Biju Mathew

Biju Mathew has served as Place 6 on Coppell City Council since May 2018. Coming from a job in information technology of 10 years, Mathew provides insight from his unique lens and experience in other departments. His term will end May 2024. 

What advice do you have for high school students looking for opportunities?

Our job does not pay any money:.we don’t take any salary or anything like that. This is a good way to give your time to the community, it’s all about service in your heart. If you have that service mentality in your heart, you are willing to do so many things for the city and neighborhood that you don’t expect anything back.

Why are you so passionate about upholding Coppell’s standards?

Even though we may have to go through comments from the citizens and residents [that are] not so pleasant, we still want to do what’s best for the community. At the end of the day I always think ‘my family lives here, so we want to be safe, secure and intact’ and the best way is to get involved [and] provide some type of service so that we all can live peacefully and harmoniously.

What has helped you decide to give back to the community?

I was born in India. I came to the U.S. when I was 16 years of age, so I finished my 10th grade in India and finished my 11th and 12th grade here in the states, in Boston. I understand the schooling system in India and the United States because I had the privilege to graduate from here. One of the things I noticed is that in the United states [you] have the opportunity to do a lot of service oriented projects. That gives you the ability to start volunteering your time to many programs within the city or outside of the city charitable organizations like northlake club or lions club. There are so many clubs that you can be a part of and assist the city and otherwise too.

Is there a project in particular that you are proud of?

One of the things we talked about [was] parks and recreation. Another thing that we have here in the city of Coppell is we need to upgrade our neighbor[hood] infrastructure, including streets, curbs, gutters and sidewalks. As every year passes by, we are doing one step at a time. For example, if you’re coming from Denton Tap from the south, you now have two lanes to make your left turn into Parkway so that parents who are coming to drop off kids at [the] high school get there faster. So we created a two lane left lane. Same thing with the Walgreens; there is a right coming on the north side. 

What is an essential part of the job as a council member?

Our budget is the key: the revenue and expenditures come in and we have to make decisions on what the programs are that we want to continue every year. Of course, you want to have a good police and fire department because that concerns the safety of everyone who lives in Coppell and works in Coppell and the businesses. Passing a budget is one of the main jobs we do as a council member.

Why have you chosen to be so invested in Coppell’s parks?

We have a great park system. We did a lot of work when I was on the park board making sure that the Andy Brown East, West and Central were [beautified]. People can walk, I see a lot of seniors from the high school also running there in the morning, playing basketball, volleyball, whatever they like. 

We got a gold medal award for being one of the best parks in the country. We were a gold medal winner this year for the best park in the United States. That’s a cool thing for our city with a population of 41,000.

What are some of the positions you took up before being a city council member?

That’s another way of giving back to the community.  That’s how I started giving back and I was a member of the park board for four years, then I became the board member of another board called CRDC (Coppell Recreational Development Corporation).

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