School Bond Election
To the Editor:
Years ago I watched with fascination over the last school bond election series. It’s been a while, but I believe it failed at least once. My fascination was with the marketing campaign that was undertaken to get it passed after getting voted down. The proponents mustered a grass roots campaign of mothers with school age children. It morphed into what I saw as angry mothers protecting their babies. If you were against the school bonds, you were vilified in several ways. It was run as slick as any political campaign.
The school district invited the public to tour the elementary school. A friend invited me, and we took the tour together. I was sorely disappointed with only 6 interested citizens on our particular tour, that I perceived as apathy. The main thrust was the aged elementary school, and cafeteria. We walked the auditorium as well. I quickly did the math in my head, and I was horrified. The tour leader invited and fielded questions at the end of the tour. I told the tour leader the following. Of course the figures were appropriate to the year this happened.
You can build a house for $100 sq/ft. You can build a luxury home with mesquite floors and a metal roof and granite for $200 sq/ft. What you are proposing is over $6,000.00 sq/ft. It makes me wonder, whose brother in law is getting the contract? The response was that they had to abate asbestos. I responded that I had personal knowledge of that procedure and it’s not that expensive. They next commented that they were spending a budget commensurate with other central Texas school districts. I responded with words spoken by many a mother, asking a child, if your friend jumps off a bridge, are you going to do it?
Now I realize that commercial and school construction is not exactly the same thing. I just googled cost of new schools in central Texas, and the result was 250 to 450 dollars a square foot for March of 2026. It was a lot less when I took that tour, and the $6000 per square foot that was approved was worth a lot more as well.
In my opinion, the La Grange school district needed most everything they requested. They deserved the school improvements. The auditorium was dated but very serviceable. I thought it an extravagance at the time. My problem was the expense. It was insanely expensive to me. This brought up so many thoughts, mostly over people spending money that is not theirs. It’s an attitude of perceiving public interest, funds, and bonds as a never ending bottomless pit of money, that just never stops flowing.
I again did the math on what this was going to cost me. Based on my property in La Grange, this was going to cost me and my family $34,000 in increased taxes over the lifespan of the bond. 34K for one family. That does not seem reasonable to me. I voted against it. I lost.
So here we are many years later. I see the LTE in the paper and the comments on FB. The campaign has started. It is espoused already by several mothers that if you vote no, you hate children and are a horrible person. It’s for the children. It’s the backbone, and foundation of our community? They want a yes vote on any bonds. No one ever discusses the price and why?
I wanted to write today to please respectfully consider other points of view. I don’t hate children. I believe in having great public schools. I do however ask that every voting citizen hold the school district accountable for every dollar proposed to be spent. I want competitive bids. I want efficiency. I want justification. Every new building can’t be the Taj Mahal, or even the dreams of school administrators.
I try and look at the big picture. I look at 38 trillion in national debt. I look at instances of public money fraud in MN and CA. I look at all the efforts for property tax elimination. The pot is about to boil over. People have had it. Fixed income retirees are getting killed with inflation and property taxes. The property tax system is broken in my opinion and can never be fixed. Another bond election, no matter how desperately needed, is just icing on the cake.
I will probably vote no, unless I see a dramatic change in attitude and justification for the price. I will probably lose. It will probably cost me a small fortune.
I will admit this about the last bond election. In hindsight, I am glad it passed and the elementary school was rebuilt. It was an insane expense and so overpriced it is sickening. But I know in my heart that if we tried to reproduce what was done back then, it would easily cost seven times more in 2026? Isn’t that a heck of a note.