Recap of City Issues - February 1, 2008

Laurie Mullens, Mayor Costa, other staff members and myself took part in a video shoot for the Mayor's state of the city presentation in February. As we've done the last several years, the Flower Mound and Lewisville Chambers and the HVBA are joining together for a regional state of the city luncheon on February 19. This year each Mayor's presentation will be via a video. We also plan to use our video as a marketing and tool for the city.

Wes Nienhuser, Joey Hardin and Frank Furche worked on repairing a retaining wall at Pilot Knoll.

Wes Nienhuser, Joey Hardin and Frank Furche are near completion on camp site repair.

South crew was busy with ball field renovations at Unity Park this week.   They cut all the sod out of the red field in order to prepare the ball fields for games.

South crew repaired playground equipment at Kid’s Kastle at Unity Park.

Parks staff put up signs and tarps at Unity.

North crew removed debris from the entrance of Wichita Forest this week.

North crew has been chipping brush at Copperas Branch Park.

North crew pulled together as a team for the Library Foundation and relocated library books from an off-site storage area.

Pedro Miranda took time out to “spiff up” the Inland Trail for Mayor Dianne Costa’s video shoot this week.

The gatehouse at Copperas is currently under renovations and being remodeled because of the flood damage this past summer.

Wes Nienhuser went above and beyond the call of duty this week.  He took time out of his day to help build balloon weights for the Father/Daughter dance.  We greatly appreciate Wes going the “extra mile.”  Thanks, Wes!

This month Corporal Roppolo went to Razor Elementary on Career day and spoke to approximately five hundred students about Safety and Police work. 

Two sixth grade students participated in the Scared Straight Program conducted by Corporal Roppolo.

The Animal Care Unit recently entered a contest - "Bright Ideas" - on how to promote adoptable pet videos and your group.  We were one of 100 selected to win a video-enabled digital camera.  This contest was sponsored by PetFinder.com, which is the website the Animal Care Unit uses to help adopt our found pets.  This video camera will help showcase those adoptable pets on that website.

 This week, the police department responded to 121 calls for service, made 83 traffic contacts, made 4 arrests, responded to 2 traffic accidents and performed 450 community policing activities.

The Highland Village Fire Department had36 calls for service the week of January 24th – 31st.  This included:  11 medical emergencies, 1 gas leak, 1 motor vehicle accident, 1 injured person, 2 public assists, 3 commercial inspections, 2 structure fires, 3 mutual aid calls, 7 fire alarm calls, and 5 odor investigations.

The Fire Department welcomed three new Firefighter/EMT’s this week to their staff.  Matthew Luttrell has been volunteering at the HVFD since February 2006 and is currently enrolled in paramedic school.  Amber Wade has been an EMT for several years and is close to completing her paramedic certification.  Tony Sorsby has been volunteering at the HVFD for two and half years.  He is also attending paramedic school.  The Fire Department is very pleased to have them joining their staff.

Employee participation in taking the Health Assessment at myuhc.com is still continuing.  Forty-one employees have turned in their confirmations.  The cut off is February 29, 2008 so employees who haven’t participated yet don’t forget!

Vanesa Childers and Jana Onstead worked with Tom Rollins to work out some access issues with Sage/Abra eRecruiter for the online application set up. Tom Rollins has been facilitating the set up for the network drops to the stations so they can be connected.  Entries and testing can start now and we hope to have it set up and running soon. 

On Thursday, Chief Tatum and Assistant Chief Collier attended the weekly construction meeting for the fire station.

Assistant Fire Chief Collier was interviewed by a representative from the Messenger regarding a feature article on new individuals to our community.

Rhoda Savage attended a retirement celebration held in the Allen Senior Citizen Center honoring the accomplishments of the Library Director for the City of Allen.

Sgt. Kimberlin completed and graduated from the 93rd School of Police Supervision.  This was a month long supervision school held in Arlington.

Chief Ed O'Bara attended a committee meeting with the Advocacy Center.

Chief Ed O'Bara attended a monthly board meeting for the Advocacy Center.

Mayor Costa attended the TML Elected Officials Conference from February 1-3 at the Marriott Las Colinas in Irving.

Michael Leavitt, City Manager            
02/01/08