A plan to put up lights at a Southlake high school is igniting a controversy.
Homeowners near Carroll Senior High School say the lights will bring new noise and light -- and that district approve of the proposal would violate a decades-old agreement.
The Carroll Independent School District is considering using leftover bond money to put up lights for baseball and softball teams at Carroll.
But residents of the Stone Lakes neighborhood said they don't want the lights and the extra noise and light they will bring and plan to fight the proposal.
CISD has several other options, but board members appeared at the last meeting to have already made up their minds, said Jennifer Blanchard, who opposes the plan.
"We didn't get a very good feel for it -- three or four trustees that already decided which way to vote before hearing form the public," she said. "We'll give it our best shot and hope to get an ethical decision."
Signs opposing the lights are throughout the neighborhood. Neighbors have also signed hundreds of petitions, saying they are in favor of doing something for the baseball and softball fields -- just not in their backyards, especially because of the history between the school district and the neighborhood.
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"CISD, with our neighborhood, has had various agreements over the last 20 years, including one CISD official has stated at a City Council meeting that there would not be lights at the baseball field, and we feel that the current board of trustees for CISD does not want to not honor that policy with us and go ahead and put lights up," Blanchard said.
The district said the board has not made a decision and that Monday night's meeting would be a discussion with the public and the board.
As the meeting got under way, many opponents arrived clad in red shirts to show their opposition. The group said it hopes something can be worked out, but its website, Fight the Lights, warns of legal action.
"We've been trying to work them them (the board), " Blanchard said. "The city has proposed a baseball field, a city field that could be used by both the city of Southlake and the school district, so it would be a win-win for everybody."
