and maintain the signage and assist the city in determining where the kiosks would be placed, Graves said.
Under current ordinances, businesses must pay a $10 permit fee for signs, and they must be 10 feet apart from each other, at least 3 feet from the curb and 50 feet from any intersection.
Cedar Hill collected $10,400 in sign permit fees in 2006, Graves said.
In a kiosk program, businesses would pay the sign company for space on the kiosk, and the company in turn would give a designated portion of that amount to the city for permit fees.
Council member Wade Emmert expressed strong support for a kiosk ordinance.
“I think it’s much better than the current row of signs you see,” he said. “They’re ugly, they’re unsightly. Those big trucks park half on the road and half off it, and it’s dangerous.”
Emmert asked Graves if there was a way for average citizens to use the kiosks to advertise garage sales and things like that.
Unless something changes in the ordinance the city comes up with, individuals would have to apply for a sign permit, Graves said.
“I think we should make some concessions for average citizens to advertise their garage sales,” he said. “I think if they don’t remove them, we could probably do something about that, but I don’t think we should shut our citizens out of the process.”
Graves was asked how homebuilders felt.
“Some are for it, others are against it,” she said.
High-Tech Council Member Keeps in Touch
May 19, 2006
By LOYD BRUMFIELD
News Editor/Today Newspapers
Wade Emmert has always had a desire to stay abreast of high technology and its rapidly changing nature.
When he was first elected to the Cedar Hill City Council in May 2004, he wanted an easy way for his constituents to stay in touch with him, so he developed the first blog operated by a public official in the Best Southwest - and maybe even in Texas at the time.
“I’ve always been interested in technology and community service, and having a blog about the city council just seemed like the logical thing to do,” he said.
Emmert’s blog, www.wadeemmert.com, has grown into a site that gets hundreds of hits a week. His latest innovation for the site, a podcast element, has drawn 200 people who have listened to part one of a two-part interview with Mayor Rob Franke.
The blog offers biographical information, archives, links to the city’s site and other pertinent information, contact information and a section for public comment.
People can also sign up for e-mail notification when Emmert updates the site.
“I never expected such a response,” Emmert said. “I get comments now on just about everything I post. Almost all are positive, but sometimes we get into the discussion of issues.”
On a regular basis, Emmert updates the blog with links to issues that impact the city, whether it’s new from the latest council meeting or information about developments in the school finance issue.
School finance reform drew a passionate response, with some saying the latest efforts are a step in the right direction, and others saying give less money to public schools and more to private schools.
Podcasts are a relatively recent development, thanks to the profusion of iPods and other like audio and video products.
“I wanted to do more than just put city council meetings online,” Emmert said, adding that part two of the mayor’s interview is coming soon, and he would also like to talk to former mayors, members of the city staff and other community leaders about being subjects of future podcasts.
Right now, he doesn’t plan to turn meetings into podcasts, fearing their dry nature might not be practical.
“I want to inform or entertain people,” Emmert said. “Listening to a dry city council meeting just doesn’t seem like the way to do it.”
Eventually, Emmert wants to archive the podcasts, burn them on discs and bury them in a time capsule slated for construction at the new government center.
“That way, when people open the capsule 50 years from now, they’ll get an accurate historical record straight from the people,” he said. “You can’t do that with tapes, but as long as there are computers still around to play the medium, we’ll be OK.”
Emmert’s site also supports RSS technology, or “Really Simple Syndication,” meaning people can access news feeds from the site without actually visiting it.
“People can access a feed and they can view it in a number of different programs and they don’t have to keep visiting the website,” Emmert said.
The councilman spent about 20 hours - not all at once - constructing the framework of the site and getting it running, but the work of updating it doesn’t take much time, he said.
As of now, he’s the only member of the council to take the plunge into the blogosphere.
“There are people who have websites during campaigns, but it’s important for me to be able to stay in touch continuously with people,” Emmert said.
Making Progress on Code Enforcement
January 25, 2006
Last year, the Mayor created a Citizens Advisory Committee (which I was honored to Chair) to review proposed changes to the City’s code enforcement regulations. Those regulations were adopted in October and city staff has been doing a great job implementing them. We are beginning to see improvement.
Here are some before and after pictures of one of the worst offending properties:
We still have work to do, but we are making progress.
Property Codes Get A Final OK
October 21, 2005
By LOYD BRUMFIELD
News Editor/Today Newspapers
Several months of meetings and workshops with citizens groups came to an end Oct. 11 when the Cedar Hill City Council unanimously updated the city’s property maintenance regulations and minimum housing requirements.
“It’s a special night for neighborhoods,” said Council member Wade Emmert, who headed a citizens advisory committee dedicated to property maintenance and housing. “It is my belief that no matter which side of the highway you live on, everybody is entitled to safe, clean neighborhoods.”
Emmert’s comments drew applause from the crowd during the short meeting. He also thanked committee members and the city staff.
“At the end of four separate meetings, there was a unanimous show of support adopting the minimum housing standards,” he said.
Council member Daniel Haydin, who seconded Emmert’s motion, was the first to make a motion to approve property maintenance regulations.
“The staff took a lot of initiative in working with other cities trying to find common ground on code enforcement,” Mayor Rob Franke said. “Johnny (Kendro) and Stacey (Graves, code enforcement officers), we appreciate all your hard work.”
Franke pointed out that this year’s budget calls for hiring a third code enforcement officer, which illustrates the city’s commitment to basic standards of living.
Most of the minimum housing requirements are common-sense regulations, including ensuring that homes and businesses be free of electrical and plumbing hazards.
In addition, the new regulations require that every residential dwelling unit (with the exception of efficiency apartments) have a minimum square footage of 120 feet and include a kitchen, bathroom and at least one bedroom
The property maintenance regulations also include requirements that properties be maintained in a “clean, safe and sanitary condition,” and yards and business areas must be free of “rubbish, garbage, junk or waste which constitute a public nuisance or which are contrary to the public health, safety and welfare.”
Also, residents are now required to keep their fences in good condition, although they are not required to have fences. Under new regulations, any missing or broken slats must be replaced or repaired, and leaning portions must be straightened.
Overgrowth of trees and shrubs must be curbed and can’t create hazards or obstructions, and residents and business owners are expected to keep their properties free from insect and rodent infestation, the new codes state.
Loyd Brumfield can be reached at cedarhill@todaynewspapers.net.
City Council Appoints Neighborhood Advisory Board
August 8, 2005
An edited version of this article appears in the Fall 2005 quarterly, Cedar Hill Highlights.
When the City of Cedar Hill created the Neighborhood Services Program their purpose was to ensure the vitality of our neighborhoods and to see that residents were informed, educated and had a voice at the city level. With these goals in mind the City Council adopted a resolution creating the Neighborhood Advisory Board.
The nine-member board consists of citizens who have resided in Cedar Hill for a minimum of two years. Representation is based on the geographic distribution of population in the four quadrants resulting from the intersection of U.S. Highway 67 and Beltline Road, with two members representing each quadrant and one at-large position. The board meets the second Monday of each month in the conference room of City Hall, located at 502 Cedar Street in downtown.
The Neighborhood Advisory Board will deal with issues that impact the entire community, creating, developing and implementing programs that will encourage, support and strengthen our neighborhoods.
“The City Council recognizes that our neighborhoods are the heart of our city,” said Council Member Wade Emmert. “Surely, when our neighborhoods are involved, indifference is not an answer.”
The board will also assist in the creation of neighborhood leadership programs and provide oversight and input regarding city services as they relate to neighborhoods.
It is important to note that the board will not limit the right of any individual Cedar Hill resident from approaching the Mayor and City Council or city staff on any issue, nor will the board affect the status or autonomy of existing neighborhood and homeowners’ associations or Public Improvement Districts (PIDs). These will continue to serve as the voices of their residential areas.
Focus on our neighborhoods is essential to the continued success and quality of life in Cedar Hill.
“Neighborhoods are an integral part of community life,” noted Councilman Emmert, “and it is vitally important that we come together as a community to strengthen that which binds us all.”
Budget Highlights
August 4, 2005
The 2006 Budget has been finalized. We will officially vote on it in an upcoming meeting, but for all intents and purposes, it is final. This year we had a number of important issues to tackle. I discussed some of these issues in one of my prior posts. See Refocus. I think we were successful in addressing some of the most important needs. Here are some of the key points:
More Police. We added 5 more police officers. Adding more officers puts more officers on the streets more of the time and will support our public safety as the city grows over the next year.
More Firefighters. We added 4 more firefighters and will purchase a new fire engine. More firefighters and new equipment gives us the ability to respond with firefighters and paramedics from the same station at the same time.
More Code Enforcement. We added a new code enforcement officer and will purchase computer software that will help all our officers track violations. The number of violations our officers must track can be overwhelming at times. A new officer and software will give them much needed resources to implement the vision for our neighborhoods. More stringent code standards will be implemented in the next few months. See Code Enforcement Report, Residents Mull New Ordinances, and City Wants Input on New Codes.
Drainage and Transportation. We set aside $100,000 (in addition to last year’s $125,000) to help find solutions to the drainage issues facing some of our neighborhoods. We also continued our practice of allocating funds to help offset the costs of future road construction projects.
There are many other important aspects of this year’s budget, but those are the highlights. I hope you will support us as we work toward the vision for our city.
Winding Hollow HOA Meeting
June 30, 2005
I was honored to speak at the Winding Hollow homeowners association meeting on Thursday. I acknowledged the positive things happening in Cedar Hill, but I also discussed the challenges that lay ahead.
You can hear my comments using the audio player below.
Welcome!
My name is Wade Emmert and I am a Council Member for the City of Cedar Hill. This web site is a way for me to share with you some of my thoughts about issues important to the City.
It is my sincerest goal to be a good steward of the citizens’ trust. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve you.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at Wade.Emmert@cedarhilltx.com or (214) 740-3164.