McALLEN ISD WANTS $297 MILLION
Wed, 2015-02-25 09:27
News Staff
McAllen school trustees Monday night, on a 5-2 split vote, decided to take a $297 million bond issue to voters in May. Trustees Debbie Crane Aliseda and Sam Saldivar tried to split the single proposal into three separate proposals for voter approval but could not convince fellow board members. The $297 million proposal will go to the voters for approval, or not, on Saturday, May 9, when trustee positions 1,2,4 & 5 will be voted on, too. The bond election call came after a year-and-a-half study of the district by a group of 165 persons, charged by the board to study the needs of the district and come up with recommendations. The Facilities Forecast Advisory Committee (FFAC) officially presented its findings to the board on January 26 and recommended the district go for a $440 million bond issue to fix the problems and circumstances they addressed in their report. Monday night's $297 million bond decision is a retreat, then, from the initial figure, but the board made clear that they may address the $142 million in projects not included now in a different manner in the future. The school board wants voter approval for the entire $297 million bond issue but trustees said they plan not to sell the entire amount all at once, but to sell them in three packages of about $80 million, $137 million and $80 million. In other words, the district wouldn't sell the bonds and start the interest clock until they were ready to start projects and based on market conditions. Selling the bonds at three different times, instead of all at once, would raise property taxes by 17 cents per $100 of property value by 2020, according to information from the district. There is already a website up with information on where the bond money will go: mcallenisdbond.com. Trustee Aliseda argued for cutting the big bond into three smaller ones that would still total $297 million. Her proposal was in the form of an amendment to the resolution ordering the bond election. Prop. 1 totaled $113,837,094 "for the renovation, replacement, construction, acquisition, and equipment of school buildings" for schools 50 years or older: McAllen High School and Achieve/IB, Career Technology, Travis Middle, Alvarez Elementary, Navarro and Jackson Elementary Schools. Her Prop. 2 totaled $119,510,492 for schools 30 to 49 years old and Aliseda's Prop. 3 in the amount of $63,170,744 was for schools 29 years and younger, a total of 16 institutions that included Nikki Rowe High School, Fossum Middle School and the AgFarm. Aliseda said she wanted to give voters a choice, rather than an all-or-none vote, because she feared voters will turn down the single $297 million bond. Trustees who disagreed said they were concerned that allowing voters to pick and choose which schools and facilities get an upgrade would not achieve a primary goal of the initiative, which is to bring equity of facilities and equipment to all schools across the district. In the end, only Aliseda and Saldivar voted to break up the proposal, and Trustees de la Garza-Lopez, Vela, Ball, Esparza & Garza-deShazo voted to go for the whole thing. One resolution got everybody's vote and in it "The Board of Trustees and Superintendent of the McAllen ISD" pledge to the voters that they will carefully monitor market conditions and work to get the best interest rates and schedule and that they will name a Facilities Forecast Oversight Committee to monitor the way bond money is spent and provide "input" on all projects. They also resolved that "all contracts funded from bond proceeds will be awarded only after an open and competitive procurement process and only to the most qualified and responsible bidders" and "that the district will establish a fund mechanism for systemic, longrange planning to address future needs of aging facilities." Place 1 trustee, Debbie Crane Aliseda, will not run for re-election in May but will instead seek the city commission seat held by her late brother, who died of a heart attack last December. Place 2 trustee Hilda Garza-DeShazo, Place 4 trustee & board president Erica de la Garza-Lopez, and Place 5 trustee & vice-president Daniel Vela, are all running for re-election. The school district and the City of McAllen will have joint polling places. The district stated that projects funded by the $297 million bond should be finished by 2023.
By Davis Rankin Futuro McAllen