I want to start out with a word of warning.  You might actually see some radar enforcement on the streets of Lake Highlands.  Our Dallas County Constable and Lake Highlands resident Mike Pappas has entered into an agreement with the City of Dallas to help with truancy, warrant issuance and traffic speed enforcement.   

Don’t worry — Constable Pappas is not going to try to send his kids to college on traffic fines.  All radar enforcement is being done on a requested basis.  This means that when I receive a complaint about speeding in school zones, as I did this week in front of the Ninth Grade Center, Mike will have one of his deputies enforce the speed limit in that area.  This sounds like a great idea unless you get caught so consider yourself warned.

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The other areas in this agreement deal with crime related issues. As you may recall from earlier articles, our crime rate in District 10 has been increasing.  In meeting with Chief Click, he suggested that Pappas could help by serving warrants for known criminals in our area that the Dallas police could not get to, and hopefully drop the crime rate by getting these known offenders back to jail.

Lastly if a child is skipping school, he or she may be doing something else like breaking into cars; if Pappas can help with the truancy problem ,this too could help our crime statistics.  Mike Pappas has done much for our neighborhood as a volunteer at school and being president of the Exchange Club; now he is extending that to his profession as a constable and I appreciate his help.  

Someone else in our neighborhood who has tried to make things better is Michael Miles.  Michael works for DART and is my official or unofficial liaison between the City of Dallas and DART.  Michael made an extreme effort to try and save part of the trestle at Church Road and White Rock Trail for our students and community of Lake Highlands. Due to many obstacles, his efforts went without reward.   I know some of you are probably glad to see the graffiti laden trestle gone, but the tradition of seniors at the high school painting it and putting their names on it has now died.  Michael has met with neighborhoods about DART light rail expansion into our area and has gone out of his way  to make sure our concerns are heard.  To be honest, at times Michael is the only one at DART I felt like I could believe. He is a great neighbor and friend to Lake Highlands.

Lastly — Go Wildcats!  Football will show the sports press they are playoff worthy, and volleyball rules!