Katy Citizen Watchdog$

We’re Taxpayers. It’s Our Money.

Groups Begin Bond Battle/2 Organizations Compete To Make Their Cases With Public

Back To “Watchdog Archives (“In The News”)”

More portable buildings, deteriorating campuses and loss of educational excellence will be the Katy school district's future if voters don't approve a $261.5 million bond package in May, says a community group in favor of the initiative.

But citing concerns over district spending and uncertainty over state funding for schools, a new political action committee has adopted a slogan that says, "Not this bond. Not this time."

The Keep Investing in District Schools organization is an effort by parents, teachers and business leaders to encourage voters to support the bond proposal in the May 13 election, said group spokesman Forrest Bjerkaas, one of the 62 members on the district's bond committee. The group has a Web site at www.voteyeskids.org .

"We're planning information meetings, we're going to have some signage and we're making ourselves available to different organizations to tell people why (the bond proposal is) the best thing for the children," said Bjerkaas, a 20-year Katy resident and father of two children in Katy schools.

But in an effort to defeat the bond package, Chris Cottrell, co-founder of the Katy Citizen Watchdogs group, announced last week the formation of a political action committee called Citizens and Parents for Schools.

The group is endorsing Watchdog-supported trustee candidates Fred Hink and Tom Law, both who oppose passage of the bond proposal.

On its Web site, www.katycitizens.org , the Watchdogs group questions the merits of scheduling a bond election before state legislators hold a special session on school finance on April 17.

In his analysis of the bond election posted on that site, Cottrell suggested that the district hasn't always been responsible with taxpayer money.

"What the Legislature decides could have significant effects on our current and future debt," Cottrell wrote.

KIDS chairman Stan Stanley, husband of a retired Katy teacher, pointed to the district's rapid growth and said that with 3,200 new students each year, the district wants to be proactive rather than reactive.

The Katy district has one of the highest growth rates in Texas, and demographers have projected that district enrollment will be at 88,848 by the end of the next decade.

Bjerkaas said he's watched Katy grow from "an excellent small school district to an excellent large school district" since he arrived in 1982. People are primarily attracted to the area, he said, because of the quality of education in the area's public schools.

He was a member of the district's bond advisory committee in 2002 and of the group that supported that bond's success. The 2002 bond money, he said, was only intended to take care of the district's growth needs for three years.

But the Watchdogs say that passing the hat to the taxpayers doesn't include a plan for handling the district's estimated $1.5 billion in bond debt or projected $20 million budget deficit for the current school year.

Bjerkaas said the issue is continuing the quality of education that he said attracts 3,200 new students a year. Without the bond election, he said, those students will come and will have to be placed in portable buildings.

"The one way that we have to keep our quality is to issue additional bonds that will allow 3,000-plus new students per year," Bjerkaas said.

betty.martin@chron.com

 

Betty L. Martin, Houston Chronicle

Date: 03/29/2006