Your Thoughts Please....

[Rooster71]

This post does involves politics (at the local level), so I believe it best belongs in this forum. I will explain the situation and please feel free to give ideas. If someone has encountered a similar issue, I would really like to know about it and what actions were taken.

Background
I live in a rural area in north Texas. The local school district is classified as AA (meaning something like 1000-1250 students). This school district already has the highest tax rate of any school district in the county, $1.77321 per $100. Taxes were raised considerable about three years ago when a new high school was built. The school's enrollment is not forecasted for any significant growth in the near future. This district has experienced some financial problems in the last several years due to the actions of a spend-happy superintendent (this individual left the school two years ago when the depth of his financial screw-ups were discovered). However, the budget is once again balanced and the district has overcome these budget woes.

The Problem
Last week a local newspaper published a small news story stating that voters in this school district passed a measure (via an election) to issue $2.5 million in new bonds. The problem here is that the people living in this school district were not informed of this election until after it happened and the issue was passed. Needless to say, voter turnout was a lowly 9%. Even with the school board members persuading their friends and family to vote for the measure, it passed by only about 20 votes. There is no doubt in my mind that this measure would have been soundly defeated if the average public had known about this election. This is not a case of voter apathy, there was no honest attempt made to inform the electorate of the bond election.

Supposedly there was a notice placed in a tiny local newspaper (one with very low circulation), however I read this online and did not see this ad. When I asked local people who voted how they heard about the election, they say the heard about it from a friend or neighbor. I know for a fact that no election notice was ever published in the area's main newspaper. The newspaper where the notice was supposedly published is a small paper (weekly, about 3 or 4 pages per issue) that is not considered to be an actual source of news among the majority of area residents.

So now with the debt service on $2.5 million in new bonds and no funds to pay for it, the taxing authority is working to determine a new tax rate for next year. It is estimated the hike will be in the range of 8-10% per year.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[cardcounter0]

Isn't the school board elected? Vote em out, and put in a board that will return the money in some manner.

[Chris Alger]

Sounds like your regular newspaper dropped the ball. After all, it's supposed to look for things like this, right? There was probably discussion of this at the local board meeting and a notice on a wall somewhere. Your paper should at least be reading the notices in the smaller papers.

There's probably some statutory requirement requiring a notice of election to be published in a paper with "general circulation," or something similar. Unless your paper is sympathetic with the bond measure, I'd complain to the it and urge it to pay for an attorney (who would actually represent some sort of ad hoc committee of voters) to review the issue of notice, see if there's any grounds for challenging the election. You can also undo the damage if an alternative slate of school board members are elected later, something that should loom as a reasonably likely prospect to the incumbent board.

[Rooster71]

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Isn't the school board elected? Vote em out, and put in a board that will return the money in some manner.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, they are elected. I will be working towards voting all of 'em out. I am not sure about how the money can be returned, given the fact that they are know to spend money like drunken sailors. But I an definitely looking into it.

[jakethebake]

Ah how I miss Texas politics.

[Rooster71]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like your regular newspaper dropped the ball. After all, it's supposed to look for things like this, right? There was probably discussion of this at the local board meeting and a notice on a wall somewhere. Your paper should at least be reading the notices in the smaller papers.

There's probably some statutory requirement requiring a notice of election to be published in a paper with "general circulation," or something similar. Unless your paper is sympathetic with the bond measure, I'd complain to the it and urge it to pay for an attorney (who would actually represent some sort of ad hoc committee of voters) to review the issue of notice, see if there's any grounds for challenging the election. You can also undo the damage if an alternative slate of school board members are elected later, something that should loom as a reasonably likely prospect to the incumbent board.

[/ QUOTE ]
I was thinking that it is the school board's responsibility to notify the public, typically via an ad in the paper. It is my contention that the board members wanted the election notice to not appear in the main newspaper. I wrote a letter to the editor of the bigger newspaper which was published yesterday in the Sunday edition. Hopefully this will stir up some protest and get the ball rolling toward a resolution. I have already received several phone calls in support of my letter to the editor. I am hoping that the school board will respond and eventually the election can be nullified.

[jakethebake]

Try playing that new game with `em...

Texas Hold `Em Down & Kick `Em

[ddollevoet]

[ QUOTE ]
I was thinking that it is the school board's responsibility to notify the public, typically via an ad in the paper. It is my contention that the board members wanted the election notice to not appear in the main newspaper. I wrote a letter to the editor of the bigger newspaper which was published yesterday in the Sunday edition. Hopefully this will stir up some protest and get the ball rolling toward a resolution. I have already received several phone calls in support of my letter to the editor. I am hoping that the school board will respond and eventually the election can be nullified.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that it is more likely that your contention is wrong and the that school board followed the proper procedure.

I live in the Atlanta, GA area. And yes, organizations need to run "ads" announcing legal notices, meetings, bank foreclosures, estate auctions, events, etc. Unfortunately for your situation, they are only required to run the ad in the newspaper that is designated at the "legal paper" for your county. Most of the time, the "legal paper" is not typically the city newspaper or the popular paper.

In Atlanta's case, the main paper is the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It's circulation is 460,000 during the week and 620,000 on Sunday. You won't find these type of notices in the AJC though. Instead, they must, by law, be published in the Fulton COunty Daily Report. Circulation = less than 16,000.

Bottom line: if the school board followed proper produre (i.e. gave the proper notice to the public) you may be S.O.L.

One last thought: If you get pulled over for going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone, you will not win on a defense that you didn't see the signs where they were posted.

[Rooster71]

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I think that it is more likely that your contention is wrong and the that school board followed the proper procedure.

I live in the Atlanta, GA area. And yes, organizations need to run "ads" announcing legal notices, meetings, bank foreclosures, estate auctions, events, etc. Unfortunately for your situation, they are only required to run the ad in the newspaper that is designated at the "legal paper" for your county. Most of the time, the "legal paper" is not typically the city newspaper or the popular paper.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is the type of info I've been trying to find, what and where it has to be published. I have looked online and have not yet been able to find the info. First of all, after looking I have not yet seen any proof that the notice was ever published. It has been said that it was supposedly in a small newspaper, but it cannot be found in issues of their online edition. To give you a better idea of the type of paper we are talking about, it is just a few pages, has a circulation of no more than a few hundred subscribers and the typical headline goes something like "Jenny Smith Wins 8th Grade Spelling Bee."

[ QUOTE ]
In Atlanta's case, the main paper is the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It's circulation is 460,000 during the week and 620,000 on Sunday. You won't find these type of notices in the AJC though. Instead, they must, by law, be published in the Fulton COunty Daily Report. Circulation = less than 16,000.

[/ QUOTE ]
Again, if I could somehow find this info for the state of Texas it would shed some light on the problem.

[ QUOTE ]
Bottom line: if the school board followed proper produre (i.e. gave the proper notice to the public) you may be S.O.L.

[/ QUOTE ]
The key word in your statement is "if". And even if what they did was legal, it is one of those things that was not done in good faith. First, I don't see how board members could expect to get re-elected. And second, some of the members are business people (for example, real estate and insurance) who stand to lose alot of business due to the fact that many of the people who were not aware of the election are customers. If I had an insurance policy with a guy who held this type of sneaky election that will eventually result in another tax increase, I would certainly do business elsewhere in the future.

[ QUOTE ]
One last thought: If you get pulled over for going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone, you will not win on a defense that you didn't see the signs where they were posted.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is not the same. I see what you are saying, but it's just not the same thing. In order for this scenario to be even remotely similar, you would have to say something like "if a secret election were held and it was decided to lower the speed limit from 55 mph to 35 mph and you get pulled over for going 55 mph but the signs were never posted", you would eventually win on a defense that there was no way to know what the speed limit was.

Or you could look at it as being similar to a situation where if our congress decided to have an unpublicized vote on doubling their salary and it was passed. Yea, it may be a legal situation, but certainly it was not right.

You may be correct by saying that the taxpayers may be SOL. However, I am certain that there will be enough of a backlash from angry taxpayers that secret elections won't happen in this district again. Also I think that some of the board members will lose business from members of the community, whereas they wouldn't had they done the right thing.