by Roseana Auten
Believing that to make a statement one way or the other on a proposed baseball
stadium in East Austin would imply some sort of agreement between them and the
Phoenix Firebirds/City of Austin, the AISD Board of Trustees declined on Monday
to endorse the October 7 bond issue to help finance the facility.
Then again, the board wasn’t posted for action on this item, and wasn’t being
asked for an endorsement, anyway. Well, wait a minute. What was the
board supposed to do? It was all a bit vague.
For example: former Dallas assistant city manager A.C. Gonzalez, AISD’s newly
hired deputy superintendent for administrative support services, told the board
that the stadium represents “the potential of an opportunity to possibly use
the facility on a joint-use arrangement, whereby the facility might be
configured to accommodate football games.” And maybe soccer. Maybe some
baseball games, too. Maybe if some kind of interlocal agreement were worked
out, AISD could drop plans for using its own bond funds for a district-owned
stadium.
“What are we being asked?” said trustee Geoff Rips. Gonzalez explained that
the point of the agenda item was to “encourage a discussion” and for the board
to offer direction on whether AISD should pursue… something.
Firebirds representative Craig Pletenik was more definite about what the point
of the agenda item was – he has been offering the possibility of joint-use with
the school district as a kind of selling point to the voters, and just wanted
the board to be aware that the offer was open.
One observer muttered that it was annoying for AISD Superintendent Jim Fox to
dispatch his staff on this. With the notable exception of vice president Jerry
Carlson, the board seemed to agree. Trustee Diana Caste�eda opined that
it was premature to discuss making an agreement, since bonds for the stadium
have not been approved by the voters yet.
Trustee Melissa Knippa struck an unusually harmonious chord with
Caste�eda, adding that AISD intends to pursue interlocal agreements when
it’s to the district’s advantage to do so, but that there was nothing to
negotiate yet. “I would like our staff focused on our bond issue,” said
Knippa, “and our classroom needs.”
Board action included setting the tax rate for 1995-96, at $1.28 per $100
property valuation. AISD officials tout it as the lowest tax rate in five
years, and the lowest tax rate among school districts in Central Texas. Taxes
on the average home, valued at $102,018, (including the $5,000 for the school
district’s homestead exemption), will only go up by about $5 to $1,309.09 per
year.
Speaking of taxes: at a September 6 work session on the upcoming AISD bond
issue, some board members disavowed the notion that they want to get voters in
a good mood for the 1996 bond issue, which may top out at over a third of a
billion dollars, so they adopted a budget for 1995-96 requiring no significant
tax hike. Both Carlson and trustee Tom Agnor declared that they were not
operating under that assumption when they voted for this year’s budget, nor
will they look at next year’s budget with hopes of getting the bond package
approved.
The board also discussed possible bond election dates. One thing’s for sure –
the election won’t be in December. Knippa was the only member strongly in favor
of the earliest poll possible; she backed off that position when she realized,
she said, that the board still has too many things to decide before they offer
a package to the voters. Trustees narrowed the possibilities for the election
to sometime between the end of February and the end of April 1996. They expect
to discuss it further at their work session on September 20.
The board also canceled a September 13 public hearing (a misprint in last
week’s Chronicle said the hearing was September 6 – our apologies). They
will reschedule it when there’s something substantive on which to have a
hearing. At this point, the bond is still very much in its nascent stages.
This article appears in September 15 • 1995 and September 15 • 1995 (Cover).