My only child graduated out of the Grapevine ISD school system in 2008. I live on a fixed income, and I already pay pretty high property taxes—around $5,500/year on a 2,200 sq ft home on a small lot. $3,750 of that $5,500 goes to a school district of which I am no longer a customer. MANY of those who ARE customers of that district are not homeowners, and so they do not pay any property tax toward the support of the schools. As for their landlords, they may not be customers of the ISD either, but they're still paying into it. I don't feel a need to add to my property tax burden by voting for a bond to support a school system of which I am no longer a customer. I live on a fixed income, and I already pay 8.25% sales tax. I don't feel the need to to add to my sales tax burden by voting for a bond to support a school system of which I am no longer a customer. I live on a fixed income, and I wrote a check last Monday to the IRS for $13,181. I don't feel a need to pay another penny more to any government agency for ANYTHING....not any further street "improvements" (if you saw the road construction already ongoing in in Grapevine you'd understand why).....or a new football stadium to lure an NFL team here (I've been through two or three of those particular boondoggles already, back in California).....or any of the other multifarious long cons in which somebody wants to get OPM (other people's money) to pay for it. I am on a fixed income. I already pay enough......and you're arguing for DFW to go the way of California. .......and we haven't even gotten into the state's "Robin Hood" scheme for redistributing educational wealth from richer districts to poorer districts.n5wd wrote:That's an awfully broad paint brush you're using, TAM, and one that, IMHO, isn't justified in the cases that I am familiar with.The Annoyed Man wrote:I came from California where people specialize in passing bond issues "for the children," and other bogus reasons. In the end, all they do is commit the taxpayers to paying off a debt that will likely never be used in the way it was sold by its proponents. You do NOT want to go down this road.
I always vote no on any bond issues now. A bond issue is just a way for politicians to get out of being responsible for spending.
Bond issues are how the only way that some entities, such as school districts, are able to expand and grow their facilities in advance of increasing populations such as is happening in most counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. When the demographers say that a district's population is going to grow by X percentage in the next 10 years, that gives a district some time to begin planning for the new population's needs.... and a bond is exactly how they pay for that new expansion. Without the bond, kids get crammed into schools that weren't made for that many kids, new technology doesn't get implemented districtwide, basically the district is left to try to to and accommodate the expansion needs as best they can in their operating budget, meaning all those temporary buildings that everyone (cough, cough) loves to be in. And then they have to go back to the voters and ask for a tax rate increase, which no one likes, either. Bond packages are much more transparent, as the bond expenditures have to be accounted for separately, and it becomes quickly obvious in the public records when things are not being taken care of as advertised.
The district I work for as done everything they told the voters they would do, built the schools and the new football stadium, installed the new technology (such as digital projectors in every classroom in the middle and high schools), and have come in under budget each time.
So, if you're just voting down a bond package because you don't believe in them, you're doing the same thing as a voter does when they select a straight ticket on principles - you're overlooking the things that a bond package can provide for the people that the bond is designed to serve without even known if the need is there. Yeah, I'm sure there may have been a whole lot of jurisdictions that have had bad packages, but on the whole, I think you'll find, at least here in the DFW metroplex, that most school bond packages are well run and serve a definite need or public desire.
Everybody has good intentions about it. Nobody thinks they're screwing the taxpayers. But these things are a spending habit that excludes the normal legislative budgetary process from the funding, and in the end, there is little or no accountability for them because you are voting to spend money NOW that won't be paid off for 20-30 years.....because that's how bonds work......just like with Obamanomics. You may say the process is transparent now, while the bond issue is still recent memory with folks, but trust me....in 20 years, nobody is going to remember it or what it was for—only that they don't like how much they're paying in taxes—and those that do remember it will not think of their share of the tax burden as having been particularly well spent because they will not have gotten the promised ROI.
I am a member of the Grapevine Chamber of Commerce, and I have sat through plenty of chamber luncheons while the head of the ISD, or my local state House representative at the time (Vicki Truitt) kept selling us on why this stuff was important. Well, maybe it is important for people who still have kids in school and not enough money to send their kids to private schools, but it has very low importance to me. I think schools are extremely inefficient, and a lot of money is spent on stuff that has little or nothing to do with literacy and the "three Rs," and the taxpayers—even those whose vested interest includes children still in school—are getting a bad return on their investment........and this is coming from the son of two university level educators.
Case in point.........and I'm going to tread on a whole lot of toes here, but I don't care...........high school football stadiums...... What the heck ever happened to inexpensive bleachers? Grapevine high school has a better football stadium than either Pasadena City College, or Citrus College back in southern California. How much did that stadium cost? It seats 9,100 people. You could build cheap bleachers that would seat that many, and cost less than 1/10th of what this stadium must have cost........and it's not even as elaborate as Southlake Dragon stadium literally about 400 yards away. What improvements could have been made to the TEACHING part of Grapevine high school without a football stadium that would rival many college stadiums? It had to be in the $millions. Now, I like football as much as the next guy....particularly high school football. I like it better <gasp!> than either the college or pro games. I used to help coach it. But I have an appreciation for education which says that athletics are fine and should be encouraged, but the classroom comes first—including in fiscal needs, because literacy is the primary function of a school. If Grapevine ISD could afford to build this stadium, why does Grapevine ISD now want me to pay more sales tax, or property tax, to fund new classrooms? Instead, how about spending the money you have more wisely?
I could go on, but with all due respect, sell it somewhere else. I'm not havin' any.......and my attitude is a direct result of the abuse of the process...a process in which the proponents always said "trust us....it will be well spent."