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For a building like the City Gym, the gutters and downspouts have to be sized according to the International Plumbing Code. They must be able to carry the equivalent of a100 year flood amount. The Code adopts NOAA's figures, and for Irion County that is approximately 3.75 inches per hour. I determined from several PIA requests to ICISD that there was no independent inspection done of the building as it was being built, as required by TEA regs, so it is impossible to say how the roof will perform in a worst case flood. Also see here for the architect's calculations on how much water will be coming off the roof. Here is the agenda for the December 4, 2023 Mertzon City Council meeting, with my comments on the agenda and follow up analysis on the meeting down below. Comments: Agenda items 5-8 appear to all be connected and relate to the recent efforts of the City to secure no cost bonds to improve the drinking water system. The process of securing these funds have been long and tedious, and the Mayor, Council and City Administrator deserve some kudos for doggin' these funds. All that appears to be missing (but perhaps will be addressed in this meeting) is putting this long process all back into plain English. How will the money be spent, and when will citizens see the benefits? And, last but not least, how will citizens be able to tell the City spent the money like it said it was going to in the first place? (Bond expenditure accountability.) In the "how to read an agenda" category, one way to cut to the chase with agenda items like 5-8 related to bonds (or anything else confusing in an agenda) is to call or email your your elected official before the meeting and ask for them or someone in their office to spell out for you in plain English what a particular agenda item means. I did this very thing last week when I emailed County Judge Molly Criner and asked a question about an agenda item in an upcoming County Commissioner meeting. She answered me, and I was a better educated taxpayer as a consequence. And, by answering me, she was being an accountable elected official. It is always appropriate to ask before a meeting: would you tell me what y'all are doing, in plain English? Note that somewhere on the agenda you will usually find a phone number to call, so a call , civil in tone, is a good start. The rest of the agenda, items 9-11, are standard items for this meeting. But, one never knows what will come up during these items. I try to stay to the end of these meetings because on occasion informative or politically sensitive matters will be raised at these times. As I've said before, don't be a flash in the pan by coming to a public meeting all hot and bothered and leaving as soon as your issue has been covered. Effective advocacy requires a time commitment. Challenge yourself to learn more about your government than the one issue you are most concerned about. Stay to the end of meeting if at all possible. Advocacy tip: if you are in a group raising group cane about an issue, decide before the meeting how and when the group will leave. Plan ahead as a group how you will politely decline to accept the presiding officer's invitation to your group to leave after open forum, if that invitation is made. (Sometimes the meeting leader will invite folks to stay after open forum by saying something to the effect all are welcome to stay but the rest of the meeting is going to as dry as cardboard, and such language will cause folks to hit the door as if they were just asked to leave. Don't take the bait.) Finally, if your group is going to leave the meeting while it is ongoing, all need to leave the meeting orderly without disturbing the remainder of the meeting. How organized your group is at leaving informs the decision makers how organized your movement is. Analysis of Meeting: Below are the minutes for this meeting, without the minor changes approved at the Council's following meeting on December 18, 2023. Note that I responded to Superintendent Moore's request to close parts of 3rd Street at the December 18 meeting. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

Update: read my December 17, 2023 update at the bottom of the page. At last, Irion County ISD has gone back to publishing its check register on the web. You can find it here. I have recommended before that the District be more forthcoming with its financial data, and I even recommended it this week here at paragraph d. There has been 5 years of darkness. Well, almost 5. Since my September, 2021 Public Information Act request, I have been requesting and receiving the check register for each individual month. Much of the information I have learned about the 2019 bonds has been sourced directly from my specific monthly requests for the District's check register. Sometimes you have to dog your government like a good border collie who can't let his eyes off the sheep...or horse your government like a good quarter horse who has cow and can't let its eyes off the cows. Man, it is a lot of work, but there's little choice. Has to be done. In this instance I am especially glad to see the District post the document on its website. There was never any need for my having to have made so many requests because this data is very much a public document. Indeed, this was no doubt an obstructionist effort by the District during the DeSpain years to make me dog for the data in hopes that I would relent and go away. I didn't... So, why in the world would you read a school's check register? Here's a reason, from a recent conclusion I was able to make that comes directly from attending board meetings and my PIA requests for the District's check register and the documents behind a check: With my September 26, 2023 request, I have concluded that there is no final audit report of WBK Consulting done by R.L. Townsend.  The Board approved the audit on August 15, 2022.  I have asked on 5 separate occasions for an update and final report.  See PIA requests on November 15, 2022; January 26, 2023; March 8, 2023; April 24, 2023; and, finally on September 26, 2023. For the September 26 request, the District provided me with 2,111 pages of non responsive materials.This request has been a priority, thus my many stabs at it, because without a response it is readily transparent that the Construction Manager At Risk was able to perform under the contract without any formal auditing of how public dollars were spent. And, so when you open the check register, on page one no less, one thing you will find is this: Sure enough, during the tenure of Superintendent DeSpain not only did the Board approve and pay RL Townsend over $5,000 for the construction audit, but the final two payments to WBK for their performance under the contract were made well before the audit was paid for. Which is to say that WB Kibler never had any incentive to cooperate and complete the audit - they had already been paid in full! The few behind the scenes emails that I was able to obtain about the audit indicate that Townsend found WBK noncooperative. No wonder there is no final audit report by Townsend that can be provided to me. WBK had already been paid and had left town. Superintendent Moore should be applauded for posting the check register. She doesn't know where the skeletons are when the sun comes out because she is new to the job. That takes a lot of courage and dedication to open government. (The Board appears to have hired a new kind of administrator, and so I reiterate my opinion about her pay here.) The great American screenwriter Norman Lear recently passed away, and in this Sunday Morning interview was quoted as saying, "The cost of freedom is citizen participation." There's a lot of meaning in those words, and I contend that Lear meant more than participating at the ballot box. He was a vocal advocate for First Amendment rights, and he even owned a rare copy of our Declaration of Independence that he put on tour throughout the US. All of that, and especially his writing in the All in the Family series, was a form of citizen participation. So, I encourage you to protect your freedom by your own brand of citizen participation. Part of my brand, tailored specifically to address the oppression of stormwater from government facilities, is to attend school board and city council meetings, use the open government laws and publish this website. These things count. Here's an advocacy tip for you and your brand: it may be painstaking at times, but you may have to dog your government as a cost for your freedom, and I mean dog it. This takes real effort on your part. * Below is an example of one of my recent Public Information Act requests specifically addressing information that I have sought from the Irion County ISD check register. Feel free to customize this request to a particular check that you may want more information about. It is a worthwhile exercise to go behind a check for more information. I regularly ask for invoices, contracts and correspondence all tied to a particular check. The register itself only scratches the surface of what is available. Please provide... A copy of the invoices submitted by Carl J. Cahill, Inc. for the following two checks: A. for payment via check number 025564 dated 05/25/2023 for $22,700 with the check memo “set up and poured wall”, and B. for payment via check number 025064 dated 04-21-2023 for $67,070 with the check memo “paving road on Juanita”. December 17, 2023 UPDATE: I testified before the Texas Senate Public Education Committee back in May, 2022 on their interim charge on bond reform. My recommendation 17 was "Audits: Require random state auditor or independent auditor audits of the construction manager’s and district budgets. (My review of the budgets of Irion County ISD and their construction manager at risk  is that there is so much budgetary slack that Education Code 44.0411 on Change Orders is rendered meaningless. Prudent fiscal management of tax dollars requires regular auditing, and bond related budgets should be subject to audits.)" I provided a copy of this testimony to ICISD to inform them of my concerns about how the 2019 bonds were being used. The Senate, however, dropped this interim charge I presume because the Uvalde school shooting took priority. My testimony was the same afternoon as the Uvalde shooting, May 24, 2022, and it was a surreal experience to witness the committee take in the news live during the meeting. I hope the Senate will once again take up school bond reform, as no doubt this blog is testament to how badly things can go for taxpayers when bond funding is abused by a school district. Copyright 2023 G. Noelke

Here is the agenda for the December 11, 2023 board meeting, with my comments on the agenda below and my comments on the meeting below that. Agenda comments: Agenda item 8, Further facility project discussion, is notable on this agenda. Supt. Moore attended the Mertzon City Counsel meeting last week and announced there would be a bond called in 2024 (in Feb.), so all discussions about the school facility now are important. I could write pages on this agenda addressing the TASB policy update at item 7. I covered this issue on an earlier blog post at bullet two. For more on existing ICISD policies, go here. Board members, both governmental and nonprofit, are largely present to help the superintendent or executive director create and manage the policies of the organization. Their main role is not to be a "do-er", as in mechanically perform some task (like voluteer at a ball game or class function), but rather to be a "reader" and "thinker" and to communicate advice and direction to the superintendent or ED. They are executive level managers but without day to day control over the organization. Boards go through various stages of growth and re-growth depending on the executive level management skills of the board members and their superintendent/executive director. Failing to wrestle over policy during meetings, however, is a sure sign of a poorly functioning board. This agenda accomplishes so much more on a policy level than previous agendas. Appendix A to item 7 is great way to communicate policy changes. First, it tells the board members to come prepared to think and discuss particular policy changes. (To have a good policy discussion you need to read the proposed policy first!) It tells stakeholders, like teachers, to pay attention because they are discussing employment practices. It tells students that changes to their student records are being considered. It tells parents that standards for safety and security could be changed. And, importantly, it serves as advanced notice to the community that it can speak up during open forum before these changes are passed. (Yes, the community at large is a stakeholder in a public school's policies!) Appendix A is a treasure trove of information, even though it only generally identifies the topics. Even if the Board ultimately approves TASB's policy update verbatim, giving it more air time on the agenda presents greater opportunity for discussion by the Board and Superintendent Moore. I frankly used to cringe when Superintendent DeSpain and former President Flores passed these updates without discussion. ("We have to do what TASB tells us" was Flores' position. No they don't. TASB does not regulate school districts by law. They may be the only game in town, but that doesn't mean they are free from questioning.) The Board members don't all have to become policy wonks, but they also shouldn't lifelessly adopt what TASB feeds it. Agenda item 7 with its appendix are refreshing changes made by President Carlile and Superintendent Moore. As to the closed session, recently I raised in an open records request the sharp rise in hires at the District during DeSpain's tenure, so I am interested in the Personnel issue at 11 (b). Did you know that during the last 3 years the District grew from 52 to 72 employees? That's significant. Why such growth? I am still trying to find out. Otherwise, I suspect the Community Committee mentioned at 11 (d) is related to forming the bond related community committee responsible for selling the bond project to voters. If you were to look back in history at the 2019 bond you might not call what was used then a "committee". Maybe they should be called a...family and some close knit principals, coaches and board members? Maybe a superintendent and architect were also members? (An architect who had a with a previous relationship building a gym with the superintendent!) More on all that later. In any event, a committee of this type is supposed to be the tool used by the District to obtain buy in from the community on the bond. In another light, it is the group of people the District can persuade to make an objective ask to the community for the funds; the District uses this committee to make the ask for the District. What happens if the District doesn't get community buy in, because, say, the committee was not legitimately formed and is really just a group of networked insiders who are intent on using bond funds as they see fit? Well, web sites like Government in the Sun pop up in protest! Meeting comments: Public Forum. School Counselor LeAnn Rutherford spoke during Open Forum in defense of Athletic Director Jacob Conner. It is exceptionally rare to see an employee of a governmental body speak during open forum. It is generally a risky proposition because one never knows where all of their bosses are on whatever issue it is they speak on. Moreover, the open forum is generally reserved for the public, and for an employee to speak during that time leaves an appearance that the employee is saying something that is not approved by all. Ms. Rutherford appeard to be trying to say, enough with the rumor and conjecture, I know this man to be a good man and something good needs to be said. Of course, the context was entirely missing and one would have to be an insider to know what wildfire she was trying to control. I'm no insider, and I strive to avoid conjecture when I can. However, I have been openly critical of Mr. Conner on this website for a number of reasons. Principally, he failed to forthrightly testify to the Mertzon City Council that the proposed new gym (which was largely his brainchild) would flood city streets, private residences and, yes, even the football field that he manages, even though such was known at the time. (Reminder to all ICISD employees: you are public servants first. You serve the public, not just those who are the beneficiaries of your departmental budget!) Second, his department required a $98,000 budget amendment for athletic equipment at the football field during a year of a fiscal crisis. I have recently received this budget amendment in response to one of my open records request and will post it in time. Flash in the pan advocacy. A number of folks attended the board meeting who had never attended before, presumably to support Mr. Conner or support the statements by Ms. Rutherford. No one else spoke during open forum. Mr. Conner was not present at the meeting, and there was no substitute or mention of his report to the Board. I can't say what the purpose of their advocacy was at the meeting, and these folks left after shortly after the board entered executive session. Read my note 3 about how to avoid flash in the pan advocacy. TASB Update 122. There was at least an incremental change in that Superintendent Moore provided a bullet point summary of the changes in the legal policies in Update 122. There was no discussion of those changes by the Board, and no mention of Appendix A, local policies. Update 122 was approved. In time, perhaps the Board will reconsider whether to allow the folks in Austin to dictate local policy and at least begin to question policy matters. Say what they will about the meaning of the law in their legal policies, TASB is not the final authority on local policy. Local policy is the Board's purview. Budget. CFO Helms was not present. There was so little stated about the budget that another open records request is going to be necessary. The District should be more transparent about its finances and start posting financial data on its website. The District is undergoing/has just undergone a financial audit, so there is reason for our community to pay attention. Remember, a 2024 bond is almost certain to be called and these are our tax dollars at work. Superintendent Moore's report: She mentioned in her report that Ener-Tel was in the process of deploying the new security cameras. I recently received a copy of the the District's contract with Ener-Tel pursuant to the Public Information Act. I was mainly curious about whether they were using Aritificial Intelligence as part of their software. Indeed they are. This verifies, as I stated in my post AI and School Security, that there is reason to be concerned about how AI is being used...and who is using it. Action items after closed session. There were none, and I was the only member of the public present. This board's marathon meetings are 3 to 4 hours, but this one was wrapped up in about an hour. Coincidentally, another reason to stay until the end if at all possible is to show the governmental body your respect of them and respect of the procedures they have to observe to serve the public. The open meeting procedures to close a meeting, in a legal sense, are just as important as the symbolism of publicly reciting the pledges to the flags at the opening of a meeting. Update: After I initially posted this page I learned that the District is now posting some of its financial data on the web like it used to. See this post, The Sun Shines on the Check Register. Also, to put this meeting in its historical context, this week the City closed Fleming Ave for flood cleanup, thus putting the District in an awkward bind as it considers another street closure for a 2024 bond election. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

In an unexpected move, the City of Mertzon earlier this week closed W. Fleming Ave from 3rd to 4th Street to begin blading the street to remove what is now multiple years worth of sediment originating from the Irion County ISD campus. I first began railing against the District's sediment from stormwater runoff landing on Fleming Ave as long ago as 2016, when the paved skirts around the new tennis courts were washing gravel into the street. And, I opposed the 2019 bond and new gym largely because of the flooding it would cause on Fleming and all points below. These efforts by the City this week show that I was, well, correct! Huge loads of gravel and dirt sediment are being removed by the City. This week I met with Superintendent Moore and have exchanged emails with Mayor Stewart about the situation. If one relies on MLK's quote, "...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" as I necessarily have had to do to save my home, you might have in your bank of protests a long ago statement condemning the injustice you are being plagued by. I did, and here it is, my September 2020 statement to the Irion County ISD school board about flooding from the bond construction. And, here is the email I sent this week about that statement to Superintendent Moore, Board President Maegin Carlile, Mayor Aubrey Stewart and City Manager Michelle Wardlaw. To put a point on my communications with Superintendent Moore and Mayor Stewart earlier this week, attached are my comments to the Board on September 21, 2020. Among other things, I used this presentation at the time to show that construction gravel was traveling down 4th Street to Fleming and that the football field was being flooded by the same water. I had the 3 exhibits made up on large foam board, and I stopped speaking during my presentation to show each exhibit to the entire room. Then, at the end of the presentation, I gave a copy of the document I have attached to Superintendent DeSpain, each board member, Jeff Potter (architect) and the WBK representative present at that meeting. Everyone had personal knowledge. No one ever responded to me, and these comments prompted no one to clean up the streets. Moreover, it prompted no one to reconsider the stormwater impact of the new gym, which was just starting construction at the time. It astounds me that so many people, presumably the leaders of our community, chose to do nothing. I don't know what else I possibly could have done to make a point that terrible decisions were being made. The City should stand up to the District and not clean up after its messes. To continue cleaning up after it, like it did this week by scraping and removing the build up on the shoulder of Fleming in front of my property, promotes irresponsible growth by the District and increases everyone's taxes. Of course, the City can't continue to ignore the terribly unsafe condition of Fleming Ave. But, the District needs to acknowledge the damage it is doing to our community by outright ignoring the impact of stormwater runoff from the campus. And, that damage was largely started by the advocacy of those who favored moving the proposed new gym from its agreed upon location on 2nd and Juanita to its current location on 4th and Fayette. See item 4 below for the names of all who favored the 4th Street location. This document is the minutes of a pivotal August 3, 2020 special board meeting (only the month before my comments to the Board above), when District leadership pulled out the stops to reverse the City's refusal to close 4th Street for the gym: "I would rather rely on Mother Nature's wisdom than on man's cleverness," is an apropos quote by Wendell Berry. The District's leaders were undoubtedly being very clever to get what they wanted at that meeting, but Mother Nature has spoken and will continue to speak. Her wisdom here is simple enough. Rain water flows downhill, and it gives no special consideration for avoiding streets...or football fields, for that matter. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

By April 2021 the District had spent $506,000 of the $18 million bond on excavation and backfill for City Gym. The limestone rock was similar to that seen on this page. Apparently the District did not care about the community enough to address the obvious question of where the stormwater was to go from atop this limestone hill. By this point they certainly had sufficient evidence that the rock was impermeable. Why did no one care? One thing the Public Information Act can be used for is to view public employee employment contracts. I have obtained a number of contracts through the years, and more recently I requested and received a copy of Superintendent Moore’s contract. Here it is. Here’s something to consider. At $115,000 annually, her salary is only just above the median for rural superintendents, according to this recent TASB survey. That survey concluded that for school districts with less than 500 students (ICISD is in this camp) the median salary was $112,466. However, the median salary reported for districts statewide who participated (72% of all districts) was $150,000. Keep in mind that measuring salary against a median metric is not necessarily the best way to approach this issue, but the median data was all that was reported by TASB. I’ve publicly gone on record supporting higher teacher salaries and opposing school vouchers. My critics will find it difficult, therefore, to assume that I am anti-ICISD on everything solely because they are flooding my property. I’ll go one step further here. Her starting pay was too low. Consistent with my opinion that ICISD teachers are paid too little, our community should not be paying superintendents near the median for rural districts. She’s only a few months into her contract, so my views are necessarily without regard to her performance. That said, my rationale for paying teachers better is the same as my rationale for paying, in this case, starting superintendents better - if the Board wants the next candidate for the job to be superior to the last, it is going to have to be prepared to progressively graduate up to urban campus pay. Anecdotally, my personal experience with 6A and 1A superintendents makes me pause to consider whether TASB’s distinction in its survey between large and small districts is a valid distinction. There’s room to consider Ann Richard’s great quote, “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” There’s no doubt in my mind that rural district superintendents are doing the same job as urban superintendents, with the main exception being that rural superintendents are doing it with far fewer staff resources. In other words, that less than 500 student metric is one of convenience for TASB, and it likely does not accurately reflect the similarities between rural and urban school district superintendent jobs. And, though I didn’t flesh this out on my teacher salary post, if the District wants to retain good teachers they have to pay them well. The same goes for superintendents. The TASB survey points out that the average stay for a superintendent is 3 years. Superintendent Moore’s contract is for three years. If the Board is going to consider keeping her, there’s no doubt they will have to consider aggressively upping their ante. (One reason for investing in higher starting pay for key positions like the superintendent is that retention can yield substantial dividends for the district’s overall growth and sustained excellence. Excellence. There's that word again.) Evaluating a public employee’s worth and salary from the sidelines like I am doing here is difficult, at best. All the discussion regarding her initial pay was done in closed session, so the public is privy to nothing about the Board’s judgements. (TASB's survey data came out a few months after she was hired.) Those deliberations, or some part of them, need to be public. This call for more transparent discussions regarding salary deliberations in closed sessions highlights the need for public accountability and involvement in determining public employee compensation, as it directly affects the community’s values and priorities. My larger point, as I’ve said in other posts, is that budgets are statements of community values. Our values flow with the money. Community and opportunity I believe in part are created by excellent pay…for both teachers and superintendents. Superintendent Moore needs to earn her salary, so I’m not excusing performance. But, that analysis comes later. Even so, there is good reason to believe she was started on the low end of the pay scale. Our community needs to do better. Noticeably absent from the TASB survey is data addressing the differences in pay between male and female superintendents. I suspect that having that data might help further flesh out some wage bias that might be timely addressed at ICISD at this moment in its history. For the first time in my memory, and probably for the first time in its 114 year history, the school district is being led simultaneously by a female superintendent and female school board president (Maegin Carlile). This board, thankfully, can no longer be called an “ol boys club”, as I have heard it described in the recent past. This change in leadership is consistent with a community where there are more women than ever in government leadership roles. Here’s a list of the current women leaders in the county and their offices, not in any particular order: County Judge: Molly Criner District and County Clerk: Shirley Graham-Miles Tax Assessor-Collector: Joyce Gray County Treasurer: Carolyn Huelster Justice of the Peace: Donna Smith District Attorney: Allison Palmer District Court Judge: Carmen Dusek Third Court of Appeals, Chief Justice: Darlene Byrne I consider this kind of diversity of leadership a good thing. The community is properly aligning with a larger societal acceptance of women as leaders. I'm glad for that. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

The GMPL goes completely unused by students and faculty most days. The expense and resulting stormwater mismanagement, including its impact upon the City of Mertzon, just boggles the mind. My latest Public Information Act request shows that the District did a budget amendment in Jan. 2023 for unplanned costs of $427,574 to pay for this parking lot and for paving Juanita Street from 4th St. to 5th St. This means, among other things, that the 2019 bond project went over budget at least by the same amount. With special thanks this Thanksgiving season to my ICISD high school teacher who created a spark to write, Byrene DeCordova, below are my comments regarding the regular meeting on Nov. 13, 2023 of the Irion County ISD school board. The agenda for this meeting can be found here. Retention Stipends. The Board had budgeted in and approved at this meeting a retention stipend of $1,000 for full time and $500 for part time employees. This is the week before Thanksgiving, and I'm sure any amount is appreciated. But, it isn't enough. I won't do a deep dive on teacher salaries here, but, generally, a starting teacher salary at ICISD is $38,500. If a teacher could have made it teaching the last 30 years, they would cap out this year at only $59,575. The salary schedule for 22-23 at ICISD is here. This pay scale is abysmally low and diminishes the value of the profession. Read my legislative fix for low teacher salaries here. Our state, the ICISD school board and our community need to do more for teachers. Budget. In other budget related news, CFO Robert Helms reported that the ad valorem tax revenues are starting to come in. He has been able to invest the first $1.6 million at an attractive 5.75%. He stated that this would also help with salaries. That's welcome news, but market interest rates should not be a limiting factor on raises. Remember, it was investment revenue that saved the District in an earlier budget crisis (see Comment 4 here), and relying on the market for revenue is not a safe way to run a railroad. Again, the better approach would be to already have those raises banked, as I suggest in my legislative fix. Superintendent Moore’s Report. She gives  the board members a report in written form each week, so the board meeting report is typically brief.  The written reports are subject to the PIA, and I do request them.  Otherwise, at this meeting she reported on the STAAR school district litigation and that TEA had lost.  See my blog post on that here. This means the current metrics have been determined invalid and are not being used while the case is on appeal.  The unknown here, in terms of accountability metrics, is: are ICISD teachers continuing to teach to standards while the case is on appeal by TEA?  “Scores or no scores, we are still teaching kids,” she said. Were I a parent on the front lines during this appeal, I would certainly want to drill down on this issue because this appeal could well last beyond this school year. Parents should especially know what the standards are during the appeal of this litigation. Facilities Update Informational. A representative of Gallagher Construction Services made a presentation on the condition of District facilities in open meeting, and a security review to the board in closed session.  The public part was informative and well done. That said, let’s call a spade a spade here and recognize this firm has already been chosen to advise the District on pre-bond referendum planning.  See their list of services here.  There’s reason to suspend judgment about Gallagher from the start. Their business plan is clear - earn as much off the bond dollars derived from Irion County minerals as they can.  And, they aren’t one of our neighbors already paying our local property and sales taxes. They hail from Richardson. Why does this matter?  Well, do a search for “Potter” and “WBK” in this blog and you might ask yourself, “Where is the architect and construction manager for the 2019 bond projects today?”  They are gone, g-o-n-e, to build on with the protection of governmental immunity, never to face the consequences of stormwater flooding that they had knowledge about from the start.  And this community, as I am documenting in this blog, has a mess on our hands for generations to come. My message - especially for those considering being on the District’s community committee evaluating a new bond - is suspend judgment. Executive session. As I stated at Comments 1 and 2 on my agenda review page, the meat of this meeting was in the executive session. By law, the public can’t know much of anything about what went on.  Generally, what to look for is whether the governmental body voted on any matter after they re-enter the public meeting, and at this meeting the Board did not. However, the Board admitted into executive session the representative of Gallagher Construction to discuss his security audit and recommendations. This is where my review of the pending HJR 1 below is worth real attention.  If that proposed Texas constitutional amendment is passed in current form, in practice it will funnel literally billions of dollars to Texas school districts who will then be able to meet totally in private in executive session to discuss security matters with any number of individuals  and companies who, like Gallagher, will have a financial stake in selling consulting services, construction management, security devices and all manner of things. Such folks may not even have a security clearance.  In effect, this could become a private digitization of school security, with billions of tax dollars involved, and without the oversight of parents and the community. Everything done by the school districts with these billions of dollars, at least under the current provisions in the Texas Open Meetings Act, could be done in total privacy.  If this doesn’t awaken your inner George Orwell, well, you may be in a coma.  And remember, AI is already here… There’s already reason to be concerned with facial and vocal recognition and AI. How  they will be used - and potentially abused - in school security is anyone’s guess. But if HJR 2 comes to pass, you won’t know about it. An amendment to the Texas Constitution is needed for teacher salaries Since January 2023, our state legislature and governor have been spending down an $18 billion surplus. Even now, after one regular session and four special sessions, our state leaders have not allocated any of that to teacher salaries. I expressed my concern here, questioning the wisdom of demeaning teachers in such a way. I believe Texas taxpayers are victims of an ongoing bait and switch. Even as our state last week voted in significant property tax reductions, our state leaders and TEA are missing a significant opportunity to prioritize teacher pay in our public education system. All the while our state coffers have grown, they are passing premise safety laws (which are going to have significant long term maintenance and operation costs) as a backdoor response to school shootings, in particular at Uvalde. That is, while Texas taxpayers are receiving significant property tax relief, in the background we are about to get hammered with long term security and safety "upgrade" costs that in effect hand further insulation to the gun control lobby. Here's a solution. Take a look at the currently pending HJR 1 and its fiscal note, which has already passed out of committee. (More on HJR 1 here). This proposed constitutional amendment aims to create a constitutionally protected fund for safety and security in public schools, amounting to billions of dollars. I suggest that the language in HJR 1 be edited to create a state school teacher salary fund instead. Such a constitutional amendment would prioritize people over chasing school safety. My amendment would also prevent our governor, state legislature, and TEA from playing politics with teacher salaries and firearm regulation. They need to stop avoiding the elephant in the room. We shouldn't promote constitutionally protected right to work laws for the school security industry, we should promote competitive teacher salaries that will draw more and more qualified folks to the profession over time. And, of course, we should ask our state leaders for more sunlight on the gun lobby. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

One reason stormwater runoff is such a problem in Mertzon is that underneath the 1 - 6 inch topsoil is layer upon layer of impermeable limestone, just like these limestone layers west of Cowboy Hill. This photo is about 5 feet of one side of a limestone trench. In coming posts I'll show some pictures of the massive limestone excavation that was necessary for the construction of City Gym. How is it I know so much about this rock? As a kid on the ranch I dug a lot of post holes in it! UPDATE: Read my analysis of this meeting here. Here is the agenda for the November 13, 2023 board meeting, with my comments underneath: Comments: Often the meat in the meeting will be found in the Closed Session, and such is the case here. Starting with my big red arrow... Here, from my perspective as a next door neighbor and taxpayer, has largely been the District's community relation plan since 2016: If what a community member has to say is that it is not a great day to be a Hornet, then the District doesn't want to hear about it or know about it; go away...or as Superintendent DeSpain literally put it, "You are out of order!" Now, to her credit, Superintendent Moore came to me during her first week a few months back and tried to get to the nub of my flooding concerns. That was some smart community relations work on her part. No administrator or board member had done that before in the now 7 (s-e-v-e-n) years I have been trying to get community wide flooding addressed. The Board, however, has long been tone deaf when it comes to community relations with its neighbors and taxpayers who are not rearing children in the school. So, I think it is a good thing to see a community relations topic on the agenda. I hope the Board looks beyond its immediate parent constituents and considers a need for better relations with its neighbors, taxpayers and alumni. As I said in this post, creating community is an obligation of local government. Rather than flood the residences that sustain it, the District needs to build up the community. Build it up not with athletic facilities, but with opportunities for growth for all. Two other items in Closed Session are noteworthy. "Separation agreements" are the tool used to release teachers and administrators from contracts. If anyone is being released from a contract then the Board will have to approve that in open session at item 14. And, then there's that "Safety" topic again. "Safety" equates with big dollars going to outside folks who don't live inside the District. As I've said elsewhere, I think taxpayers - statewide - are getting hoodwinked on these mandated safety upgrades. The school shooting at Uvalde is having a huge financial impact and no one is willing to publicly confront that. In open session, note Item 6 on "Facilities Update Informational". The Board met in closed session recently to do a walking tour, so perhaps they will be sharing some of their learnings here. To retain credibility and avoid an appearance that they are a secret club for motivated parents, the Board needs to on occasion publicly deliberate on its closed session findings. "Retention Stipend" at item 7 could mean someone is about to get a bonus... Such things have to be approved publicly. The "Superintendent Evaluation Tool" in the consent agenda is worth a listen, if there is any discussion. This appears to not be her actual evaluation, but consideration of some tool to manage that evaluation. Everything about the evaluation of a superintendent should always receive the highest level of attention from the public. (One reason I raised the concerns in this blog about Supt. DeSpain earlier this year was because the agenda was written in such a way to indicate that he was receiving an unscheduled evaluation when he had received his annual evaluation only months before.) Also, note this meeting starts at what appears to be the new regular starting time - 6:00 pm. If you miss it perhaps you can find it on this page, but of late the District appears to not be posting its meetings there. I will post audio of any portion of the meeting I find noteworthy on my YouTube channel. Time permitting, usually a day or two after the meeting, I will write a blog post about the meeting. One final thing for those in the background who are contacting me anonymously and telling me that I am wrong about this or that. You'll note that I'm not giving anyone any air time on this blog when I am contacted anonymously. If you have followed me in the seven years I have been addressing these issues, you know that I have done everything publicly and attached my name to everything I do. The "sun" part in Government in the Sun is about public accountability, especially accountability for the words we speak and write. I do not intend to diminish my message when you won't own your message by putting your name behind it. Anonymity on the web largely leads to disinformation, and I'm not going to market that. If you think I'm wrong, put your name on it and we can debate. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

I voted this week, and when I did I remembered, again, how around 1975 I witnessed Brent Evans get knocked out cold under this big oak at the front door of the Community Center. We were returning from a Boy Scout horseback camp out at the Scout Dam on Spring Creek, and Brent's horse scrubbed him off using one of the branches in this tree. He recovered quickly, thankfully, but it could have gone the other way because we all were foolishly loping our horses in at the end of the camp out. Brent later became an Eagle Scout, but left us too soon. Here is the agenda for the November 13, 2023 Mertzon City Council meeting, with my comments underneath: Comments: Agenda item 5. Support Scouting, like the City Council is clearly doing here. Among other things, Scouting's reverence of the flag reinforces the importance of our pledges of allegiance in public settings like city council and school board meetings. See my Note 1 on this page for more on why I think our pledges are essential to public meetings. Agenda item 6. The City has done well of late qualifying for several grants. All those letters stand for the Texas Water Development Board Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. If they vote , this item should be passed. It is hard to argue against a clean drinking water grant.

The Mertzon City Council at its November 6 2023 meeting is considering a radar sign in Mertzon to help with speeding vehicles. Update: Read what happened at this meeting regarding the purchase of the radar sign here. Here is the agenda for the meeting, with my comments underneath: Comments: Here is some full sunlight on a significant City issue - the City of Mertzon does not have an ordinance enforcement system. Former Mayor Bill Taylor once astutely observed that the City's ordinances are nothing more than a book of promises the City hopes citizens will follow. Why? Because the City can't enforce them without a ticketing system and a municipal judge. Why doesn't the City have those things? Well, there is a cost issue. But, I think more than that there has long been an anti regulatory mentality in the city, plus the Council members have not wanted the pressures that come with upsetting their own neighbors when asking them to comply with an ordinance. I raised the question in an earlier post about whether the City is meeting its obligations to create opportunity and community. From my perspective of being flooded by stormwater runoff with every measurable rain, I contend that the City cannot create opportunity and community if it gives Irion County ISD the right to take over its streets and alleys, flood them, flood City Park and then flood the District's football field (which is leased to the District by the City). It's crazy for government to flood its people, it's nonsense for government to flood itself, and it's incomprehensible for government to join forces with another governmental body and for each to flood the other. That's what the City and the District are doing by the City having no ordinances on flooding - it's a mutual pact to flood one another. But, the problem at hand in this meeting is speeding. There are ordinances for speeding in Mertzon. It's a big problem, especially around the school campus. And, often the biggest violators are NOT students. I'm always watchful for speeding school busses and ATVs driven by school employees. These drivers certainly know better, but there are no consequences for speeding, even in a school zone. I've also had to be more careful around town on my bike. A radar sign in Mertzon is a good idea. It will raise awareness and prompt self correction of speed. In an enforcement environment where all the City has is a hope that citizens will keep a promise, then the City should do what it can to increase citizen awareness about when they are violating their promise...and then hope for the best. It is no doubt unusual for a municipality to so heavily rely on hope with something as critical as speed limits, but when there's no enforcement that hope is all any of us have for safety in our streets. Of course, opponents might cynically say a radar sign will symply reinforce that drivers can be lawless in Mertzon. Without consequences for speeding, what difference would it make if a radar sign shows one is driving the speed limit in a school zone or 105 mph in a school zone? There are a number of reasons for not embracing this cynical view, including that it is ethically wrong to speed because of the dangers to other drivers. (Similarly, it is ethically wrong to flood your neighbors even though no ordinances prohibit it.) Thus, our City Council can still prioritize creating community simply by applying ethics (a radar sign promotes the safe speed), even if they are resistant to an enforcement system or robust ordinances that better protect the safety of our citizens. UPDATE: The City Council approved the approximate $3,000 purchase of a radar sign at its November 6, 2023 council meeting. I read the the highlighted language in # 4 above during open forum. During discussion Mayor Stewart pointed out that the City would be providing data from the sign to the IC Sheriff and to DPS, both of whom expressed an interest to him to use it for enforcement. Therefore, while the City does not have an enforcement mechanism like I discussed above in #1, the information collected from it may be used by county and state law enforcement. No one else from the public attended the meeting. I also notified Supt. Moore and Pres. Carlile about the Council's vote and expressed my hope that this would tamp down the speeding around the ICISD campus. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

If approved, this Texas bill will remove parental approval for a student's participation in human sexuality instruction. UPDATE: Neither of these bills survived the legislative session and therefore never became law. Should parents have the right to remove their child from human sexuality instruction in public schools? HB 78, if passed, would take it away, and more. There's also an identical companion bill, SB 59. These bills are currently pending in the Texas legislature. Specifically, they would delete this language from 28.004 of the Texas Education Code: (3) a statement of the parent's right to: (A) at the parent's discretion, review or purchase a copy of curriculum materials as provided by Subsection (j); (B) remove the student from any part of the district's human sexuality instruction without subjecting the student to any disciplinary action, academic penalty, or other sanction imposed by the district or the student's school; and (C) use the grievance procedure as provided by Subsection (i-1) or the appeals process under Section 7.057 concerning a complaint of a violation of this section; The formation of the ICISD School Health Advisory Council was just approved by the Board last week. Their upcoming meetings are public and hopefully will be posted on the District's website, as required by the Education Code 28.004 (d-1). Do parents need more or less sunlight in the classroom when it comes to sexuality instruction? How do you feel about the right to file a grievance being taken away, as these bills also do?

In future rain storms look for the rainwater coming out of this pipe on the northeast corner of City Gym. This is the source for some of the roof water that floods our streets, park and the football field, a consequence that was known - but never planned for - by ICISD and the City of Mertzon before ground was broken for the gym. As I said in this post, It is Wrong to Treat Teacher Pay This Way, I took issue with Governor Abbott using teacher pay as a hostage to get what he wants with vouchers. In a turnaround, however, yesterday he expanded the scope of the special session so that now teacher pay can be considered. Here is his message, with my comments underneath: My comments: Might this mean using teacher pay as a hostage for vouchers was not a winning card in the legislature? Sure looks like it to me. Here is one press account about what is going on, which is to say that no one really knows. Note that the expansion is for more than just teacher compensation. In Texas, one significant power of the governor is to call special sessions and determine what the legislature will consider. Two things jump out here that I have been addressing on this blog: public school accountability and school safety and its funding. Watch for more on these issues. Remember this: for all the property tax relief homeowners may be getting from the ongoing vote on amendments to the Texas Constitution, TEA has stated that their security upgrade rules are costing billions. Here's a handy Reports page on the Capitol web site that will help you search for House Filed and Senate Filed bills. I suspect that the Governor's expansion is so comprehensive because there are already a number of bills filed that he is having to negotiate over. Take the time to be a reader. If you learn to read government documents like this and go to the source to read them for yourself (I found this within seconds on the Governor's web site), you will not be as susceptible to misinformation on the web.

Floodwaters, partly from runoff from the Irion County ISD campus 2019 bond projects, entered 3rd and Duncan last week on the way to the football field. A state district court in Travis County last week granted the Temporary Injunction request of the plaintiff school districts who challenged TEA raising the STAAR accountability metrics. I have previously addressed this litigation here at Note 3, and here is a KERA article on the granting of the TI. You will also find the Plaintiff's Second Amended Petition along with the judge's order granting the temporary injunction request on my new Documents page. Both documents are fully downloadable as pdf's. Irion County ISD is not a party to the litigation. Note: the day after the judge ruled, TEA filed an accelerated interlocutory appeal to the 3rd Court of Appeals. In other words, this case is far from over. Copyright 2023 G Noelke