As most property owners know, school property taxes comprise the largest part of your annual property tax bill. Here are some questions to ask your Georgetown school board members that relate to the cost of schools.
1. Over the last 15 years, GISD has issued $400M in bonds. $350M remains to be paid plus $209M in interest for $559.2M currently owed. Do you support an increase in bond debt, and if so, how much more?
2. Over the last 5 years, enrollment has grown at 1.9% annually and inflation has been 1.22% annually for a total growth rate of students plus inflation of 3.12% annually. Why has the budget grown at a 7.46% annual rate over the same period? Do you support limiting the budget growth rate to student growth plus inflation?
3. The GISD apparently hires an architect and designs schools from scratch each time a school is created or replaced. Would you support a common school design, one each for elementary, middle and high schools that might only differ cosmetically at the entrance? Round Rock ISD proposed a bond election last year that would fund a $160M high school! That is rediculous!
4. The average GISD teacher’s salary is $49,402 while the average salaries of professionals and administrative personnel range from $61,197 to $109,782. The Superintendent makes $246,400 annually. Does that seem fair or appropriate given that the teacher is the most important person in the education of children?
Two Southwestern University students have been caught removing Confederate flags from the cemetery of the International Order of Odd Fellows located behind the University.Wilco Sun
The women students were caught May 2, 2018 removing the flags from Confederate graves. They were caught with about 100 flags and their excuse was they were concerned some of their university friends would be offended if they saw the flags.
The Georgetown police did not file any charges, even though they should have, and any disciplinary action was left to Southwestern University.
The message should be broadcast loud and clear that hateful actions like grave desecration are not to be tolerated in Georgetown.
The City has embarked on building a new city hall complex using two existing buildings on the West side of downtown near the library. It is projected to coast $13M with $6.2M of that to come from the sale of three existing city owned buildings.
113 East 8th Street - the old post office
103 West 7th Street - the existing municipal court/city hall
101 East 7th Street - the visitors center
Unfortunately, these three buildings have been appraised at $3.4M, leaving a$2.8 hole in the budget for the new city hall.
The bidding has been closed on these building with the winning bids to be presented to City Council today.
If the bids do not significantly exceed the appraisals, the city will have to issue Certificates of Obligation to make up the difference. Recall that Certificates do not require voter approval even though the funds are being spent on long term capital improvements.
The city's Fiscal and Budget Policy states that "Certificates of Obligation are the least preferred method of financing" and "every effort will be made to ensure public participation in decisions relating to debt financing".
The city needs to use the "slush fund" monies and other reserves before resorting to more debt financing.
This report needs to be a warning for Georgetown to watch their pension fund even though Georgetown's pension fund, Texas Municipal Retirement System, was not a part of the study reported herein. City Council needs to make sure it is fully funded with an assumed rational discount rate. Texas Public Pension Funds
Texas’ public employee pension funds returned an average of 11% in 2017, as they rode the strong gains of US equities last year, according to a survey by Maples Fund Services for the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems (TEXPERS).
The report from Maples reviewed the asset allocation and investment performance for 63 local pension systems that are members of TEXPERS, which have a combined market value of approximately $57.1 billion. It found that the 63 funds’ average annualized returns for one, three, five, 10, 15, and 20 years were 11.0%, 5.5%, 7.4%, 4.9%, 7.7%, and 6.6% respectively. Overall, the Texas public retirement system has 75 member systems, with approximately 2 million participants, and $165 billion in assets.
