AUSTIN (Oct. 28, 2024) — Round Rock ISD parents and taxpayers have been busy opposing the district’s proposed, unaffordable, and unjustified $1.3 billion bond tax increase on the general election ballot.
With just days to go before votes are to be tallied, bond opponents have reason to believe that $1.3 billion sum, if approved by RRISD voters on Nov. 5, would be grossly mismanaged. A 30-second video clip released by the Travis County Taxpayers Union is evidence of deliberate mismanagement of bond tax revenue by the district. In the video clip, RRISD’s CFO said “this district loves to build things, brand new things, but they don’t want to take care of things.”
The CFO further conceded that in the 2023 budget (that preceded the VATRE tax property tax increase of $19 million in the first year alone), “there is no dollars for preventive maintenance; we do reactive maintenance, and that’s not a sound practice.”
The 30-second video, from a 2023 budget discussion, may be viewed here: https://youtu.be/h8OiCn8rrJo?si=6Lt9fkKKeEmfun22
The following statement may be attributed to Don Zimmerman, former Austin Councilmember and Director of the Travis County Taxpayers Union:
“What RRISD is not telling voters is that paying for preventive maintenance — out of the hundreds of millions of dollars collected in the form of ‘maintenance and operations’ property tax every year — isn’t merely a good idea, it’s the law. The District bureaucrats deliberately divert M&O dollars away from building maintenance knowing they can use lack of maintenance as campaign talking points to pass the next bond. Most of the ‘need’ for $1.3 billion dollars of new debt taxes for regular maintenance is the result of malfeasant management, not local or state taxpayers ‘not fully funding education’ — a partisan, false allegation made every year over and over again for decades!”
Current RRISD facilities are only 70% utilized owing to four consecutive years of declining enrollment. RRISD has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “transfers” campaign to draw out-of-district students, and that has failed as well.
The District’s 2023 demographer (Zonda Education) predicts additional enrollment declines for the next 10 years. The firm asserted that the decline of RRISD’s enrollment of in-district school aged children is declining 3.5 times faster than the small overall decline of students. Home schools and private and charter schools are growing in terms of enrollment while RRISD declines.
In 2018, the District’s demographer (Templeton Demographics) portended RRISD would have 24,136 students in 2024; District ADA (average daily attendance) data shows the actual number as 20,535.
The Travis County Taxpayers Union has been busting the chops of subsidy-demanding special interests and bloated bureaucracy since 2012. For more information contact Don Zimmerman at (512) 577-8842 or David G. Schmidt at (909) 856-7129. Learn more at http://www.TCTUnion.org
To learn more about the effort to defeat Round Rock ISD’s billion-dollar bond proposal. visit www.VoteNoBonds.com.
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