|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Brownsville Independent School District Board of Trustees approved a tax rate of $1.028664 per $100 valuation for 2024-2025, a slight decrease from the 2023-2024 rate of $1.030964.
The approval came after a public hearing at a BISD board meeting Tuesday night and marked the final step to fully enact the district’s $490 million budget for the current school year. The budget for last year was $465 million.
The tax rate includes a maintenance and operations levy of $0.786900 and a debt service levy of $0.241764. The debt service amount includes a levy of $0.110864 to retire $26.945 million in remaining bonded debt from series 2020B.
Chief Financial Officer Alejandro Cespedes gave an illustrated explanation of how the tax rate works and what retiring bonded debt early means in terms of lowering interest costs.
In response to a question from Trustee Carlos Elizondo, Cespedes said retiring bonded debt early builds capacity for the district to take on new obligations. Elizondo mentioned the possibility of proposing a $450 million capital improvements bond.
Superintendent Jesus H. Chavez then said the district’s financial advisor had “come over and said we’re going to have over a $400 million capacity. We also have described to the board a process that involves an internal assessment of our facilities, a process that involves anybody from our community that wants to be involved with us can sign up and actually validate our facility needs, add to or delete (from them.) I don’t know whether the bond committee is going to recommend a bond election or not.
”I would presume that they would, after looking at what facility needs we have. … It is up to the board to propose a bond election and vote in the affirmative to have one or not. You also have the ability to talk about the number of propositions and the amount of the propositions. That authority rests with the board.”
Trustee Eddie Garcia said BISD has longstanding maintenance needs in its schools, for HVAC and roofing repairs and the like.
“Not only that, it has been decades since one school has been built, something that definitely this school district needs in order to bring back some of those students that have left us. You show a child a new toy next to an old toy and they’re going to go for the new toy every time, and that is something that we have not had in decades,” Garcia said.
Cespedes noted: “It is recommended that districts do have debt on the I&S side because it shows that you’re trying to maintain your facilities and it helps with student achievement and employee retention.”
