Posted on 07/23/2004 5:16:49 PM PDT by primeval patriot
Ruling means schools should get $500,000 annually from trust
CELINA - A Collin County judge cracked the books and bank accounts of a secret, century-old private trust Monday, ordering that public officials hold seats on the trust's board and that public schools get a share of $15 million in assets.
The Celina Independent School District will be paid about $500,000 now and each year indefinitely, said John Vinson, assistant attorney general in the state's Charitable Trust Section.
The A. Hubbard Trust, with only $200,000 in the bank, will almost certainly have to sell its 980 acres of fertile farmland to pay the schools and settle tax penalties that could exceed $1 million, said Lewis Robinson, president of the board. Interest on profits from the land sale - about $15 million - would pay the district royalties.
The state attorney general filed a lawsuit against the trust last fall after two Celina residents questioned whether the five men managing the trust's millions in assets should be allowed to do so in secret and whether local schools were getting all the money they deserved.
"All these people who've been moving in ... they see all that land and they want to turn it into money, "said Mr. Robinson, 81, sitting on the tailgate of a pickup at his ranch Tuesday morning. "But I'm a farmer. I hate to see good farmland tore up to build houses."
Mr. Vinson said that furrowed rows of corn and sweet sorghum may give way to tract homes and strip malls in Celina, but that the infusion of cash will ease the school system's growing pains.
"The bottom line is that CISD is going to start getting more than 10 times what it was getting before, in addition to a big lump sum," said Mr. Vinson. "That was the idea all along, to provide ... a benefit to the schools."
The trust was formed in 1897 by the will of a country doctor and his wife, Moses and Mary Hubbard, who put their money and land into a perpetual fund to support a county school.
That school closed and merged with the Celina Independent School District in 1957, but board members continued to donate money to the school district. Records show that the trust has donated between $20,000 and $30,000 a year each of the last five years.
Board's reaction
The payments honored the benevolent wishes of a doctor, said Mr. Robinson, adding that those who questioned the arrangement were betraying the Hubbards' desire to keep the farmland intact.
"These people want to bust up the trust," said Mr. Robinson at the time the suit was filed. "They want to sell the land."
But on Tuesday, board member Bobby Martin struck a more conciliatory tone.
"I don't have any hard feeling for anybody," he said. "I don't like what happened, but I accept it. It's going to be a different way of life around here."
Mr. Martin and others say a judge's intrusion into the affairs of the Hubbard Trust, and the state's lawsuit, illustrate the corrupting influence of money and modernization in Celina.
Hubbard Trust board members were appointed for life. They gathered a couple of times a year to conduct business, sometimes in a board member's barn or toolshed.
Thursday morning, the board will meet in Celina ISD Superintendent Ken Burks' office, and he will be sworn in to the board. Later this year, the school board president or his designee will join the Hubbard Trust.
In the community
"Everyone knew there were some things about that that will needed to be changed and updated," Bill Stelzer said on Tuesday between pulls of black coffee at Bill-Y-Bob's Cantina on the square, the town's unofficial listening post. "But nobody should be able to force a private family trust to sell land it doesn't want to sell. That's just not right."
J.C. Ownsby agreed that the controversy has strained longtime friends.
"These are good men with good intentions," he said, his blue eyes watery from under a white cowboy hat. "There are a lot of angles to this thing. I don't see how you could say one side was right and one side was wrong."
Mr. Vinson said the trust's language and administration were out of date. Most obviously, he said, the trust said its proceeds should only be used for the education of white children.
It also did not anticipate state laws, tax obligations and other contemporary societal values.
"It needed to be fixed up so it could serve its purpose - to provide support and benefit for CISD," he said. "It may need to be revised again in 50 years."
School Board President Keith Scott said the windfall is welcome. The school board is facing a shortfall of several hundred thousand dollars.
"We're always looking for ways to save money," he said. "This could not come at a better time for Celina's schools."
Jane Willard, a bank president and president of the Celina Heritage Association - one of two people who asked the state to investigate - said she, too, feels melancholy about the recalibration of Celina's rural life.
"I wish I could sit here and say that this little piece of beauty be preserved exactly as it is 1,000 years from now," she said, reclining on a sun porch and gazing across her tree-shaded back yard. "There's a spirit and a way of life out here that isn't going to last much longer. But things change. And things are changing."
E-mail sfarwell@dallasnews.com
Where I come from, saving money means cutting back on expenditures. It doesn't mean robbing your neighbors.
Obviously not enough for the government school looters.
Palno = Plano, man I keep messing up.
There, got that corrected.
What's wrong with that?
It's a private trust!
Would ANYone question a trust set up solely for, say, Mexican children? Or blacks?
Just think of all the new administrators he'll be able to hire with $15 million.
There seems to be quite a few non-profit organizations that give scholarship monies exclusively to college bound hispanics and african-americans.
I don't know how those groups differ from a private trust that was formed to support a county school.
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