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Katy Citizen Watchdog$ |
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We’re Taxpayers. It’s Our Money. |
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Picture Of The KISD Bond Process - Part III |
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Back To Watchdog Archives (“Commentary”)
Even though the bond issue passed in 1996 was touted as being able to “meet District needs until 2004,” and the District had received a building project “grant” of $996,098 from the state’s “new facilities allotment fund in the fall of 1997,” KISD was back planning for a new bond by 1999, five years short of their stated goal. The Texas Legislative Budget Board recommended that Katy ISD lower its tax rate by $.16 that year, but the KISD Board only managed to lower it by $.135. By the next year they had raised the tax rate to $1.8675, which in truth meant that between 1998 and 2000, Katy ISD raised the tax rate $.1725!
The amount asked for in the 1999 Bond was $324.3 Million.
This was the first bond initiative that generated any opposition. Unfortunately for the School Board, A. D. Muller, a Republican activist, had bought a new home in the east end of the district. Not being inclined to approve of tax and spend liberalism, Mr. Muller began a public campaign to oppose the bond. He was joined by Annette Hoffman, a Republican candidate for Ft. Bend County Judge, who had carried the Katy area in a recent primary election. Without much financial backing other than from their own wallets, they mounted a small campaign of mostly signs and rhetoric and came within 37 votes of defeating this bond.
Of 5,437 voters, only 50.3% or 2,737 of them voted for the bond while 2,700 or 49.7% voted against it. A swing of 19 votes would have changed the outcome.
A. D. Muller was quoted at the time as pointing out that nearly 50% of the people in Katy ISD have “concerns about the district’s spending habits.” Mr. Muller also said, “The results of the election should be a wake up call to the district that the community is not ready to give it a blank check.”
When vote tallies showed the schools where voters voted overwhelmingly against the bond (Katy High School 373 FOR/591AGAINST; Wolfe Elementary 89 FOR/100AGAINST and West Memorial 266 FOR/ 376AGAINST) were the very ones who stood to gain from the bond passage, Superintendent Merrell said “it didn’t mean anything that voters at some schools which would benefit the most from the bond funds voted against the proposal.”
Opponents of the bond suggested that they objected to the package “because it would push Katy’s tax rate from $1.83 per $100 of assessed property value to the legal limit of $2. On the other hand, KISD predicted the $324.4 Million bond election, if passed, would ultimately increase taxes on a $100,000 house from $1,555 to $1,700 per year.
Mr. Muller, in an Open Forum at a school board meeting, challenged the superintendent’s statement that the increase amounted to a small “pizza” a month for the average family. Down the road Mr. Muller sent six small pizzas to the Administration offices with a note that said, “Please accept these pizzas in lieu of six months worth of my school taxes!”
Such a close election should have given our school board and superintendent cause for pause, but it did not. A School Board and its superintendent denying the will of the people surely can’t continue to generate the confidence necessary for the acquisition of “yes” votes on bond issues, or can they?
The public and the press seem to have short memories.
See also “The Bond Initiative 1999” in Mary’s Corner. Click here to see the details of this initiative.
© 2006 by Mary McGarr. All rights reserved. |
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Mary McGarr, Katy Citizen Watchdog$ |
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Date: 10/12/2006 |
