Archive for category Elections
After over a year when I did not have the time or inclination to write in my blog, finally I have an issue which has provided me the motivation. So here it goes…
I moved to the City of Coppell from Fremont, California in July 2002 to take up a job in this area and then bought a house in this City later that year.
After living in this lovely City for a few years, I thought I should volunteer my time and give back to this City in some manner.
Around the year 2005 (if memory serves me right), I came to know about several Boards in the City where one could serve as a volunteer. One of the Boards that sounded interesting was the Conduct Review Board as it was supposed to look into any malfeasance by City personnel from the Mayor downwards. So I applied to be on this Board, got appointed and was then sworn-in at a public function at City Hall.
At the time I joined this Board, I thought the Board would meet every few months to deal with any issues that were brought to the attention of this Board.
This Board position expires every 2 years and one needs to reapply to be reappointed. I did that every 2 years since I first joined and got routinely reappointed and sworn-in each time except for one 2 year period many years ago where I forgot to apply and so I was not on the Board during that period.
In effect, I have been a member of this Board for some 14 years.
During this period this Board NEVER met even once presumably because not a SINGLE City personnel had ever engaged in any misconduct or malfeasance. The only thing I had to do was to reapply and attend a function to get sworn-in every couple of years to continue to be on this Board.
After about a decade, I found the fact that no issue ever coming before this Board so astonishing that I recall remarking once at a function to the then Mayor Karen Hunt: “Either Coppell City personnel are so clean that they never do anything wrong – or they are so clever that they never get caught when they do anything wrong!”.
As usual, I re-applied this year to continue on this Board and got reappointed without any interview. Unfortunately, I missed attending the swearing-in ceremony (which I had never missed in the past) due to some last-minute conflict and was sworn-in a few days later in a private ceremony (pictured above).
I was expecting that this will be another uneventful 2 years of do-nothing time vis-à-vis this Board till, to my great surprise, I learned a few days ago that my membership of this Board became the subject of a controversy.
To provide the context to this controversy, I have to refer to another aspect of my life.
Sometime in 2010-11, I was contacted by the then President of the Coppell Republican Club, David Bittermann. He was apparently impressed with a presentation I had made to the Coppell City Council sometime earlier and invited to join the Board of this organization as the VP of Programs. I accepted the invitation and then over the years conducted forums for candidates running for the Dallas Fifth Court of Appeals, Coppell City Council, Texas House of Representatives and US Congress (among other things). I was even invited to attend the State Republican Party Convention which I did and, in the process, met some of the bigwigs in the Republican party, both State and National level leaders. Later I became President of the same club but sometime in 2013-14, I resigned due to both a difference of opinion with other Board members as well as lack of time as I had to deal with some personal matters due to which I decided to attend law school. During my tenure at the Coppell Republican Club, I used to manage their Facebook group. On my departure from this club, I started my own Facebook group in September 2014 which I initially called Coppell Opinions and later renamed it to Coppell Global Public Square (CGPS).
Most of the people who came to know me during my tenure at the Coppell Republican Club joined this new group at my invitation. This included Mayors (including the current Mayor, Wes Mays, who was a member right from the outset some 7 years ago, who I endorsed in this group after he visited me in my home when he was running for election this year, but recently left the group possibly due to the current controversy, a spineless, CYA, action in my opinion), City Council members, judges, lawyers and many other highly reputable individuals.
I was clear from the outset that this would be a non-partisan group and all viewpoints stated intelligently, however controversial, would be entertained. There would be no room for political correctness. Further, this group would definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea and if someone who joined did not like reading the posts, he/she could easily leave.
Most importantly, this was a PRIVATE group, meaning no one outside of the group could read any of the posts and anyone doing so by joining this group was doing so by his or her own CHOICE. The best analogy I could use to describe this group – it is like someone choosing to come into my house because they believed I had something worthwhile to say and then either staying (if they liked what they heard) or leaving (if they did not like what they heard). IN NO EVENT WOULD I ALLOW ANYONE TO COME INTO MY HOUSE/GROUP AND TELL ME WHAT I COULD OR COULD NOT SAY AND IF YOU DID SO YOU WOULD BE SUMMARILY EJECTED FROM MY HOUSE/GROUP.
Having said that, the only entity that had any say on what I could or could not post was Facebook itself. So none of the 10,000 odd posts that can be currently found in the group are in in violation of any Facebook guideline.
See this link for a more detailed description of this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1488932914712931
Now we come to the controversy.
A woman by the name of Amelia Anderson (see: https://www.facebook.com/amelia.anderson.75) has recently filed a Code of Conduct complaint against me stating there in essence “Mr. Venkatraman has a public record of making racist, homophobic and misogynistic statements in writing” and attaching to her complaint some 15 screenshots from the CGPS group (which would constitute around 0.15% of the 10,000 odd posts I have made in this group since its inception).
On doing some investigation, I learned that she was the wife of Robert Anderson (see: https://www.facebook.com/robert.anderson.12935) who recently ran to become Mayor of Coppell and was soundly defeated.
Finally, my response to this complaint.
In the over 7 years that this PRIVATE group has been in existence, I have made around 10,000 posts (as stated above) on pretty much every topic under the sun. Friends have communicated to me that they enjoyed reading my posts since they found my posts to be refreshing, fearless, unfiltered, politically incorrect, telling it like it is, not holding back on anything, etc. More importantly, they told me that they agreed with most of my posts and that I was saying things in writing that they were too afraid to say in the current environment where everyone has to watch what they say due to the fear of being CANCELLED. So much so they were too nervous even to “like” anything I posted in the group leave alone comment or post themselves in the group. In recent months they warned me that one day the “woke mob” (which has nowadays taken upon itself to decide what one can or cannot say) will come after me and try to CANCEL me as well. I had told them that I would not be intimidated by anyone and I did not come to this country, which prides itself on allowing everyone FREE SPEECH, over 37 years ago only to allow some crazy nutjobs to cow me down and tell me what I can or cannot say in my own PRIVATE group.
Now it appears that the woke mob is targeting me and the spearhead of this woke mob is this woman who is either clueless and does not know that I am on a Board that has never met in 16 years, I have not been paid a penny to be on this Board and so it makes little difference to me whether I am on this Board or not and hence she is engaging in a futile exercise in trying to get me removed from this Board – or she is shilling for her husband who may continue to harbor some political ambitions and this complaint could be part of some grand strategy by him.
In any event, whatever, the motivation of this nitwit might be, she is clearly an embodiment of the CANCEL CULTURE of this time and so, as a matter of principle and with the support of friends who want me to take on this CANCEL CULTURE, I am NOT going to step aside even from this inconsequential role as a member of the Conduct Review Board without a fight.
So gird your loins and be prepared for combat, you woke folks…
WHY I WILL NOT VOTE FOR MY OLD “FRIEND” TRACY FISHER – over $250,000 of our kids’ money wasted ….
Apr 6
Recycle Tracy Fisher
President Harry S. Truman once said, “The Buck Stops Here”. The phrase refers to the notion that the President has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions.
Based on this, for what I am about to tell you, the buck stops with Board of Trustees President Tracy Fisher.
In a nutshell, Coppell ISD interfered in my child custody matter. Coppell ISD did so by getting its attorneys to file a Petition in Intervention in my child custody case. According to an Administrative Law Judge based in Austin, he had never seen this type of action by a school district, interfering in a custody matter, in his 25 years on the bench. And that too regarding a trivial dispute over how many emails I should be allowed to send (then) Assistant Superintendent, Brad Hunt (see link at the bottom for details).
Thus far, Coppell ISD has spent more than $250,000 in legal fees in this matter (based on information obtained via Open Records and estimated to date). This figure will continue to grow as the legal matter is still ongoing and could reach the half a million dollar mark before the legal matter concludes. This is money that should be spent educating our children.
To put this amount in perspective, $250,000 could have paid the salaries of 5 Coppell ISD teachers for a year.
Why is “Coppell ISD” taking money that should be spent on our teachers and our children and handing it over to a law firm?
We all know “Coppell ISD” is not a real person. So, who made the decision to give Coppell ISD’s lawyers a blank check to spend unlimited amounts of money to interfere in this private matter? Who made the decision to divert sacred public education funds to a private law firm?
There are only 2 suspects – the Administration (headed by Brad Hunt) and the Board of Trustees (headed by Tracy Fisher).
I have known both Brad Hunt and Tracy Fisher for almost a decade and have had excellent relations with both of them. I even regard Tracy Fisher as a friend!
I have repeatedly tried to reason with them to stop this madness, reach a settlement (non-monetary, involving just resolving some communication issues between me and Coppell ISD personnel) and end the bleeding (of dollars) from Coppell ISD – and from Coppell families and taxpayers.
Amazingly, both of them, in addition to contending that they are not responsible for making these type of legal decisions, also act blithely unconcerned that massive amounts of public funds intended for our children are being wasted.
So, from the look of it, the lawyers are now in charge of Coppell ISD and essentially have a free rein to bill at their own discretion with little to no oversight from district management or the Board of Trustees.
Then what can be done to stop this continuing bleeding of taxpayer dollars which should be spent on education, not litigation?
For the solution, once again I go back to Harry S. Truman’s saying, “the buck stops with the President”. In this case, whether she will accept responsibility or not, the buck stops with Coppell ISD Board of Trustees President Tracy Fisher. And since she seemingly has no clue how to stop this hemorrhaging, she has to go and make room for someone else who can take charge of the situation and stop this obscene waste of our tax dollars, money that has been diverted from our children’s education.
That is why I am dumping my old friend Tracy Fisher and will not be voting for her in this coming election.
Post Script: If those of who have read this far and are curious as to what in world happened between me and the powers that be at Coppell ISD that led to this situation, this link should give you an idea: https://venkyvenkatraman.com/2017/04/my-secretary-brad/
My secretary, Brad ….
Apr 5
How did a grievance complaint against a Coppell Independent School District (“CISD”) tennis coach end up making CISD’s School Superintendent my de-facto secretary resulting in a lawsuit by CISD against me? Here is the unbelievable tale …
Many years ago, a tennis coach in a Coppell Middle School sent me some rude text messages and I complained to the school Principal. When she declined to take any action against him, I decided to file a grievance with CISD, confident that the controversy would get resolved pretty expeditiously since it appeared such a black and white case.
CISD has a grievance procedure which can be found in http://www.coppellisd.com/Page/13790 . I utilized this process to file my grievance. What followed was an eye opener. There are 3 levels to the procedure, the final level being a hearing with the CISD Board. At every level I got what appeared to be prima facie a fair hearing. However, each time the result was the same, a terse “DENIED” with no explanation as to the rationale for the denial. This was pretty frustrating for me since even in court one can ask the judge to explain his/her ruling by filing an appropriate Motion.
I used the grievance procedure a few more times on other matters over the years with pretty much identical results. Eventually, CISD took a step that from my standpoint was a clear retaliation. The new Superintendent Mike Waldrip had just taken office and within a month or so he ordered that all future communication between CISD and me had to go through the Assistant Superintendent, Brad Hunt. I know for a fact that was his personal instruction since I got a copy of the email (via an Open Records request) he sent to that effect.
That meant that even if I had the simplest of question of any teacher or coach regarding anything to do with my daughters, the Assistant Superintendent had to be the middle man. To his credit, Brad Hunt was very cooperative and responsive. Clearly this was not his decision and many times it appeared that he might be OK with revising the arrangement but then he would come back saying nothing could be changed. Mike Waldrip obviously was the one who was calling the shots.
The result was hundreds of emails between me and Brad Hunt over a period of several years – that would not seem a whole lot if sent to a bunch different teachers, coaches, administrators, etc, but a substantial work load if it one person was going to be the middleman and receive/respond to all emails. In effect, Mike Waldrip turned Brad Hunt into my personal secretary! And while expressing my frustration with this convoluted arrangement about a week or so ago, I referred to Brad Hunt as my secretary while sending a “prohibited” email to a teacher. When Brad Hunt acted terribly offended to my referring to him as my secretary (as if an Assistant Superintendent was an upper caste person and the secretary was a lower caste!), I sent an email to him stating “Based on the role you are playing vis-à-vis my communication with the school, whether you like it or not, you have de-facto become my secretary” and asked how much was he getting paid compared to his secretary.
Apparently that incensed the powers-that-be so much that CISD suddenly suspended a scheduled Level 2 grievance hearing and filed a “Petition in Intervention” with the court on March 31, essentially intervening in my personal child custody matter and asking the court “to place reasonable limitations on Respondent’s communications with Coppell ISD through Brad Hunt”.
Bottom line – being a third year law student, I know how to respond effectively to this lawsuit without incurring any costs but CISD will be paying its lawyers thousands of (our) tax payer dollars, presumably to teach me a lesson (which I am confident that they will not succeed in doing) – a total waste of money – and not at all befitting of CISD’s supposed slogan “We are all one team” implying students, parents, teachers and administrators all work together for the larger good of the school system.
To conclude, unless Mike Waldrip has gone rogue and got CISD’s lawyers to file a lawsuit against me without informing the Board, our elected officials are (most likely) involved in this matter – in which case, clearly some fresh blood with some common sense is needed on the Board and hopefully that will come about in next month’s Board elections.
Postscript: while researching for this article I found out that Mike Waldrip is paid a salary of $254,616.00, Brad Hunt is paid $153,591.00 and his secretary (whom he shares with two other big wigs at CISD) is paid just $43,862.08. I would say making someone who is paid $153,591.00 perform secretarial functions is a sheer waste of CISD’s resources and the blame for that lies squarely on the shoulders of Mike Waldrip. The question is who will take him to task and bell the cat to end this abuse of personnel and resources?
I wanted to write something about democracy the day after Independence Day in the US and what came to mind was a posting I made on Facebook a couple of months ago during local election season and the reaction that resulted from it – see the string in its entirety below (except for some expletive-laden comments by, strangely enough, a couple of women, which the moderator deleted).
To give this some context, one of my American friends recently remarked to me that small town elections here tend to be the nastiest since, unlike in State or National elections, the candidates are well-known to the populace and any criticism is taken personally. Example: people can call Obama and Bush and kinds of names and attribute to them actions that they may or may not have been responsible for and it is highly unlikely anyone will even bat an eyelid, leave alone come after you in person. But try the same about someone running for City Council or Mayor in a small town, and all hell could break loose!
Finally, I cannot conclude without commenting one aspect of elections – voter turnout. A small town election, despite all the noise by rabid supporters on either side, could result in a turn out of less than 10% (and less than 5% for run-off elections). This is not necessarily because the voters are apathetic to the process – in my opinion, it is just a message from the majority of the electorate that “life is pretty good and we are pretty satisfied with the status-quo and we really don’t care who wins”. So to get at least their base to turn out, politicians have to portray a situation which implies that if they are not elected, the sky will fall down and the world as we know it will come to an end – so they resort to a host of negative ads and messages that increases the nastiness – and possibly demotivates many who don’t think they have a dog in the fight to come out to the polls.
Given that every politician who gets elected at any level (from local to national) engages in questionable tactics (including the current Mayor in the last election), I find it somewhat hypocritical for people (especially politicians) to pile onto Burrows for his (supposed) fake endorsements. (I think it would have been smarter for him to claim that he was endorsed by George W. Bush, a fact which no one could have verified one way or another!).
Anyway, Burrows’ only prior claim to fame was that he ran against me for the President of Coppell Republican Club and lost last year. However, the exposure he is getting in this forum of over a 1000 people will probably turn him into a minor celebrity and he will get the name recognition that he was missing earlier. Imagine, if you knew neither candidate personally and you were standing in the election booth having to pick between Yingling (whose name sounds vaguely foreign) and Burrows (whose name sounds solidly American) which one would you pick? Just due to this xenophobia among a large section of our community (remember the fate of Akula and Guduru?), the supposed underdog might end up prevailing on election day.
Sometimes ignoring your unknown opponent might be a better tactic than trying to publicly tear him down ….