Hello District 7,

I hope your Fourth of July was filled with fun, family and fireworks. Although I hope you were enjoying the fireworks at Firewheel Town Center and not setting them off yourself. Over the holiday weekend, the Garland Police Department’s firework task force of 10 officers and three fire marshals were busy enforcing Garland’s firework ordinance. The task force issued 50 citations and seized 800 pounds of illegal fireworks. Also, celebratory gunshot calls during the Fourth were down due largely to the city’s awareness campaign.

Our biggest topic of discussion on council this month has been the parking of commercial vehicles in residential areas. Please see the slides from our July 15 discussion here: https://bit.ly/2Z73qnP. The slides provide a history of housing development and zoning ordinances in the city from 1942 to the present. Look at slides 27-44, and decide whether those vehicles shown should be 1) allowed to park on public streets, or 2) allowed to park in private driveways. I encourage you to provide your feedback on this topic to me via my council email address at council7@garlandtx.gov.

To help enforce parking restrictions and other violations, the Code Enforcement department will begin longer enforcement hours on weekdays from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM beginning August 4. This will add additional after-hours enforcement to catch violations such as sidewalk encroachments, trailers parked on the street, oversized vehicles parked in residential areas, parking on unimproved surfaces, and overcrowding and home occupation violations which occur during non-business hours. Also, this additional enforcement will be accomplished by rearranging schedules of existing staff at no additional cost to the Garland taxpayer.

Come to the groundbreaking of the new Central Park dog park August 1 at 9:00 AM. This long awaited project is finally underway and scheduled to be complete by the end of the year. Also last month, the city received requests for proposals to convert the methane Hinton Landfill produces to usable energy rather than flaring it off.This will provide an additional source of revenue for the city and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses. 

Finally, the city should receive the final master plans for the library system, park system and trail network within the next month. These documents will help guide the council to improve and expand these quality of life programs through the next decade and beyond.

As always, I encourage you to reach out and contact me if you have a compliment, concern or complaint. Contact me at 713-677-4999 or council7@garlandtx.gov