News

The following article was written by Sarah Blaskovich of the Lewisville Leader newspaper. We reprinted it here to tell you about a recent donation from the CoServ Charitable Foundation. Thank you to CoServ members, customers and employees for your support

Highland Village, champions of the “Safest City in North Texas” award for five

consecutive years, is getting even safer.

A $25,000 donation from CoServ Charitable Foundation, which exchanged hands on Tuesday, will give the Police Department the seed money to purchase a $50,000 navigation tower to use for busy intersections and festival events.

The new gadget is called the SkyWatch Eagle Observation Tower, and Mark Stewart, captain of the Highland Village Police Department, hopes to purchase it in full by October.

The remaining $25,000 will come from the Police Department’s own budget as well as from local business donations. Stewart hopes that the Wal-Mart currently being built at FM 407 and FM 2499 will be willing to shell out some money to keep the bustling intersection safe.

The tower is built on a trailer and can reach up to two stories into the sky. The enclosed, air-conditioned room can comfortably fit about two police officers, who loom over crowds to watch for crime or other threats to safety.

It takes about five minutes to set it up, Stewart said, and their 40-person civilian police squad will be used to help man the SkyWatch as much as possible.

“Actually, you don’t even have to have someone in there, since you can’t tell from the ground,” Stewart said of the tinted windows.

In the past, Highland Village had borrowed a SkyWatch from police departments in Lewisville or Grapevine for large community events such as the balloon festival in August or on holiday weekends.

“We found it to be such a good tool that we decided we could use one of our own,” Stewart said.

CoServ Charitable Foundation is an arm of CoServ Electric, the second-largest electric cooperative in Texas. The group gathers money by rounding up their residential electric bills to the next highest dollar, and about 85 percent of their residential customers have agreed to participate in this plan, called Operation RoundUp.

CoServ generates between $42,000 and $45,000 a month simply by pinching pennies, said Dennis Engelke, a member of the Foundation’s grants committee.

The $25,000 for Highland Village, then, was just one of many donations that the group gives monthly. Since November 2005, CoServ has donated $830,000 to community groups like the Highland Village Police Department.

“Public safety is a concern to CoServ,” Engelke said. “Becau