Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal opinion and is NOT made on behalf of the Town of St. Paul or any official town body. The above image is generated by ChatGPT. While I currently serve on the same council, this endorsement is based on my personal experience working with these individuals and does not reflect any expectation or promise related to council decisions.

Election Day is today, so be sure to visit Town Hall or any other polling location in the area to make your voice heard! Here is the repost of my endorsement:

Election season is here again in St. Paul, and two town council seats are up for grabs. After working closely with both individuals during my first year on the council, I am proud to endorse:

• Alderman Larry Nail for Seat 1

• Alderman David Dryden for Seat 2

✅ Larry Nail – Seat 1

Alderman Nail is a thoughtful, tech-savvy leader whose expertise in information technology and cybersecurity brings invaluable insight to the council—especially as we work to modernize and secure our town’s infrastructure.

He currently serves as the Senior Director of Worldwide Information Technology and Global Cybersecurity at Diodes Incorporated, a Plano-based semiconductor company. In this role, Larry oversees global strategy and infrastructure protection, while also mentoring and educating future professionals in the field.

Locally, he plays a key role in strengthening the town’s IT systems. His contributions to complex issues are consistently insightful, grounded in deep real-world experience.

✅ David Dryden – Seat 2

Alderman Dryden has been a steady and unifying presence on the council. He consistently helps us focus on collaboration and making real progress—especially when it comes to protecting St. Paul's financial health.

Professionally, David S. Dryden is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) and the Managing Partner of Insight Wealth Partners, LLC, a financial advisory firm based in Plano, Texas.

With over 30 years in financial services, he’s exceptionally qualified to lead our town toward smart, sustainable financial decisions.

It has been a true pleasure working with Aldermen Dryden and Nail. They are diligent, collaborative, and deeply committed to doing what’s best for our town.

If re-elected, I’m confident they will continue to serve St. Paul with integrity, thoughtfulness, and vision.

🗓️ Voting Info

Voting hours are from 7AM to 7PM.

St. Paul Location:
St. Paul Town Hall
2505 Butscher’s Block, St. Paul, TX 75098

You can vote at any Collin County early voting location.
Click here for the full voting location map →

📍 Note: Due to construction on Parker Road, Parker City Hall and Collin College may be good alternative locations.

• Email: stpaulpost@gmail.com

• Images generated and written with assistance from ChatGPT.

Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal opinion and is NOT made on behalf of the Town of St. Paul or any official town body. The above image is generated by ChatGPT. While I currently serve on the same council, this endorsement is based on my personal experience working with these individuals and does not reflect any expectation or promise related to council decisions.

Early voting is set to end next Tuesday, so be sure to visit Town Hall or any other polling location in the area to make your voice heard! Here is the repost of my endorsement:

Election season is here again in St. Paul, and two town council seats are up for grabs. After working closely with both individuals during my first year on the council, I am proud to endorse:

• Alderman Larry Nail for Seat 1

• Alderman David Dryden for Seat 2

✅ Larry Nail – Seat 1

Alderman Nail is a thoughtful, tech-savvy leader whose expertise in information technology and cybersecurity brings invaluable insight to the council—especially as we work to modernize and secure our town’s infrastructure.

He currently serves as the Senior Director of Worldwide Information Technology and Global Cybersecurity at Diodes Incorporated, a Plano-based semiconductor company. In this role, Larry oversees global strategy and infrastructure protection, while also mentoring and educating future professionals in the field.

Locally, he plays a key role in strengthening the town’s IT systems. His contributions to complex issues are consistently insightful, grounded in deep real-world experience.

✅ David Dryden – Seat 2

Alderman Dryden has been a steady and unifying presence on the council. He consistently helps us focus on collaboration and making real progress—especially when it comes to protecting St. Paul's financial health.

Professionally, David S. Dryden is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) and the Managing Partner of Insight Wealth Partners, LLC, a financial advisory firm based in Plano, Texas.

With over 30 years in financial services, he’s exceptionally qualified to lead our town toward smart, sustainable financial decisions.

It has been a true pleasure working with Aldermen Dryden and Nail. They are diligent, collaborative, and deeply committed to doing what’s best for our town.

If re-elected, I’m confident they will continue to serve St. Paul with integrity, thoughtfulness, and vision.

🗓️ Early Voting Info

Dates:

St. Paul Location:
St. Paul Town Hall
2505 Butscher’s Block, St. Paul, TX 75098

You can vote at any Collin County early voting location.
Click here for the full voting location map →

📍 Note: Due to construction on Parker Road, Parker City Hall and Collin College may be good alternative locations.

• Email: stpaulpost@gmail.com

• Images generated and written with assistance from ChatGPT.

Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal opinion and is NOT made on behalf of the Town of St. Paul or any official town body. The above image is generated by ChatGPT. While I currently serve on the same council, this endorsement is based on my personal experience working with these individuals and does not reflect any expectation or promise related to council decisions.

Election season is here again in St. Paul, and two town council seats are up for grabs. After working closely with both individuals during my first year on the council, I am proud to endorse:

• Alderman Larry Nail for Seat 1

• Alderman David Dryden for Seat 2

✅ Larry Nail – Seat 1

Alderman Nail is a thoughtful, tech-savvy leader whose expertise in information technology and cybersecurity brings invaluable insight to the council—especially as we work to modernize and secure our town’s infrastructure.

He currently serves as the Senior Director of Worldwide Information Technology and Global Cybersecurity at Diodes Incorporated, a Plano-based semiconductor company. In this role, Larry oversees global strategy and infrastructure protection, while also mentoring and educating future professionals in the field.

Locally, he plays a key role in strengthening the town’s IT systems. His contributions to complex issues are consistently insightful, grounded in deep real-world experience.

✅ David Dryden – Seat 2

Alderman Dryden has been a steady and unifying presence on the council. He consistently helps us focus on collaboration and making real progress—especially when it comes to protecting St. Paul's financial health.

Professionally, David S. Dryden is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) and the Managing Partner of Insight Wealth Partners, LLC, a financial advisory firm based in Plano, Texas.

With over 30 years in financial services, he’s exceptionally qualified to lead our town toward smart, sustainable financial decisions.

It has been a true pleasure working with Aldermen Dryden and Nail. They are diligent, collaborative, and deeply committed to doing what’s best for our town.

If re-elected, I’m confident they will continue to serve St. Paul with integrity, thoughtfulness, and vision.

🗓️ Early Voting Info

Dates:

St. Paul Location:
St. Paul Town Hall
2505 Butscher’s Block, St. Paul, TX 75098

You can vote at any Collin County early voting location.
Click here for the full voting location map →

📍 Note: Due to construction on Parker Road, Parker City Hall and Collin College may be good alternative locations.

• Email: stpaulpost@gmail.com

• Images generated and written with assistance from ChatGPT.

The Town Council has two meetings scheduled for this Friday. The first one is scheduled for 3:30PM and covers the resignation of the Town Secretary along with the appointments for one Town Council seat and two PnZ seats. 3.3.c is a result of the motion made from the last meeting.

The second meeting at 6:30PM covers the interviewing of a candidate for Town Administrator.

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Well, this Spring has certainly been an interesting one. Hopefully, you have all managed to stay at least somewhat dry. In any case, the June council meeting is set for 7:00 PM this Monday at Town Hall. Let’s take a look at the agenda:

The public hearing for 3990 is the first major item on tap for Monday. If you are interested in this topic I would highly recommend attending this meeting and having your voice heard. The next topic is regarding the collection of debris left over from our ever continuing storms this Spring. Item 6.2 is related to having a town-wide alert system that can be used for weather alerts. I hope to see you there!

In other news, the Alderman seat #1 vacancy has officially been listed on the town website. If you are interested in filling the Alderman vacancy, please follow the guidance on that page. It is a partial term that ends in May of 2025.

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We have a special meeting at 7:00 at Town Hall. During this meeting, the mayor pro tem will be voted in by the council. Think of this position as a backup for the mayor; they are a council member who can take over meetings when the mayor is unavailable. Additionally, their duties include signing financial documents for the town, ensuring that town business can proceed uninterrupted.

The middle section of the meeting will focus on removing the signing rights of the previous administration and transferring them to the mayor and one lucky council member. Who could it be? You will have to wait on the edge of your seats until the meeting to find out!

The last agenda item is presumably to discuss who will be able to access Town Hall in the future. Traditionally, and to my knowledge, city officials have been the only ones permitted to go in to the inner sanctum of town hall during normal business hours while the general public typically conducts business in the foyer.

There is also a PnZ meeting scheduled for Tuesday and here is the agenda for that:

It appears that proposed changes for several ordinances will be on tap for Tuesday. Specifically, ordinance 14-1 is the parking ordinance which describes the parking requirements for businesses. This has been modified to make it more clear and remove ambiguities that could make enforcement more difficult.

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We have two meetings this week for your viewing pleasure. The first one shown above is the Town Council Meeting from Monday, 5/13/24 which includes the swearing in of three council members.

Here are the main things that happened during this meeting:

• 8:25: Citizen comments: Town should record meetings and post Council/PnZ information packets online

• 39:14: Council members were sworn in

• 1:02:01: Alderman Seat 1 will need to be filled. The city will post the opening on the website. Want to try your hand at town politics, but don’t want to deal with those pesky elections? Well, now is your chance. Uncle Paul wants YOU to apply for our open Alderman Seat.

  

  
  

• 1:05:29: There are 2-3 PnZ seats that need to be filled as well. The openings will also be posted on the town website. We need your help to keep St. Paul rural!

• 1:06:45: Citizen ordinance feedback forms will need to be submitted with contact information. There will however, be a checkbox added that will be used to optionally keep your personal information confidential.

• 1:09:22: The proposed parking ordinance will be sent to PnZ for deliberation.

This next recording is from last week’s PnZ meeting. This is based on an audio recording since video was not available. Here are the main topics discussed in the meeting:

• 1:52: 774 Park Blvd was approved for joining lots

• 18:04: 3990 Lakeway plans to borrow parking spaces from neighboring businesses such as Goodfella’s and Country Club Cafe.

• 25:18: Other worship center is NOT relieving traffic issues

• 27:01: The timeline on the parking lot construction is unclear

• 28:48: Claimed a max of 110 people in each service

• 29:41: Property owner promised to not sell the lot with the proposed parking area

• 30:56: June 6th is the planned day for recommending to the council (thus far)

The PnZ information packet can be seen below.

#2 Records Request Attach

2.3MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

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Between an election, a little known PnZ meeting, and an upcoming council meeting this week, there is much to discuss. Given that, let’s take a look at the top three headlines:

Election Results

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank everyone for voting and supporting my campaign. Many of you took the time to tell others to vote for me, sometimes on social media and sometimes with your neighbors and friends. You also took time out of your days to show up at the polls and as a result the voter turnout was really impressive. Your votes resulted in a landslide victory for Kent and I. These are the results according to Fox4:

Kent and I are working on taking office as soon as possible and are eager to jump in and see what progress can be made. Your overwhelming positive responses and encouragement have not gone unnoticed and we are ready to serve the townspeople of St. Paul.

PnZ Meeting

On Monday May 6th, there was a PnZ meeting regarding the issuing of an SUP for the ICW (3990 Lakeway).

Unfortunately, I was caught unaware of this meeting and showed up late. Also, I was advised by a town staff member to not record the meeting because election equipment had been stored behind the council table. A copy of the audio recording the town makes has been requested and if it is received, I will post it here for others to be able to hear.

Regarding agenda item 3.2, it appears that a new concrete parking lot will be poured to accommodate more parking at the south end of the building. This will likely not be enough parking to satisfy ordinance 14-1. In the drawing that I saw, there were no parking stripes on the diagram so it is difficult to say how many spots the new lot plans to accommodate. Additionally, from the documents that I was able to view, there was no timeframe for when this parking lot would be poured.

The second part of the PnZ approved plan includes reassigning currently designated parking spots from the businesses at the building next door, 2260 Country Club Road, which currently houses Goodfellas Pizza and Country Club Cafe among several others. It is proposed that when the ICW needs overflow parking they will park in spaces at 2260. This will likely cause tenants at 2260 Country Club Road to lose business if their parking lot is full and their customers have to fight for a parking space on the street to support this recommendation.

The current thought is that this new parking lot / current parking space reassignment plan will be sent to the council for approval in June.

May Council Meeting Agenda

The next council meeting will take place this Monday, tomorrow, May 13th at Town Hall starting at 7:00 PM. There is another council meeting scheduled for Wednesday as well. Why, might you ask? Well, from looking at the agenda items it seems they are going to try to swear us in on Monday, but there is concern about not getting all of the necessary government paperwork completed so they have a backup meeting scheduled for Wednesday just in case. Hopefully the Wednesday meeting is not needed.

Here is the Agenda, for Monday’s meeting;

Yes, you read that correctly, Alderman Campbell has resigned and the council is looking for another person to fill that spot. This would be an excellent way to try out a position, as the term ends in May 2025.

It also looks like the Town Secretary is forming an exit strategy as well. After all of these agenda items, it appears that Kent and I will be sworn in.

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Election Day is finally upon us! Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote today at Town Hall from 7AM to 7PM.

Thanks to those who have supported our campaigns, we appreciate you all!

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Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote at Town Hall this week. In order to accommodate typical work schedules, Early Voting has extended hours from 7AM to 7PM during the last two remaining days: Monday and Tuesday. Election Day is May 4th and the hours are also 7AM to 7PM at Town Hall. The early voting schedule is shown below:

Thank you to everyone who has already gone out to vote and to those who have supported our campaigns, we appreciate you all!

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The St. Paul Town Council will hold a special meeting tomorrow, April 18th, at Town Hall. The purpose of this meeting is to address the agenda items that were skipped during the last meeting due to the extended discussion of the SUP request near Lakeview. The agenda is shown below:

The major development here is the appointment of Judge Terry Douglas. The necessity for a judge became apparent following the emergence of the ICW permit situation last year. This appointment is expected to empower the town to enforce codes, potentially mitigating the parking issues on Lakeway Drive.

Tax rates will also be a prominent topic, especially as residents have begun receiving their annual 10% property value increases. Any measures the town can take to alleviate the tax burden on residents would be welcomed. However, this may prove challenging, as it appears the town is planning to hire more staff, as indicated in the agenda.

The next block of agenda items consists mostly of administrative topics:

There is still a plan to add a second council meeting every month. To determine if that is really needed, it seems like the town would need to have some long term goals, then come up with a plan that satisfies those goals which would then be leveraged in order to determine the frequency of council meetings required.

As an aside, at the last council meeting it was mentioned that citizen ordinance suggestions were not being considered because the PnZ was swamped with SUP requests. However, the PnZ meeting was cancelled for this month. Perhaps a quorum could not be established, but in the interest of transparency, the town should have publicly declared the reason for the cancellation.

As always, Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote on May 4th at Town Hall. Early voting starts April 22nd and ends April 30th.

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A well run commercial/SUP property can and should be a boon to the community. But, when those businesses start encroaching on residential borders they start putting a burden on the residents. This could include noise, traffic, parking, an eyesore, or blinding lights in the middle of the night in what was once your serene and peaceful backyard that you worked incessantly for years to afford. There are many residents in St. Paul that are having to deal with these issues and they will only continue to increase if we take history as our instructor. Also, as Parker Road is expanded, investors will be inclined to come in and start flipping residential property into commercial-like properties. Commercial/SUP properties also bring in one more thing…concrete, and lots of it. In St. Paul, most of this concrete is used for parking lots. So, why is that a problem?

Well, imagine you have a small ditch in your yard that almost overflows when you get a heavy downpour. Now, imagine your commercial/SUP neighbor who is the only property on the hill above you decides to cover his entire 3 acres with what is effectively a parking lot. According to the Federal Highway Administration, concrete has a runoff factor of up to 0.95 and dense soil has a runoff factor of at least 0.13. A higher runoff factor means that less water will be absorbed which will result in the more water accumulating downstream. Comparing these numbers means that your poor ditch will need to handle 6.3x more water flow.

Given this scenario, the ditch will flood and probably damage trees, flower beds, and at worst your house. While this is an extreme example case, it is not that far fetched from what could happen with the proposed property at 1702 Parker Rd. In addition to buildings, there is planned to be over 3 acres of paved concrete added to the site. This property drains into the lower lying residents and across Lakeview Rd. Residents are already worried about the road being covered by water and their properties flooding at the present time so adding a 6.3x runoff factor increase on 3 acres will likely have drastic consequences. Shouldn’t this have been brought up at the last PnZ meeting, you may ask? Well, a citizen at the meeting stated that it was brought up by a member of the PnZ but was subsequently shot down presumably because it will be discussed when the building permit is applied for. A little transparency would go a long way here. The town needs to put these plans online and they need to be easily accessible to the residents without them needing to go through an official Public Information Request. But, in any case, here is the packet the PnZ had at the last meeting.

March PnZ Information Packet

2.13MB ∙ PDF file

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Download

For that much concrete being poured, one would expect that surveys would need to be done for current drainage through the surrounding residential properties at the very least. Most likely given how much concrete is going in and how close surrounding areas are to flooding either new drainage would have to be engineered or detention/retention ponds should be created. The town should be able to answer the following questions from residents surrounding this property:

• How much deeper will the drainage level be in my ditch during peak capacity?

• What new areas of my property can be expected to be under water during peak capacity?

• Where are the calculations that show that these changes will not flood my house?

• Will it flood the road?

• How will drainage, retention, and detention ponds be engineered to minimize the impact on my property?

• Why should my property be affected at all by those upstream from me who are looking for tax right offs or who are looking to line their pockets from commercial ventures? Isn’t it the purpose of the town government to protect my property?

The 6.3x factor is simply a back of the envelope calculation and there is definitely more to consider as far as drainage, but it definitely brings up some interesting questions that the town needs to answer. If this hypothetical calculation is not enough to warrant concern, then consider what residents bordering the Carefree Storage have to deal with.

This shows the massive amount of water coming from a parking lot. Note that upstream of the deluge that the ditch this gentleman is traversing has little to no standing water and that all of the flow is coming from the neighboring business. Perhaps the town could adopt an “impervious surface management ordinance” that would require commercial/SUP properties to offset concrete areas with a ratio of detention pond volume, this would go a long way in alleviating these issues. Currently the requester would need to consult with the Core of Engineers and address drainage issues when applying for a building permit. In my opinion, that is too late in the process, issues like this should be discussed at PnZ meetings as the result of drainage analysis could drastically alter their plans. If you have concerns about drainage, email your council members and let them know your thoughts. Given that, the next town council meeting is tomorrow evening, Monday, April 8 at town hall and will allow citizen comments regarding this and other issues. Furthermore, it is set to be voted on by the council at the meeting tomorrow according to the agenda:

Item 5.4 will be when 1702 Parker is discussed. The PnZ packet shows that they will be about 15 parking spaces short of code compliance in their preliminary plan, but the finalized plan should be within the parking ratio code. The question is how long will it take to actually build up to the finalized plan?

You will also notice from the agenda that it looks like the town is moving forward with the municipal court. Let us hope that this will be aimed at enforcing commercial ordinances vs weaponizing ordinances against the residents.

As always, Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote on May 4th at Town Hall. The St. Paul Town Hall has now shown up as a polling location for May 4th, so the location is looking more official. Early voting starts April 22nd and ends April 30th.

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You know when you start getting personally attacked for your actions that you are on the right track, and boy, we must on the right track. There are a whopping 24 regular agenda items planned for Monday’s council meeting so prepare for this roller coaster ride of town business. Given that, cue the disinterested teenage theme park attendent pressing the big red “go” button to launch this proverbial thrill ride of council meeting agenda topics.

To my knowledge, green-up clean-up was previously discontinued because the town had trouble getting volunteers to help with loading the dumpsters so it will be interesting to see if that is picked up again. There is nothing too dramatic here from what I can see, but worry not…the drama will ratchet up as our proverbial roller coaster is nearing closer to that first epic drop.

In 5.6, at long last we get the much anticipated update regarding the ICW. Why, all of the sudden, are we getting this status from the council even though this issue was supposed to be worked by the PnZ per discussions before the last council meeting? Have they made plans for pouring a concrete parking lot that will satisfy the parking needs of the neighborhood? That topic, in and of itself, would have been the climax of the last meeting had it been on the agenda. But oh, we haven’t even neared the summit yet.

Now, we get to 5.7 where they would like to have more council meetings presumably so they can push through policy faster; more on this later. For 5.8 and 5.9 it sounds like the Municipal Court is moving forward, and the town is looking at a way to track compliance letters. Presumably this is happening while the court is getting setup so it can begin conducting business with a healthy backlog of cases. Something tells me that these new tools that the town is developing will be used against the residents instead of enforcing compliance upon non-permitted businesses. Hopefully this assumption is incorrect.

Now we get to 5.10, the Citizen Complaint Affidavit, which could refer to a formal complaint that warrants legal action. That’s interesting; not sure who is involved in this particular topic, but sounds like it will be enlightening. The next one, 5.11, is setup for the municipal court which seems like overkill. Municipal judges can work remotely most of the time and when they do come in they will not be presiding over felonies but just administrating fines so office staff to support this should be limited.

Item 5.13 should be a good update on roads as St. Paul is in need of some serious maintenance. This item is the one that seems to be brought up regularly from towns people as an area for desired action so it will be interesting to see what actual progress, if any, has been made. The next items are when things start to really get interesting.

This presumably would be an attempt to remove the wall ordinance that helps protect property values and residents’ sanity; there is an entire article dedicated to show why this is a bad idea. Changing this would most likely be against the wishes of the residents and would affect the entire town. Who voted for the representatives that are pushing this? Oh, that’s right, no one, since we haven't had a contested election of any form in quite a while.

There are at least two ways this agenda item can go. One option would be to consider the proposal given by the newly formed unofficial citizen ordinance committee that is designed to help address some of the ambiguities with the current parking ordinance and help to protect the town from liability. The other option would be to modify the code in such a way that it would rubber stamp the ICW permit by altering the parking requirements that are designed to protect town residents and continue to put everyone involved at risk of major safety violations. Putting this in context with the rest of the agenda items, it is probably the latter option. But, I would love to be proven wrong.

There has been debate on whether the election will take place at the Town Hall or a more typical place like Collin College which would be less convenient especially for the elderly due to the extra walking distance involved. Candidates on both sides have advertised the election being at Town Hall (and I have proof of this), so it would be suspect if it were moved somewhere else. Consider for yourself why you think persons involved would want this changed. Saving the best for last, we have the big reveal:

I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that this proposal for a racetrack ordinance is a personal attack by some town leaders towards me since I have a go kart track in my backyard. It is used responsibly, and I have had no complaints from any of my neighbors, in fact, many of them have enjoyed riding on it. There are several homegrown racetracks in St. Paul at this point and I would highly recommend making your own. This type of codefare is unacceptable and there is no logical reason to bring the law down on residents that want to have a little fun while being considerate to the neighbors. Freedoms like this are one of the main reasons that people move to St. Paul.

Fortunately, residents are protected from codefare by Federal law:

In other words, voting or otherwise advocating to deprive my privileges in an official capacity could render town staff, Mayor or Councilmen personally liable under Section 1983.

Overall Thoughts

This agenda is overkill and it is unreasonable to believe that the council will be able to patiently and coherently make this many informed decisions in one sitting, There are definitely some good topics on the agenda notwithstanding the personal attack(s). Now combine all of this with the rapidly approaching Election Day and the topic of having multiple council meetings per month, something is afoot. Reading between the lines it looks like the council is gearing up to clamp down on citizen ordinance violations quickly, spend a lot of money, and rubber stamp the ICW parking situation. But, again, I would love to be proven wrong.

If you don’t like the direction our town is going, then I implore you to come to the meeting at town hall and speak during the meeting this Monday, March 11th at 7:00PM. Each citizen is allowed up to three minutes to talk and from previous meetings it has been demonstrated that even non-residents and kids are allowed to speak. There are so many topics that are being discussed at this meeting that if you are going to choose one meeting to attend, this would be a good one to pick. As always, Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote on May 4th and, if elected, will put an end to this codefare. We are running our campaigns with platforms that value absolute transparency. Kent and I are dedicated to not only listening to town residents but working with them, welcoming all of their ideas, in order to help get their needs addressed in a timely manner.

Here are some final questions: Why would the incumbents for an unpaid elected position weaponize ordinances against citizens who are trying to protect the town? Is it simply because we speak the truth and ridicule their excuses?

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It’s human nature to come up with a bunch of excuses when we are asked to do something we don’t want to do. Only after debunking these series of rationalizations do we arrive at the true reason for resistance. For St. Paul, that day has dawned. We have worked through the multitude of excuses including enforcement, blaming, less than perfect ordinances etc. to arrive at the true reason for not addressing the ICW code violations and that reason is fear. Some town leaders have refused to discuss this issue any further during town council meetings which hints at legal advisement from our town attorney. The town of St. Paul is afraid of getting sued by those associated with the ICW. Even though the town would be sitting high on the mountain of justice if it did enforce code, it refuses to do so out of fear. That fact, in and of itself, should cast a shadow of shame among a select few of our town leaders since they repeatedly refuse to defend their citizens. The fact that those same town leaders have done arguably nothing practical to solve the problem nor fortify the legal standing of the town with evidence is unacceptable. Furthermore, during the last citizen comments it was mentioned that the town staff stated that they had no intention of ever fixing the parking issues associated with the ICW.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. After interviewing anonymous representatives associated with this issue, a consensus among the leadership has been stated that the plan is to approve the permits that the ICW needs if the property owner promises to build a legitimate parking lot within four years. This reasoning is falsely justified by comments like “Well, the ICW plans to move elsewhere anyways within four years as they are growing, so the problem will just float away and disappear.” It has been documented that we have already been lied to from the ICW leadership and congregants regarding their three part plan to improve the parking situation, so why would we think any parking lot would ever be built? Why would any group be permitted to have FOUR years to take action to rectify their ordinance violation? Other houses of worship requesting special use permits are not granted one and then given years to make their location compliant while operating. That is not how the process works. The town has repeatedly turned down developers and other houses of worship who do not meet the ordinance requirements. Why should this situation be any different? The town must take a stand now.

So, how does a town protect itself from legal actions if it actually enforces code? Well, first of all, you enforce code unilaterally and if ordinances need modifications or don’t make sense, you change them (and obviously consider grandfather clauses). The next line of defense is getting liability insurance, which many towns carry. Lastly, of course, hiring legal council if it is the case that the town is sued. Fortunately, TML can provide legal defense as they draw from a wealth of experience to protect the town from frivolous lawsuits. It is our understanding that St. Paul has access to all of these resources currently.

OK, so that protects you from any old Joe who wants to opens up another storage facility in St. Paul but got denied because he didn’t want to build a fence. What about when “Places of Worship” come into play? This is when people really start allowing fear to take precedence over their duty. The First Amendment gives a lot of leeway to churches and towns can’t even deny them in a residential area. Furthermore, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) severely limits how much the town can enforce ordinances on places of worship. However, in the case of the ICW, this is a health and safety issue, which can override RLUIPA. These issues have been documented and demonstrated many times over so the town has a strong legal foothold. Additionally, our town staff should be talking to other towns to get advice on how they deal with these types of concerns as well as seeking alternative legal advice if the current advice flies in the face of citizen needs. It is the responsibility of our town government to keep our residents safe.

“I want to be sued”, said nobody ever. Litigation takes time and money and should be avoided when possible, of course. But, we should not be so paralyzed by the fear of getting sued that we remain action-less at the expense of our residents. The town has the tools to handle litigation and should stand strong on that backing in order to protect its citizens.

What can be done to fix this? Complain to council members, take pictures and video any of the traffic concerns you observe. The more evidence we can feed the town about the traffic, the stronger legal standing they will have. As always, feel free to email photos/videos to stpaulpost@gmail.com as well and we will compile videos demonstrating the situation.

If you are not satisfied with the way many of our elected officials are choosing to handle this issue please make your voices heard. St. Paul desperately needs a change in leadership. On May 4th, Kent Swaner and Justin Graham would appreciate your vote at town hall. Also, please email us if you would like a yard sign or if you are interested in a campaign shirt.

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Well folks, it’s official, St. Paul will have an election for Mayor and Seat 3 on the council (Alderman). For the mayoral race, we have Mr. Kent Swaner running against the incumbent. Kent is a retired firefighter and a lifelong public servant. He has deep family roots in the area as well. His family operated a local skating rink business and his uncle was a judge in Collin County for 20 years. I can think of no one better to lead our town government than Kent. He is truly a good man and has a heart to serve the community. Kent and I have been working together to encourage the town to resolve various issues and he will be an excellent Mayor for St. Paul. Why is the mayoral race so important? Well, the mayor has a lot of influence into city council meeting agendas as well as the day to day operations of the city. Kent will do all he can to get roads fixed, major violations remedied, and citizen concerns addressed. Furthermore, just looking at interactions from the city council meetings, it appears that the town staff has too much influence over the council and mayor currently, which is backwards. The staff should serve the mayor and the council and the local officials in turn should serve their community. Both of those links appear to have been somewhat reversed in recent years, but I have full confidence that Kent will right the ship.

On a personal note, running for office was never the end goal when writing this newsletter. In general, the goal was to increase citizen involvement, shine a light on the way the town was currently being run and encourage the current administration to listen to town citizens. However, after the last meeting, it became abundantly clear that while we have many residents that are more than willing to get involved, many leaders in the town are not interested in citizen involvement. We are dangerous and uneducated they imply, clueless they proclaim; they know best needs.

Specifically, my involvement in town politics started when my youngest son’s bus was forced to backup onto Country Club Road because of ICW traffic. Obviously this is unsafe, unacceptable and will be a recurring issue if not addressed. After speaking at council meetings, doing public record requests and finding that the ICW was completely out of compliance and does not have the proper permits to operate, I doubled down and created the newsletter to shine a light on the problem.

As I did more research, it became obvious that there are many major problems that the town has neglected to address including road maintenance, drainage, and a plethora of major code violations that go unenforced. After the last meeting it became clear that some of our representatives have no interest in fixing these problems.

This is why I have decided to run for Seat 3 of the Town Council and I would appreciate your vote. So to recap and for those of us who like lists:

• Early Voting: Monday April 22, 2024

  • Mayor: Kent Swaner (k.swaner@verizon.net)

  • Town Council (Alderman) Seat 3: Justin Graham (stpaulpost@gmail.com)

Note that I will continue posting video and doing the newsletter but I will just post the “political advertisement” label at the bottom to cover my bases legally. Also, if you are worried that I am going to crack down on residents and turn St. Paul into an HOA-like code nightmare please keep in mind that I have a go kart track in my backyard, so that will never be one of my goals. Please do not hesitate to reach out to Kent or I if you have any questions, we would love to get feedback and are looking forward to getting to know some of our readers and townspeople during the campaign process.

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One might think that topics like ICW, parking, or the last PnZ meeting antics might be good things to discuss at this meeting. Instead, stricter code enforcement for residents and grass mowing were discussed. Feeling perplexed? You’re in good company. Lets get on with our ever intriguing meeting analysis.

First things first, here is the council from left to right:

• Seat 1: Mark Campbell

• Town Secretary (Mayor Verus): LeAnn Strait

• Mayor: David Gensler

• Seat 3 (Mayor Pro tem): John Crowe

• Seat 4: JT Trevino

• Seat 5: Robert Simmons

00:01:44 Citizen Comments

We first open up the meeting with citizen comments regarding incompetency, lack of respect and misleading statements that specific members of our town government have demonstrated. Due to these unacceptable behaviors it was requested that the mayor resign.

00:16:35 Election Ordinance

It seems that the election agenda items were added to address Texas statutes that require the town to hold elections even though they may be uncontested. It is unclear on whether elections will be contested as of yet. It was voted that Collin County election services should run the election, which is good. Presumably, this means when you vote for our state representatives our local elections will be on the same ballot. Of course, our town secretary brought up the cost of no election to be $75 vs around $7500 for having the election. But, fortunately, that cost is already baked into the cake that is called “democracy” and we have a surplus so there is no need to complain about this.

00:20:50 New Meeting Time

In order to accommodate our town attorney, the town council meeting will likely be moved to the 1st or 2nd Thursday of the month. However, the vote was postponed until the next meeting so that all council members would be present and have input.

00:31:45 Disbandment of the Ordinance Committee

This is where we come to the disbandment of the ordinance committee. In general, Councilman Crowe, Secretary Strait and Mayor Gensler demonstrated that they do not believe that citizens have the wits to provide input sufficient to change the town code of ordinances. Leave that to the experts, they imply. An authoritarian regime knows how to better manage town issues, don’t you worry. Councilmen Trevino and Councilmen Simmons provided an alternative point of view and emphasized the importance of citizen involvement (i.e. the way democracy works). The resulting vote to disband the committee was a tie and the Mayor eventually voted to disband the committee.

On a related note, we, as citizens are of course free to form whatever committees we want and provide input to council members who care. Therefore, I would like to revive the citizen ordinance committee. If you have any interest in helping to fix our ordinance problems, please email me at stpaulpost@gmail.com or simply reply to this article.

During this discussion Councilman Crowe commented that there were many freedom of information act requests and it was taking a lot of time to fulfill those requests. Perhaps there would be far fewer requests if the town enforced code, but that’s just speculation. At 56:05, there was an attempt at sarcastic trash talk about the Post.

1:12:00 Maintenance of Town Hall

No news here, just increased spending on town hall maintenance that is within budget.

1:15:55 Code Enforcement

This is were I thought maybe a certain parking situation would come up about a place that shall not be named. But, instead things like stricter enforcement of grass overgrowth was mentioned; super important topic considering the circumstances.

It was also mentioned that putting liens on properties doesn’t typically result in immediate revenue to the town as the lien is only enforced when the property is transferred. However, these types of issues can also be resolved in a county court since they share jurisdiction. Seems like at a fine of $2k a day, that might be something worth looking into, but the town officials think otherwise evidently.

Ultimately, it was decided that our code enforcement officer should have the action of coming up with a standard for delivering different levels of ordinance violation notifications.

1:42:15 General Code Contract

The council agreed to pass the motion to contract with General Code to supply online code hosting services.

1:50:25 Land Purchase

The council voted against buying the land between Sonic and Country Club because there is not really much the town can do with it.

1:55:45 Agenda Items

Some additional standard items are going to be added to future agendas including Project Status and General Announcements.

General Conclusion

The town continues to generate excuses for not enforcing ordinances and failed to even mention the most egregious violations brought up from the last PnZ meeting. The only thing that will change this behavior is an election.

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Get excited, the time has come for some ever dramatic city council agenda analysis. The town dropped the latest agenda on Friday, so let’s take a look.

According to 5.1 and 5.2, it looks like St. Paul is due for its first election in over 14 years, that is amazing! It is apparent from this and other correspondence that St. Paul has many citizens with a keen eye for improving the state of the town.

In 5.3, it appears that town wants to reschedule council meetings so that the attorney can attend. This presumably could make these meetings quite expensive and I would at least hope that everyone who currently sits on the council would need to agree to a new day otherwise this should not pass.

Item 5.4 is going to be a hot topic as the council is voting to disband the ordinance review committee which was discussed in the last meeting. In my opinion, the ordinance review should be allowed to start their work for the following reasons:

• Our current code needs to be tweaked to fix errors and those involved know how they need to be fixed. A third party ordinance firm would have a disadvantage here.

• Many of our ordinances already had professional consultation, yet they still have glaring and obvious flaws.

• It improves citizen involvement in the town government.

• All of the potential ordinance committee members I have interviewed on this topic actively want this committee to succeed and are excited about improving our code.

• It will be less expensive than a firm that creates ordinances professionally.

Item 5.6 regarding code enforcement should relate directly to the parking situation with ICW. Now that the PnZ has rejected the SUP request, what is the penalty? Well, according to ordinance 2-2, that should be a fine up to $2,000 a day for each offense. Why isn’t the town receiving that money? Our town attorney sent a letter stating the penalty for their violations directly to the property owner, according to anonymous sources. Per 54.003, the council can vote to remit a fine with a 2/3rds majority, however, that has not happened so the fine should be accruing daily and should be enforced. But, you may ask, they promised to park only on one side of the street at the last PnZ meeting, can’t we cut them some slack? Well, fortunately the St. Paul Post Department of Investigative Journalism is up to the task as we had several undercover reporters shed some light on what is actually happening at 3990 Lakeway in the time since those promises were made by many ICW congregants at the last PnZ meeting. In short, the promises aren’t being kept:

Since that is out of the way, lets go ahead and rebut the excuses to enforcement that we have already heard:

• Excuse: We don’t have enough town resources to enforce code

  • Solution: The 3990 parking situation is the hottest issue to date, that should be the priority and take precedence over other things even if we are understaffed.

• Excuse: We don’t have a municipal court, therefore we can’t enforce code

  • Solution: Inherently false. As discussed in our justice article and based on data from the Texas Municipal League, there are ways around this ranging from lien enforcement to county court shared jurisdiction.

The council meeting will be this Monday February 12 at 7:00PM at the town hall. The last day to register for the election is this Friday at 5:00 PM.

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Sarabeth and I had the opportunity to sit with Representative Noble, our Texas House Representative for District 89, which includes St. Paul. We discussed a wide range of topics that spanned from St. Paul ordinance enforcement to illegal crossings happening in record numbers at the Texas border. We began the conversation by filling Rep. Noble in on the current happenings in St. Paul.

She mentioned that she had been on the other side of the issue as a member of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, which historically has had its own parking issues. However, one main difference being that Prestonwood took many proactive steps towards being good neighbors which ranged from hiring police officers for traffic enforcement to providing a bus to shuttle folks back and forth to parking lots. That church eventually moved to a larger area to accommodate the increased congregation size and subsequently opened campuses in various locations.

These all seem like reasonable steps to take when trying to integrate a house of worship into a residential area. Our current parking and traffic concerns with the ICW should not require activation of the community and creation of a town newsletter to solve. We have not witnessed any practical steps geared towards addressing the lack of parking issue from the ICW thus far. They have tried parking in an empty grass lot, but that does not solve the problem because it doesn’t work in the rain and it is also a fire hazard, thus making it outside ordinance parameters. If you are sitting on a code violation, being a good neighbor becomes even more important. It should be up to the ICW to solve this problem, not the citizens, but alas, here we are.

Rep. Noble kindly gave us some advice for getting legal guidance on the issues and suggested looking at some specific laws that could help the town. We will give an update with what we discover in an upcoming article.

When asked about the work Representative Noble is most proud of she mentioned her work on the “ways and means committee” in getting property taxes down. Because of good fiscal responsibility, Texas has a healthy reserve as we have a large rainy day fund and a next step would be to start funding maintenance across the state from the excess funds in order to save even more tax dollars. Along with the tax savings, she filled in the loopholes with Texas’s do-not-hire registries and helped combine them in order to prevent job hoppers from taking advantage of the system. This prevents people who wouldn’t pass a background check from say, working in a public school. Rep. Noble has also taken strides in reducing the government overhead involved in getting foster kids reunited with their parents, as can be read about in SB593.

We discussed the border issues as well and it is clear that Texas is doing all it can to stop illegal border crossings. Rep. Noble has made several meaningful contributions toward providing enhanced border security in order to reduce illegal crossings. However, the federal government is doing all it can to counter the measures that Texas has taken.

It was a pleasure talking to Rep. Noble and we are grateful for her advice on St. Paul town matters. This interview came at the request of a subscriber, so please feel free to continue letting us know if you would like interviews with any of our local representatives and we will reach out.

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The public hearing regarding the parking situation on Lakeway will be held tonight at Town Hall at 7:00 PM. Please come and express your opinions! Comments are typically limited to three minutes.

Some additional events since the PnZ data report have transpired. On Sunday afternoon (1/28/2024), leadership from the ICW kindly handed out chocolate treats and contact information to the residents on Lakeway Drive. They mentioned that if we have any questions regarding the parking situation we should contact them. They specifically asked about our concerns and mentioned that they split their Friday service into two in order to reduce traffic flow and also mentioned that they would take the following steps to ease the burden on the neighborhood:

• Park only on the ICW side of the street since that has a long stretch of non-residential lots. In my mind, this potentially solves the following problems:

  • The bus safety issue

  • Emergency vehicle safety

  • ICW pedestrians will no longer need to cross the street

• Pour gravel in the lot behind the ICW which should open up many parking spots. Not sure of an estimate on that yet since I have not seen a sketch of plans, but this should reduce the amount of parking on the street

• Enlist members of the ICW to guide ICW related traffic to the proper parking spots which should help ensure that only one side of the street is used

These all seem like great steps towards working to reduce the traffic burden and to relieve some safety concerns, but these plans need to be put in writing on the forms submitted to the PnZ. Several of the steps can be implemented now, without further input from the town, but the gravel lot approval will require additional time and actions by the PnZ and town council. If you can’t join us tonight, please let me know your thoughts and I will present them to the council.

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The date of the public hearing for the ICW special use permit renewal is rapidly approaching. It will occur on Tuesday January 30th at 7:00 PM at the Town Hall. One might think that all of the paperwork to properly address the parking spot famine that has stricken the area is organized, double-checked, and devoid of obvious flaws. Then again, one might be wrong. Our public records request for the documents that will be presented at this hearing was approved this time so let’s explore what our PnZ committee will be working with.

This is a hand drawn schematic of the ICW suites from the public records request:

So we are looking at suites 109,110, and 111 from 3990 Lakeway Drive. First problem is that 33 parking spaces are shown in the drawing. Let’s take a look at what Google Maps says:

Google shows only 30 spots. Now, the next schematic shows that these three suites occupy 4,050 sqft.

That seems to line up with rough calculations on the building size in Google Maps. So where does this line up with parking code? Well, lets take a look at our old friend, ordinance 14-1 (I would recommend just adding a bookmark in your browser for this particular ordinance at this point).

So, what is the purpose of a parking ordinance and why is it separated based on business type? Well, the goal of the ordinance is to make sure that businesses have enough parking spaces to handle the estimated traffic that they will see throughout the day. This way people do not have to resort to parking on the street. Utilizing that same line of thinking, different business types have different occupancy loads. You can see that for an office district there is one parking space per 300 sq. ft after the initial overhead amount. So, if these suites were being used for sparsely populated offices, they would need 15 spots rounded up (3+11.8, assuming the 500’ line in the code means square feet). This would put the business well within the confines of the code.

However, places of worship tend to be more densely packed and therefore require more parking. As a result, we would use the “One parking space for each three seats in the main auditorium” rule. Depending on the house of worship, a seat could be defined as a chair, prayer rug areas, or a section of a pew. For the ICW, a prayer rug area would presumably be used, which has the following rough dimensions:

So that works out to the following areas:

This means each seat can occupy an area between 10 and 24 sq. ft inclusively. Now, lets get some rough estimates about how many can fit in the building. With a total occupied area of 4,050 sq. ft, this means that we could fit between 168 to 405 seats in the suites if we filled it end to end:

That’s a big range, so how can we narrow it down? Well, looking at the ICW pictures taken around April of 2023 from Google (can’t post them here because of potential copyright issues), it appears that two large prayer rugs are used that have many designated individual prayer areas. Calculating from the photos found online, it looks like there are approximately 208 seats which fits nicely in our estimated range.

Which results in a parking requirement of 70 parking spots rounded up:

That’s a significant amount! There are 30 parking spots available in the lot, but the ICW only occupies roughly 75% of the building. So, that results in only 23 available parking spots rounded up for ICW use.

Therefore the ICW is 47 spots short of being in compliance:

Given this, the planning and zoning commission has no legal case for recommending the special use permit be approved, as well defined requirements are not being met.

If you would like to comment during the special use permit public hearing for the planning and zoning commission, please come to the town hall at 7pm on Jan 30th and make your concerns about parking ordinance compliance / traffic / safety known. Also, don’t forget to run for office. The last day to file is Friday, February 16th before 5:00PM.

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