We wrote about how your EPISD debt service (interest and sinking fund or I&S) rate will have to go up next year in EPISD–some real numbers.
The district wants the voters to approve lowering the I&S rate from 24 cents per hundred to 14 cents per hundred and then adding those 10 cents to the current maintenance and operations rate of $1.07 thus making that rate $1.17 per hundred.
The district knows that they will actually need an I&S rate of 31 cents for 2018-2019.
Some will tell us not to worry because raising the I&S rate from 14 to 31 cents next would trigger a rollback election.
Wrong!
This Texas attorney general opinion tells us that they can raise the rate up to the maximum allowed (50 cents) without triggering a rollback election:
“There is no ceiling or limit on the debt rate for the purposes of the
rollback rate calculation. See TEX. TAX CODE ANN. § 26.08(n)(2)(A)(iv), B(iii) (Vernon SUpp.
2009). Any increases in the adopted debt service rate necessary to pay a school district’s debt
increases the “current debt rate” component of the rollba.ck formula and the combined rollback tax
rate. See id. ; see also COMPTROLLER GUIDE, supra note 6, at 13-14 (“The portion of the overall rate
used to retire debt may rise as high as necessary without triggering the threat of a rollback.”).]]”
They are not telling us the whole story.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Brutus, do they ever? 😦
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The Super is a lawyer. As a matter of fact, the lawyer-super has created a legal department at EPISD the likes of which I have never seen in a district our size. Remember, price is no object when you are spending someone else’s money. To me, the result is a bunch of LLC corporations create to circumvent laws intended to protect our public interest. He knows full well what he’s doing and what is going on (but doesn’t know crap about education). It’s a good thing for him that El Paso voters are passive and will probably just watch everything transpire and hope that the FBI or someone else will eventually jump in to solve the problem.
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Created a legal department, the likes of which you have never seen. A lawyer, a paralegal and a clerk…wow that is massive. Maybe you have never seen anything that massive because prior to this it was contracted with a law firm that didn’t reside in EPISD so you had no idea how many people were part of that deal.
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Well they never did when Dan was on the Board so I don’t know why he would expect any different.
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