When drained for maintenance or by failure, this new fire suppression water tank for City Gym first will drain onto Juanita, 4th and Fleming streets, then it will drain onto my property...and then onto my neighbors' property.
The audio for the Irion County ISD School Board Approval of Monthly Bills and Budget Amendments, July 2023, can be found at this link
https://youtu.be/NKa2qXzoxaY. I've added an index to this audio to save you some time, and you can find that by reading the Description of the audio on YouTube.
Below are my comments on this audio and more:
This was new Superintendent Sara "Nikki" Moore's first meeting as Superintendent of ICISD. Former Superintendent Ray DeSpain is now at Giddings ISD.
The report by CFO Robert Helms includes that the District costs for electricity for the new gym, City Gym, is approximately $4,000.00 a month. F-o-u-r thousand. That's outrageous. Based on Helm's report the District needs to have someone evaluate whether the gym is programed for energy savings. Clearly, the units are not programmed as even from a block away it is possible to hear the units cycling on and off. Helms also stated that the District was about to have to replace some AC units at great expense. Four thousand a month, or $48,000 a year, is enough to pay for a 9 or 10 year experienced teacher, counselor or nurse at the current ICISD salary schedule. If the Athletic Department had been required to reduce its budget by the amount of electricity for the gym, not to speak of other upkeep during its lifetime, its leadership might have been a little less eager to promote that the District needed 3 gymnasiums.
Anticipating that the District wasn't budgeting in the massive expenses associated with a new gym, back in June 2022 I requested a copy of the District's most recent long range energy plan required by Texas Education Code 44.902. No documents were provided in response by Supt. DeSpain. Section 44.902 requires the Board of Trustees to develop a long range plan to reduce annual electric consumption by 5%. I am providing the full text of this section at the very bottom of this page.
I stand by my earlier comments that any agenda using the term "as presented" (as in "Discuss/Approve budget amendments as presented" at Item 6 of this meeting agenda) is too vague under the Open Meetings Act. Helm's report clarifies that the budget amendments in this agenda relate to bus driver stipends, bus aides and appraisal expenses. The public needs to know at least the general areas where the District has missed the mark on budgeting. As it is currently, the District does not stream or archive its meetings and posts no updated financial data online, so the only way a taxpayer would know about budget mishaps like these is to appear in person at the meeting wondering what "as presented" could possibly mean. (That's what I did!) More specificity would also create some accountability in situations like the recent $98,000 budget amendment for already purchased athletic equipment. There is simply no transparency with agenda items using "as presented". The fix is simple: "Discuss/Approve budget amendments related to bus driver stipends, bus aides and appraisal services".
Helms also states (around 1:15 in the recording) that the recapture to the State is over $15 million. This amount is probably the largest ever for the District. ICISD is a "wealthy" district because of its mineral wealth - it sits on the eastern shelf of the Permian Basin oil reserve. Roughly 98% of the tax base in Irion County is from its minerals, unlike, for example Travis County, where there are no minerals and the tax base is from the value of its prized real property. The way the state educational funding mechanism works ICISD is effectively rewarded for its capital improvements because the funds used for that are not subject to recapture. The anti property right attitude of its school board is in part due to the District's lack of reliance on appreciating real estate values. (So, if they flood their neighbors' homes and render them valueless, it is meaningless to them; they still have ample funds from the mineral wealth to build and pay all maintenance and operations expenses from the mineral tax base income!) This is not a sustainable funding mechanism for public education. When there's a glitch in budgeting like there is here - the wind farm revenue falls short $840,000 and leadership failed to budget for the costs of electricity for the new gym - it becomes readily transparent that the values of this school board are for athletics and not the funding of education's principal resource - it's teachers. Paying teachers more and creating incentives for an appreciating real estate market so that families want to move here to increase their financial wealth will improve our education system.
Here is the law I referenced above that requires the school board to have an energy conservation plan:
Sec. 44.902. LONG-RANGE ENERGY PLAN TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION OF ELECTRIC ENERGY. (a) The board of trustees of a school district shall establish a long-range energy plan to reduce the district's annual electric consumption by five percent beginning with the 2008 state fiscal year and consume electricity in subsequent fiscal years in accordance with the district's energy plan.
(b) The plan required under Subsection (a) must include:
(1) strategies for achieving energy efficiency that:
(A) result in net savings for the district; or
(B) can be achieved without financial cost to the district; and
(2) for each strategy identified under Subdivision (1), the initial, short-term capital costs and lifetime costs and savings that may result from implementation of the strategy.
(b-1) For purposes of Subsection (b), a strategy for achieving energy efficiency includes facility design and construction.
(c) In determining under Subsection (b) whether a strategy may result in financial cost to the district, the board of trustees shall consider the total net costs and savings that may occur over the seven-year period following implementation of the strategy.
(d) The board of trustees may submit the plan required under Subsection (a) to the State Energy Conservation Office for the purposes of determining whether funds available through loan programs administered by the office or tax incentives administered by the state or federal government are available to the district. The board may not disallow any proper allocation of incentives.