It appears that the appointed board of managers of the El Paso Independent School District is trying to close the door on public input about the location of their new central office.
According to an article in the Times the managers recently voted to create a Texas Public Facility Corporation (PFC). The plan is that the PFC will issue up to $29 million of bonds to “pay for building new central offices in Northeast El Paso, off Trans Mountain Road and Kenworthy Street. ”
The district can do this without voter approval.
Fuzzy math again.
District staff has told us that the cost of the new central office will be about $40 million. Past experience leads us to doubt that the buildings can be built for $40 million, much less $29 million.
The Times article contained this quote: “I think this is the perfect way to finance this particular facility and even own it and still pay approximately what we’re paying now to lease this building,” Manager Ed Archuleta said.
The district is now paying $362,000 each year to the city to lease the land the current offices are on. If the bonds get sold and if they can get a 4% interest rate and if the bonds are issued at the maximum allowed period of 40 years the annual payment will be around $1.1 million.
Maybe the school district should conduct some math classes for the board.
Look for a tax increase to make up the shortfall.
Voter refusal
According to the Times article the voters can stop this with the signatures of 5% of the registered voters. I have not been able to verify this fact and would appreciate someone pointing me to the applicable law.
Bidding
The district’s stated reason for using this technique is that they are in a hurry. Lots of things happen when we hurry. Bidding will probably not be used. Texas Local Government Code Chapter 303 (the legislation that allows PFC’s) does not seem to require it.
These guys are making our former superintendent look like an amateur.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Let’s see:
Board agenda online so anyone can read it. Check.
Board meeting notices posted weeks ahead of time. Check.
Board agenda background materials online so anyone can read them. Check.
Board meeting open to the public so anyone can attend and comment. Check.
Board members contact information online so anyone can send questions or comments. Check.
Board meetings streamed live online so anyone can watch on any computer. Check.
Sure seems like they are trying to hide something!
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They’re not hiding what they are doing. They are using strategy and timing to disenfranchise the voters, knowing that 60 days is not sufficient time for taxpayers to organize and gather signatures on a petition of that magnitude. That is straight from the ballpark playbook.
Open meetings? This board has no interest in an opinion which is different than their own. That’s why this board took steps early on to limit comments. Have you ever heard the president of this board speak without condescension in his voice when responding to a challenge or a different point of view?
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I don’t see any complaints about “hiding something.” The bottom line is that the BoM has outmaneuvered and nullified the voters by doing something that is apparently perfectly legal but infinitely unethical and unconscionable considering that the BoM should be turning over management once again to the elected Board in a matter of a couple months and they are wielding all their power to rush this through. The public has been voicing their concerns for some time since closures have been on the agenda and since the flawed Jacobs study has come out, so the Board knows full well the desires of the public, yet adamantly refuses to heed the voice of the public. It is an unethical and unconscionable abuse of power. The “rush job” excuse is also just an excuse that could be easily remedied if the desire to really be accountable to the voters were there by either the BoM, the City, or EPISD administration.
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Fact of the matter is that power corrupts and we’re watching it in living color!
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A soon-to-be no-compete contract for Jordan-Foster?
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Place your bets, folks!
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Rushing to get things done, that is a signature of the former City Manager and we are now seeing that the cost estimates for the Bond projects are fuzzy math. To find out about the signatures of the voters to override the vole, ask the reporter who wrote about that.
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State law provides for the citizens to require a vote on something like this. If I remember correctly it will take 5% of the eligible voters on a petition to force this to a vote. You have a 60 day time frame to accomplish this. To whom you turn the petition into I’m not sure.
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Texas local gov code 271.049 C
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I don’t see where that applies to a Public Facility Corporation. Thank you for the reference. Let me do some more homework.
Brutus
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. Look at 271.004 b. should answer your question
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Thank U.
I missed 271.004b.
I’m having difficulty in that the Public Facility Corporation is the one that would build the building, so I’m not sure that 271.004 ties in.
Will look to see if the attorney general has written anything.
Brutus
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GA-0069 comes to mind.
Also remember the school board can create entities like this. This is the vehicle that issues the bonds. In fact it’s like the Downtown Development Corporation that the City created.
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Call Jim Darose. AG OFFICE HERE IN ELP
Sent from my iPhone
>
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It seems nobody wants to make hard decisions…. so the easy answer is spend more TAX DOLLARS…
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Let’s try to organize a plan to gather the required signatures.
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And, here we go again. No apparent attempt to look at vacancies around town, or abandoned buildings (and, we all know that such things exist) so as to save a few tax dollars? No apparent attempt to use any of the existing school properties that these same “managers” are already proposing to shut down? Yeah, this looks like just another day in El Chuco.
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Public Facility Corporations are nothing more than the governmental equivalent of special purpose entities, also referred to as special purpose vehicles or “off balance sheet financing”. If you look up these terms, you will see a lot of references to Enron, which used them in the creative financial structuring and misleading financials that resulted in Enron’s crash. Enron wrote the book on the use of these entities.
Leave it to Texas politicians and government to take a page from the playbook of a corrupt, failed business, and use it to screw taxpayers.
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I originally moved to El Paso as a manager for a Fortune 500 company. I retired from that company, after 30 years, and am now teaching in EPISD as a second career. What a screwed up mess!
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