Cedar Hill/Waxahachie (Dallas, Denton, Victoria: new home, neighborhoods, good schools)

[ladyjay73]

Hello ya'll:

I haven't been on in awhile. I've been so busy at work with year-end audit & all the other stuff.

It's getting closer to my move date, & I still haven't narrowed down where I want to live. I was there for a week the 1st part of April. I had a wonderful time. I was in Ennis, & got to experience the Blue Bonnet's. They are truly amazing. I also loved the Indian Paint brushes, I think they were called. The redish/orangish colored ones that grow in between the Blue/Bonnets. Beautiful.

Anyway, I've kind of narrowed down my search to either Waxahachie, or Cedar Hill. I will definately be in Ennis with my family for a little while until I get settled. But Ennis is just too small of a town for me. I did like Waxahachie. Saw some new communities right off the freeway, after the racetrack. Some nice starter houses, but they seems a little way out. I really liked Cedar Hill even better. CH seems to be more of a growing younger city. I wanted to find out from you guys the zip codes of the areas that I should look into further. I can't remember what area I was in when I went, but it was just off the freeway from Waxahachie. Maybe the 45? Anyway, I've heard of Bear Creek, & Joe Pool areas. Are there any other areas to look at. Right now I am still looking on-line for information. I also saw that CH HS won state! My son is really into football, & I would love to get the girls into some type of dance/cheer something or other.

Thanks again for all your information. I trust everyone is doing well. B-T-W~ what's going on with ya'lls Mavs?

[GoPadge]

That would probably be off Hwy 287, there are a lot of new homes going up in that area. There are also a fair number along I-35E as you head north. We've got some friends who live off 287 in one of the older neighborhoods (maybe 10 or 15 years old?) with bigger lots. They seem to really like the area. Waxahachie does have it's own youth sports program for the summer. It's nice having all the kids playing on the same field. We played a summer in the North Ellis league, and it was a haul from the southern edge of Ellis county in Milford, up to the games in Lancaster, plus one or two in Maypearl, Palmer and Bristol.

[dust.bunny]

Red Oak is just north of Waxahachie. Good schools and a really growing community. Nice demographic mix, too.

[dust.bunny]

Personally, having lived in Cedar Hill, I am not sure I'd recommend the schools for the most part any more. We had a few problems there & we're getting a lot of parents enrolling their kids in our in Red Oak schools, pulling their kids out of Cedar Hill.

[ladyjay73]

Thanks for the infor dust.bunny. I will check into Red Oak as well.

[loves2read]

need to be concerned also about air quality and air emissions--that area gets some bad air quality because of cement plants and others in Ennis area--they are outside townships that have more stringent air polution rules...air moves from s/se to nw/w----so check the drift

we ruled out moving to area around Joe Pool because of air pollution...can't always SEE it---

[GoPadge]

Actually according the American Lung Association's State of the Air 2007 study on air quality. (http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html (broken link))

Collin, Dallas, Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Tarrant all had more Orange Ozone days and as many or more Red Ozone days (with the exception of Johnson) than Ellis County.

As far as particle pollution goes Ellis county only had one Orange day versus Dallas and Tarrent's 7 days.

[TriumphOfTheSprint]

I don't have an opinion on whether the Midlothian plants are actually heavy polluters, but I don't think you can look just at county-level pollution indexes. Midlothian is in the Northwest corner of Ellis county (http://www.city-data.com/county/Ellis_County-TX.html), and generally the prevailing winds blow towards Dallas from there.

Maybe there are some more detailed statistics that show the area in question better than county stats. I know you'd be the guy to find them

[Lisa_from_Debary]

I grew up in the area and Waxahachie is a beautiful old town with some very nice examples of Victorian architecture...its amazing how the city has grown out so far that Waxahachie is in a good postion like it is.

[GoPadge]

Originally Posted by TriumphOfTheSprint

I don't have an opinion on whether the Midlothian plants are actually heavy polluters, but I don't think you can look just at county-level pollution indexes. Midlothian is in the Northwest corner of Ellis county (http://www.city-data.com/county/Ellis_County-TX.html), and generally the prevailing winds blow towards Dallas from there.

Maybe there are some more detailed statistics that show the area in question better than county stats. I know you'd be the guy to find them

The methodology they used for the survey was to count any day were any monitoring station in the county reported high Ozone or particle pollution. So while it's a county wide stat, it's more used as a roll-up for a group of stations. But I do agree that prevailing winds and the number of active stations could effect the numbers.

I think in the end though, the larger numbers for Tarrant and Dallas counties are due to the sheer number of inhabitants and industrial output. Tarrant county was by far worst than Dallas and I would interrupt that to mean that they have a lot more industrial pollution (since Dallas county has 1.5 times the population,) even with the theoretical "bad air" coming from Midlothian.