Vote no campaign sounding alarm: Proposition A wording could be illegal; marketing for VATRE election misleading school district taxpayers
ROUND ROCK, Texas – A coalition of Round Rock ISD parents and taxpayers are saying “later” to the VATRE, pointing out numerous misleading tactics being employed by the district.
The coalition, including the Travis County Taxpayers Union (TCTU), is urging voters to reject Proposition A in an upcoming VATRE (or voter approved tax rate election, pronounced “Vader”) on the ballot this fall. Voting will take place Oct. 23, through Nov. 3, and on Nov. 7, 2023. A press conference is set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday (Oct. 4) outside the McNeil High School cafeteria, 5720 McNeil Dr, Austin.
TCTU is calling attention to extremely deceptive marketing (see Figure A) and spurious ballot language (see Figure B) which claim the higher tax rate and additional $19 million tax revenue for RRISD as “tax revenue for the District for the current year as compared to the preceding year, which is an additional $0.” The deceitful ballot language fails to mention that the tax rate increase is so large that it requires voter approval under a Texas Law passed in 2019 to protect taxpayers from unaffordable and dramatic annual tax increases.
Don Zimmerman, director of TCTU. Zimmerman has a history with these kinds of situations. As an Austin City Council member, he publicly objected to disingenuous city of Austin’s ballot initiative language which was unlawfully crafted behind closed-doors during executive session. The following statement may be attributed to Zimmerman:
“Round Rock ISD’s ballot language is a case study of deceptive and possibly illegal ballot language – the classic ‘shell game’ of dishonest bureaucrats designed to deceive voters into believing a tax rate increase so large that it requires voter approval is not a tax increase at all, because it ‘is an additional $0.’ It is despicable that District bureaucrats would craft this deceitful language without apparently seeking the input of our elected representatives. District staff proposed the finalized ballot language on their own. It’s what these crooked bureaucrats pass off as ‘community input’ – which really means no input from the community, just final executive decisions claiming to speak for the people.”
The Travis County Taxpayers Union (TCTU) has led the fight in representing the taxpayers and challenging special interests demanding subsidies since 2012. For more information visit www.TCTUnion.org.
For more reasons to oppose RRISD Prop. A visit www.NoVATRE.com.
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