Posted on 03/07/2005 7:15:29 PM PST by TXBubba
Round Rock school district voters turned out in record numbers Saturday to overwhelmingly reject a record-high $349 million bond package administrators said was needed to build new schools.
Hutto school district voters did just the opposite, approving a $53 million bond issue to build new facilities by a margin of 2-to-1.
Round Rock's effort to sell bonds to construct two new elementary schools, a middle school and a high school was voted down by 62 percent of voters. The final count was 8,595 to 5,209.
The controversial proposal, floated during a lagging economy and against organized opposition, drew nearly 14,000 voters. Typically, district elections draw 3,000 to 6,000 voters.
"Obviously, the voters did not like the size of the proposal," school board President John Romano said Saturday. "What we will do next is conduct a survey to determine exactly what the people did not like and see if they will consider another package down the road."
Trustee Elizabeth Elleson, the only member of the board to vote against holding the bond referendum, said she believes that the voters felt there was too much "fluff" in the proposition. She also believes that a $91 million high school included in the proposed projects was unattractive to many taxpayers.
"I had a lot of people ask me why a high school should cost that much," Elleson said Saturday. "People asked me why the high school wasn't put on the ballot as a separate proposition."
Elleson said she will work with her colleagues to assemble a bond proposal for possible vote in November.
"It should be a package that contains only absolutely what we need," she said.
In addition to building the $91 million high school on Gattis School Road to prevent crowding at Stony Point High School, the bonds would have paid for a $21 million elementary campus in the Avery Ranch subdivision and a $23 million elementary in the Turtle Creek neighborhood.
The bonds would also have built a $31 million middle school near Sam Bass Road in the northwestern part of the district to ease overcrowding at Cedar Valley Middle School.
Most of the remainder of the money was intended for new classrooms at Westwood and Round Rock high schools, renovations at other campuses, land purchases for six future schools and new school buses.
Round Rock school officials said before the vote that if the proposition failed, space for additional students would have to be provided with more portable classrooms.
Buying or renting portables would mean less money available for teacher salaries and other expenses, since the district is already taxing for operations at the state maximum $1.50 per $100 in assessed property value.
Administrators also warned that if the bonds did not pass, some classes would have to increase in size.
Hutto school district voters backed their $53 million proposal in a vote of 272 to 122.
"The board is pleased," said Bobby Maples, Hutto school board president. "We're the fourth fastest growing school district in the state, and we really needed these bonds for new schools. It looks like the voters agreed with us." Hutto school officials will sell bonds to build two elementary schools, each costing about $13 million, and new classrooms at Hutto High School for $9 million. About $18 million will pay for renovating campuses.
Voter approval of the bond package means the Hutto school district's current tax rate of $1.74 per $100 of assessed property value could go up by as much as 11 cents during the year after the first phase of bonds is sold, according to Superintendent Gary Mooring.
The second year of bond sales could boost the tax rate an additional 3 cents. Hutto officials expect enrollment to grow 16 to 20 percent over the next few years. The district already has 2,500 students.
"The new facilities will be badly needed," Bert Johnson, the district's business manager, said Saturday night. "The bond victory today is really a victory for our kids."
bbanta@statesman.com; 246-0005
The "no" campaign were labeled as anti-children and liars. People around here are finally able to see through the rhetoric and not let the name calling shut them down.
Blastus helped with this group. It was nice to finally win one!!!
Previous FR thread here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1340766/posts
This is also significant because all of the local power brokers endorsed the bond and they lost. They also lost a County Board seat in the last election cycle. Perhaps they can regroup and address the significant issues facing Round Rock, like smoking on private property.
The high school was to be built in the Mayor's neighborhood.
I should say. By my calculations, each of the 14,000 voters was speaking for approximately $25,000 of expenditures, just for the school district. IMO Education and health-care are the two biggest rip-offs facing American Taxpayers - Just behind Social Security that is.
This madness has gone on for about 65 years too long and we will all end up supporting armies of Gov't apparatchiks. Ayn Rand is spinning in her grave!
Y'all need to tell the Bond Proposers that instead of building new schools, it would be a lot cheaper to give parents a modest voucher to send their kids to a private school of their choosing.
Why would tx payers want to pay for new schools, as they will just be filled up with Illegals
I sure am glad we have strict accounting and auditing practices at Texas ISDs so that the massive embezzlement recently uncovered at a New York school district can't happen here.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1356026/posts
$166 million in fluff not specifically identified in this article, over and above a proposed $91 million for ONE school?
They wanted $$$ to buy properties for six new schools! Imagine how they'd try to use the fact that $91 million was spent previously for one school to justify exhorbitant numbers for those six new schools.
Congrats on this victory. They slide these voting days where nobody but the teachers, administrators and uberleftists seem to care enough to vote no, and it's not easy to win. But they also know that they live to fight another day, and will still attempt to take advantage of voter apathy to slide in $100 million in fluff next time.
Best wishes for continued success!
You need to keep on top of it!
Let me tell you of a little thing the school in my neck of the woods did.
They wanted to remodel the high school. Voters turn them down three times by large
margins.
So did they take no for an answer. Nope! They hired a PR firm.
Now voting day is always on a Tuesday. So what did this firm do? It put the paper work
in so the day the vote fell on was the following Thursday!
So with mostly every one use to voting on Tuesday. And this being the only thing on the
ballet hardly no one showed up on Thursday. Except for the people that would vote for it.
They were pushing dirt the next week!
Watch out for this little trick!
Who knows---maybe at last, the tax payers are fed up and aren't going to take it anymore--and Round Rock will have led the way!
"It should be a package that contains only absolutely what we need," she said.
---
What a right wing nut! :)
"Administrators also warned that if the bonds did not pass, some classes would have to increase in size."
Classes would have to increase in size but administrative positions wouldn't decrease?
Similar tactics were used here, but the unions are weaker here. They never argue with the administration. The police rarely show up for anything, except at budget time when they claim to need more officers.
We had fair coverage from the main newspaper in town, but the local paper ignored us. The local talk radio stations also covered the issue very well. The NO! folks also had some radio spots during Rush.
The opposition also called us liars and used fear to motivate the loyal big goverment supporters. One of thier flyers said that if a HVAC unit went out, it would cost $700,000 and 13 teachers would be fired to pay for it. How about firing 13 administrators? How about firing the superintendant's wife and daughter? How about buying a chiller with a warranty?
The Ye$ crowd also claims they will add thousands of students each year for eternity, but they fail to identify which companies will be adding jobs or moving here. Dell is building new plants out of state. How do you attract business when you will have the highest tax rates in the state, coupled with below average schools?
The school district also recruits kids from other districts, then complains about overcrowded classrooms. They also have partially empty schools that are award winning architectual marvels. I guess it would be bad to fill them up with students.
The glossy PR put out by the Ye$ crowd also featured many pictures of elementary school kids. They left out the Goth high school kids, dropouts, and the administrators with their new Lexus and tricked out PT cruisers. Probably an oversight.
Good luck with your fight!
Similar tactic was used here to pass a giant hospital bond. The early voting locations were in the lobby of the hospitals, especially the ones where the poor come for free care. The bond passed.
It's interesting to me to kind of look at the money involved vs the number of people who turned out to vote in Round Rock.
Each vote represented around 24,000 dollars to be spent or not spent. I assume these bonds have to pay interest so really that figure is low.
Each vote that was not cancelled out by an opposite vote represented over $100,000 to be spent or not.
What is your vote worth? Suppose it had boiled down to a margin of 100 votes. Each vote would represent nearly 3.5 million dollars.
The people need to GET organized to counteract the advantage of the ALREADY organized.
Can you imagine setting aside nearly 20 million dollars to buy the property for one school? That's exactly what was proposed a while back in Comal County. Surely 100 or so acres would be enough to put one school on, and that's roughly what they were looking at. One can only marvel at paying 200,000 dollars an acre for land you can buy all day long around here for under 10,000 an acre.
People ought to be screaming bloody murder about it. I can't figure out why they aren't unless they can't use a calculator.
Hmmm. Maybe they went to public school. :-)
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