Can we revisit the CSISD Bond Discussion (signs are up, voting day approaches)

53,039 Views | 460 Replies | Last: 1 mo ago by Stupe
Stupe
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S
TellMeMore said:

Remember Consol is WAY behind the curve because the Board was so excited about a new shiny high school they forgot to elevate Consol at least to some degree. Then the Prop failed. Do what you need to, but there is no reason the Consol folks should have to wait in hallways because a School Board wanted their name on the plaques of a New High School. WO HOW.....LOOK AT US!
The only thing accurate about that statement is that Consol was hurt by the other proposition failing.

Another high school had to be built. Funds for the new school couldn't be used to upgrade Consol. The plan was to get the new school built in order to ease the massive overcrowding at Consol first. Then pass another bond for a bunch of upgrades at Consol. It had to be done in that order.

A bunch of people that didn't have kids in school defeated the proposition. And before you blame the "purple parents" for that proposition failing, there was a huge push by CSHS parents and the booster club to get people to vote "yes" on those upgrades.

Just like there is for this proposition.

It's people like that who are holding the school district back.


BCSWguru
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fair answers. Why can a tiny school like Brazos Christian self fund a new turf football field and facilities, yet Consol cannot? Why must the tax payer fund these elaborate projects? When will all of this money be used to make the schools better?

I dont care one way or the other as my kids are done, but why can other schools get by with less and CS schools need more?
Stupe
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Stupe
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Quote:

What kind of returns are we getting? Most kids in district not on grade level.
Still waiting on the link that proves that lie to be true.
Stupe
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BCSWguru said:

fair answers. Why can a tiny school like Brazos Christian self fund a new turf football field and facilities, yet Consol cannot? Why must the tax payer fund these elaborate projects? When will all of this money be used to make the schools better?

I dont care one way or the other as my kids are done, but why can other schools get by with less and CS schools need more?
Brazos Christian is a private school and doesn't have to get any type of tax payer approval. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Expert Analysis
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AG
CSISD needs tax payer approval if the facilities are self funded? That's what guru is talking about.

Here is a new facility that had a mix of funding. No idea the percentages that came from each source.
https://www.kbtx.com/2023/10/05/college-station-baseball-softball-unveil-new-hitting-facility-ahead-2024-season/
etmydst
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Well, then you are shortsighted in what can make for a successful professional. Studies (and logic) show participating in team sports makes better doctors. https://www.catapult.com/blog/athletes-becoming-doctors-why-do-athletes-excel-in-the-medical-profession

Also, your implication that learning both in the classroom and in a team sport environment can't be achieved is also very close-minded - and would be the type of opinion I would expect from someone that never had to learn to work with others in sports or other settings with those that think differently.
scs01
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BCSWguru said:

fair answers. Why can a tiny school like Brazos Christian self fund a new turf football field and facilities, yet Consol cannot? Why must the tax payer fund these elaborate projects? When will all of this money be used to make the schools better?

I dont care one way or the other as my kids are done, but why can other schools get by with less and CS schools need more?
I'm a little confused by this question. Brazos Christian is private, so everything is funded by donations and tuition, i.e., self-funded. Taxpayers are never involved. This includes academic as well as athletic facilities. CSISD is a public school and is a available to all students in the district, including those whose families can't pay, those needing special services, etc. Taxpayers are pretty much the funding source. Or are you saying the booster club should raise many millions for core infrastructure projects? I thought the booster club was there to boost, not to meet core needs.

As to why other schools get by with less, I think the fair comparison is other large suburban publics--Magnolia, Katy, Cy-Fair... Having been to a good number of other such schools for my kids' activities, I'm pretty confident we're usually the ones getting by with less by that measure, not the other way around.
BCSWguru
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Not sure many people would have a problem with whatever facility you want if the taxpayers weren't footing the bill. Why can't an entity the size of csisd raise the money? Find a donor? Why do I have to pay for $10 million press boxes and separate football stadiums? They should be trying to do more with less.
Aggie
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AG
Those of you saying " I'm not paying the bill"

You realize CSISD tax rate was $1.39 in 2017, it is now .96 cents and if this bond passes
It would raise tax rate to .98 cents
A .2 cent increase per $100

2 cents people

There has been a .43 cent decrease since 2017… so even if the bond passes it's still cheaper than we were just 6 years ago







Another Doug
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AG
Aggie said:

Those of you saying " I'm not paying the bill"

You realize CSISD tax rate was $1.39 in 2017, it is now .96 cents and if this bond passes
It would raise tax rate to .98 cents

.2 cents people






That would mean a lot more if my assessed valued hadn't gone up 70% since 2017
Hornbeck
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Maybe the School District should buy up one of the available spaces at Post Oak Mall? That would solve their admin building issues. I hear the city may have one… maybe buy it on the cheap?

I'd wager that the folks that have their taxes frozen are a lot more cavalier about that 2 cent hike they aren't paying.
TAMU1990
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BCSWguru said:

fair answers. Why can a tiny school like Brazos Christian self fund a new turf football field and facilities, yet Consol cannot? Why must the tax payer fund these elaborate projects? When will all of this money be used to make the schools better?

I dont care one way or the other as my kids are done, but why can other schools get by with less and CS schools need more?
Brazos Christian doesn't have to fund 14,000+ students and all that entails. They don't have to enroll special needs kids, kids that are troubled, and illegals who can't speak English. That's just a few differences.
b0ridi
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Aggie said:

Those of you saying " I'm not paying the bill"

You realize CSISD tax rate was $1.39 in 2017, it is now .96 cents and if this bond passes
It would raise tax rate to .98 cents
A .2 cent increase per $100

2 cents people

There has been a .43 cent decrease since 2017… so even if the bond passes it's still cheaper than we were just 6 years ago








96 cents, not .96
98 cents, not .98
2 cents, not .2
43 cents, not .43

Also, most appraised values have gone up by at least 50% since 2017
BCSWguru
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has nothing to do with outlandish athletics spending.
BiochemAg97
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BCSWguru said:

fair answers. Why can a tiny school like Brazos Christian self fund a new turf football field and facilities, yet Consol cannot? Why must the tax payer fund these elaborate projects? When will all of this money be used to make the schools better?

I dont care one way or the other as my kids are done, but why can other schools get by with less and CS schools need more?


Brazos Christian can take out a loan, say using the existing buildings as collateral, and then pay the loan back over time with whatever revenue sources they have.

CSISD has to go to the voters to issue a bond (take out a loan). Boosters club doesn't have the assets or authority to get a loan on what is essentially school property. To self fund, CSISD Boosters would have to raise millions before they could build a new facility.
EBrazosAg
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There are a lot of ways BC can fund a field. Also a lot for a ISD. That's way, way simplistic…..
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scs01
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EBrazosAg said:

There are a lot of ways BC can fund a field. Also a lot for a ISD. That's way, way simplistic…..
What are the options available for an ISD to fund facilities (athletic or otherwise)? I can see two: Bonding as proposed, and the booster club or another private organization raising money to pay for it. What are the others?
scs01
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BCSWguru said:

Not sure many people would have a problem with whatever facility you want if the taxpayers weren't footing the bill. Why can't an entity the size of csisd raise the money? Find a donor? Why do I have to pay for $10 million press boxes and separate football stadiums? They should be trying to do more with less.
I'm not intimately familiar with the football stadium situation--haven't been to a HS game in the district myself. But in one of my previous posts I gave the pool as an example where I think the district has in fact done more with less as compared with many other districts.

If you want the district to do more with less when it comes to the football stadiums, give concrete examples of how this has worked with other Texas public schools. Have other districts been able to pay for $10 million+ in improvements with private donations? Or do some districts share stadiums between high schools, for example? If I had to guess, the answer to the first question is probably negative and the second one positive...if so I wonder whether this has something that our district has considered. Anyways, given that others have IMHO made a good case that our athletic facilities need updating and upgrading, "there must be another way" doesn't do much for me unless you can give chapter and verse on similar situations where another way has worked.



SARATOGA
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I grew up in a town with 3 high schools of 5A size, about 1200 - 1600 students each (grades 10-12). When it was time to replace the oldest school (oldest building) they built a new school out among where the population was growing towards, and away from the legacy "city center" or downtown that no longer was surrounded by the largest student population.

The facility became a YMCA/Youth Center of sorts. The facility was repurposed and there were still the same number of high schools, just better located and more updated facilities to serve the town for the next decades.

In our case for the old AMCHS building, beyond utilizing it for CSISD administration there are lot of additional community benefitting uses for the "extra" space. More Lincoln Center type programs, more YMCA type programs - the "extra" space not used by CSISD administration could be used in other ways (this is just a couple of ideas, surely our community could come up with more) community benefitting ideas.
ukbb2003
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Shared athletic facilities should have been built when CSHS was built.
SARATOGA
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You know you can argue the assessed value right ?

I argue every year, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But there are 2 parts to the equation (the rate) and the assessed value. They both don't have to go up. It seems the rate has gone down. The value can (on some years) go down too. You just have to be willing to fight.
JMac03
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AG
Because my math skills stink, how much is this going to cost on average to a $400k household a year if all 4 pass?


And honestly it doesn't really matter to me personally, as I am voting YES for all 4. Just wondering how much it impacts the average household since many are quite upset over it.
cypress-ag
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I'm having to do the research as a new resident of College Station. I've always been a hard no on school bond issues but that is because I moved from the 3rd largest school district in Texas CFISD. It sickened me to no ends the amount of bond money that was passed to improve the district and it went to Taj Mahals for the Administration and a Sports Facility that was truly needed as the total number of schools made it impossible to schedule football games even including Thursday games and added 2 Saturday games with old Pridgeon Stadium.

The snuck in an all types of offices with that complex and 10 years later, built a massive Admin building besides Cy Fair High School. Like most ISD, they schedule the votes on off ballot days when nothing else is being voted on and the voting locations were in schools so teachers could all vote like good little soldiers.

Reading what has been provided and from what I've seen on the CSISD complex's, it sounds like the bonds need to be passed. If you have mold, water leaks and rodents that is unacceptable and I don't care if your kid goes to the other high school. I was shocked at the sports facilities at both schools but that's coming from CFISD. I will say that the Dallas area schools spend way more on sports facilities and indoor practice facilities than I would ever be willing to pay for as a tax payer.
BCSWguru
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I'm not well versed on it, but I see the stadiums in McKinney, Cy-Fair, Katy, etc and that seems to be the trend. Way too much. BC has a high school enrollment of 143 and they somehow have a new field, new gym, and are adding more. And they play football every Friday night, just like public schools with 8-figure stadiums. Go to any of the high dollar private schools (Episcopal, Kinkaid, St Johns) in Houston and you will see their athletic facilities are very lacking in comparison to the public schools. Its very obvious all of this excess is not needed. You cite the pool as an example, but does the school need a pool? Why cant we have a public pool the school can use just like everyone else?

I'm all for keeping facilities up. I'm tired of the excess at my growing expense.
cypress-ag
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I'll say that the CFISD Stadium off Barker Cypress makes sense for a 14-school district. It does host playoff football and it host Soccer for both boys and girls in the spring. For the marque games, they will pack the facilities and that is impressive as hell. Does CSISD need something this size, no but it would have made sense to have a central stadium for both schools.
deh40
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SARATOGA said:

You know you can argue the assessed value right ?

I argue every year, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But there are 2 parts to the equation (the rate) and the assessed value. They both don't have to go up. It seems the rate has gone down. The value can (on some years) go down too. You just have to be willing to fight.
My appraisal is appealed by a company every year and still up 86% since 2017. The final certified value has gone up every year since 2013 when we moved here so I would like to know what years it is going down. The old city, county or isd argument that we "cut your taxes" because tax rates were reduced is a bunch of crap.

I haven't decided how I'm going to vote on the bonds but let's not try to pretend the difference in tax rates between 2017 and now was a tax decrease.
BiochemAg97
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BCSWguru said:

I'm not well versed on it, but I see the stadiums in McKinney, Cy-Fair, Katy, etc and that seems to be the trend. Way too much. BC has a high school enrollment of 143 and they somehow have a new field, new gym, and are adding more. And they play football every Friday night, just like public schools with 8-figure stadiums. Go to any of the high dollar private schools (Episcopal, Kinkaid, St Johns) in Houston and you will see their athletic facilities are very lacking in comparison to the public schools. Its very obvious all of this excess is not needed. You cite the pool as an example, but does the school need a pool? Why cant we have a public pool the school can use just like everyone else?

I'm all for keeping facilities up. I'm tired of the excess at my growing expense.


Is there a public pool sized appropriately for and available for swim meets and practice?
Isn't using a public pool simply shifting the cost from the ISD to the city? How would that save the taxpayers money?

Also, swim meets are many hours long on Saturdays. Does it make sense to close the public pool to public access for most of the day on Saturday which would be peak usage for the public.
HWY6_RunsBothWays
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scs01
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BCSWguru said:

I'm not well versed on it, but I see the stadiums in McKinney, Cy-Fair, Katy, etc and that seems to be the trend. Way too much. BC has a high school enrollment of 143 and they somehow have a new field, new gym, and are adding more. And they play football every Friday night, just like public schools with 8-figure stadiums. Go to any of the high dollar private schools (Episcopal, Kinkaid, St Johns) in Houston and you will see their athletic facilities are very lacking in comparison to the public schools. Its very obvious all of this excess is not needed. You cite the pool as an example, but does the school need a pool? Why cant we have a public pool the school can use just like everyone else?

I'm all for keeping facilities up. I'm tired of the excess at my growing expense.
The public pools in BCS are outdoor facilities and not very suitable for high school swimming. College Station pools in particular are only open in the summer, while the high school swim season is roughly September-February. I think Bryan High uses an outdoor public pool for part of their swim season, but I can't imagine that would work very consistently in January-February. So are you proposing to put the city taxpayers on the hook for a natatorium so the school kids can use it...?

I agree that some of the stadiums around Texas seem a bit much. Not sure how ours will stack up after renovations. I'm pretty convinced the field house upgrades that are part of the football package are needed; that seems clear enough. I also have little doubt that the AMCHS stadium in particular needs some work, but as to where $20 million will get it relative to some of those Cadillac stadiums, I frankly don't know. The cost is a fraction of what some districts are spending on new stadiums now, but it does sound like a good chunk of change.

On the other hand, the district is claiming the overall bond will lead to a $.02 cents/$100 tax increase. If you calculate the tax increase caused by just the two athletic bonds (C&D), I came to about $26/year on a $1 million home, or $12/year on a $500000 home. A tax increase is a tax increase, but that doesn't seem backbreaking. Factor in that it's pretty clear that at least a good chunk of that money is needed just to get us back to functional. I also think that if the district is going to renovations, they should do them right so they have good facilities for a good while into the future. Doing that just plain costs money. I'm OK with what they're proposing.
TAMU1990
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BCSWguru said:

has nothing to do with outlandish athletics spending.
You need to request a tour. You have no idea what you are talking about. There is no NEW stadium. They are adding metal bleacher seating. They are fixing the press box and adding sq footage to the fieldhouse to accommodate the NUMBER of students that participate NOW. The training room is so small people lay on the floor on mats and in the hallways to see the trainer in the morning. They can't even put all of the kids in the fieldhouse as teams are spread out.

TAMU1990
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HWY6_RunsBothWays said:

What do the students have to say about facilities?

1:42-15:57


29:07-58:17

All who are being argumentative because you think palaces are going to get built should watch these videos.
Hornbeck
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Pardon me. I guess other government agencies shouldn't build palaces, then…
SARATOGA
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Maybe fire that company ?
scs01
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JMac03 said:

Because my math skills stink, how much is this going to cost on average to a $400k household a year if all 4 pass?


And honestly it doesn't really matter to me personally, as I am voting YES for all 4. Just wondering how much it impacts the average household since many are quite upset over it.

The district is claiming that this will lead to a $.02 increase in the tax rate over the current. I'm a little fuzzy on whether that is the total anticipated cost of this particular bond to the taxpayers, or the total anticipated tax increase factoring in other bonds being paid off in the meantime. Those are two different things.

Anyways, a $.02 rate increase translates to a tax increase of $20 per $100K of valuation. If a $400K household has the $100K homestead exemption that will very likely be in place after the fall election, that will be assessed on $400K-$100K = $300K of value, so an increase of $60 per year.
 
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