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I asked ChatGPT to help me fix this photo. The result, which I consider amazing if not too perfect, is at the bottom of this page . It didn’t do so well, though, when I asked about the current pope. In the background, I have started researching “civic morality” for some posts I want to do about the separation of Church and State. To set the context, the Texas Legislature, with full support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is about to require our public schools to post the Ten Commandments in our public school classrooms. The matter is almost certainly going to end up in the US Supreme Court, and I want to write about it in advance of the legal dispute and consider what current day leaders are thinking. So, I’ve been wanting to incorporate ChatGPT in more of my work. Below is my verbatim exchange with ChatGPT I would like to share. If anything, it’s the perfect example of why users of AI should not throw out their analytical reasoning. If I had been in a hurry and not read closely enough, this could have been a mess! ChatGPT had it all wrong. It overlooked the new Pope Leo XIV, and then initially denied that Pope Leo XIV existed. And, don’t miss this part of its response: “ AI models often speak with confidence—even when wrong. That’s why critical thinking is crucial. ” Me: What is Pope Leo’s position on the separation of Church and State? ChatGPT: Pope Leo XIII, who served as pope from 1878 to 1903, addressed the issue of the relationship between the Church and the state in several key documents, most notably in his encyclicals Immortale Dei (1885) and Libertas Praestantissimum (1888). Key Points of Pope Leo XIII’s Position: 1. Church and State Are Distinct but Should Cooperate • Pope Leo XIII upheld the principle that the Church and the state are distinct institutions with different spheres of authority: the Church governs spiritual and moral matters, while the state governs civil and temporal affairs. • However, he argued that both should work in harmony, not in opposition. He rejected the idea of total separation that excludes religion from public life. 2. Against Secularism and Radical Separation • In Immortale Dei, he criticized the modern secular state for trying to separate itself completely from the Church, calling such attempts a “grave error.” • He believed that religion, especially Catholicism, was essential for the moral foundation of society, and that public life should be informed by Christian values. 3. Natural Law and Divine Authority • Leo XIII emphasized that both civil and ecclesiastical authority ultimately derive from God, and that governments should respect divine and natural law. • He warned that when states ignore this divine foundation, they risk promoting injustice and moral relativism. 4. Religious Freedom • While he defended the Catholic Church’s rights and privileges, Leo XIII also cautiously supported a limited form of religious tolerance, acknowledging the need for peace and the reality of pluralistic societies (Libertas). • However, he did not embrace the modern liberal idea of religious freedom as an absolute right disconnected from truth. Summary: Pope Leo XIII rejected the modern liberal idea of a strict separation of church and state. Instead, he advocated for a collaborative relationship, where the state respects the authority and moral teachings of the Church, and both work together for the common good. He opposed secularism and promoted the integration of Christian principles into public and political life. Me: Please answer the same question for the Pope Leo XIV. ChatGPT: As of now, there has never been a Pope Leo XIV. The most recent pope with the name Leo was Pope Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903. There has been no Pope Leo XIV in the history of the Catholic Church. If you’re referring to a fictional or hypothetical Pope Leo XIV (such as one that appears in literature, film, or a speculative context), let me know the source or scenario, and I’d be glad to analyze or interpret his stance within that framework. Me: Robert Francis Prevost is Pope Leo XIV. Today. Does your model not recognize this? ChatGPT: Yes, you are correct: Robert Francis Prevost has been elected as Pope Leo XIV, becoming the first American-born pontiff in the history of the Catholic Church. He was elected on May 8, 2025, succeeding Pope Francis.   Pope Leo XIV’s Position on the Separation of Church and State As of now, Pope Leo XIV has not issued a formal encyclical or doctrinal statement specifically addressing the separation of church and state. However, his background and early public remarks provide insights into his perspective on the relationship between religion and civil governance. 1. Emphasis on Social Justice and Moral Engagement Pope Leo XIV has a history of advocating for social justice issues. As a cardinal, he was vocal about supporting migrants and critiqued policies that he viewed as unjust, such as the Trump administration’s family separation policy. This suggests a belief that the Church should actively engage in societal matters to uphold moral and ethical standards.   2. Homage to Pope Leo XIII By choosing the name “Leo XIV,” he pays tribute to Pope Leo XIII, known for his encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed the rights and duties of capital and labor. This choice indicates a commitment to continuing the Church’s involvement in addressing social and economic issues, implying a role for the Church in guiding moral aspects of public life. 3. Advocacy for Dialogue and Unity In his first address as pope, Leo XIV emphasized themes of unity, peace, and dialogue. This approach suggests a preference for collaboration between the Church and state entities to promote the common good, rather than strict separation.  Summary While Pope Leo XIV has not explicitly outlined his stance on the separation of church and state, his actions and statements indicate a belief in a cooperative relationship. He appears to support the idea that the Church should engage with societal and governmental structures to advocate for justice, morality, and the dignity of all individuals. For a more in-depth look at Pope Leo XIV’s background and perspectives, you might find this video informative: Me: Why is it that today, May 28, 2025, your data could be so totally incorrect about who the current pope is ? What should I be considering when I evaluate the current reliability of large language AI models? ChatGPT: Your question is thoughtful and absolutely on point. Let’s break down why a model like mine may have out-of-date or incorrect information—and more importantly, what you should consider when evaluating the reliability of AI-generated information, especially in a fast-changing world. ⸻ 🔎 Why My Information Was Incorrect About the Current Pope 1. Model Training Data Cutoff • My core knowledge was trained on data up to around June 2024. • I don’t inherently “know” events that happened after that unless I access the internet (as I did just now). • So when you asked about Pope Leo XIV, my default response was based on pre-2025 knowledge, where Robert Francis Prevost had not yet become pope. 2. AI Models Do Not Auto-Update • Unlike a live news feed, models like me don’t auto-sync with the latest events unless I use a real-time web access tool, which I did once you clarified your question. • Without being prompted to check the web, I will provide the best answer based on my static training data. ⸻ 🧠 What to Consider When Evaluating the Reliability of AI Models ✅ 1. Check the Date of the Knowledge • Ask explicitly: “What’s your knowledge cutoff?” or “Is this current as of today?” • For fast-moving topics (elections, deaths, wars, scientific breakthroughs), assume that the default answer might be outdated. ✅ 2. Use AI for Framing, Not Finality • Think of large language models as great for: • Summarizing complex topics • Explaining ideas clearly • Generating drafts or options • But verify facts—especially names, dates, and statistics—through current sources. ✅ 3. Prompt for Web Checks When Needed • You can say things like: “Please check if this is still true as of today.” “Look up the most recent updates on this topic.” • This enables the model to use real-time tools to get the latest info. ✅ 4. Beware of Confident Errors • AI models often speak with confidence—even when wrong. That’s why critical thinking is crucial. * • Always ask yourself: • Does this make sense? • Is this information verifiable elsewhere? ✅ 5. Know the Model’s Limits • I don’t have emotions, intentions, or firsthand experience. • I don’t “know” anything in the human sense; I predict likely words based on patterns in my training data. • That means I can be fluent, convincing, and wrong—all at once. ⸻ Summary Your instinct to question the response was exactly right. Large language models are powerful but not omniscient. To get the most out of them: • Know their limitations • Ask for real-time checks • Cross-reference important facts • Use them as tools, not authorities Let me know if you’d like tips on verifying AI-generated content or using it responsibly in research or writing. End of chat. *My comments on this sentence of ChatGPT's: Yes, lots of folks, especially lawyers and elected officials, speak with confidence - even when wrong. This is something for all of us to remember in our current political climate that seems to favor ChatGPT-like hallucinations. I uploaded the photo at the top of the page into ChatGPT, and in only 2 prompts (Replace the missing petals; Try again but leave no spaces between the petals. Make the perfect flower from this photo.) this is the photo ChatGPT generated for me. Compare it to the photo at the top of this page . Copyright 2025 G Noelke

Agenda Analysis  | Meeting Review  | Meeting Documents  | Commentary  | Last Meeting Out with the old, the turf at OK Wolfenbarger Stadium is currently getting taken out. The land the stadium sits on is owned by the City of Mertzon and leased to IC ISD. The District is paying just over $1 million in bond funds to Hellas to replace the field and track . Agenda for this meeting A. Agenda Analysis Repeal of ordinances, item 6: An "ordinance" is simply a municipal made law. Cities are authorized to make their own laws, with certain limits. I can't find any of these provisions posted at the City's page for ordinances, so one could assume that these are dusty provisions no longer being used. I recommend paying attention to public meeting agendas when laws are being repealed. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. The agenda itself, by the way, doesn't have to state the motive for the repeal. It's enough for it to state that the particular provisions are being repealed. Coincidentally, I recall the days when not only did Mertzon have a city wide curfew but it was enforced by a Nightwatchman . I don't recall whether the curfew was 9:00 pm, 9:30 pm or 10:00 pm. Maybe it was, God forbid, midnight! Whatever the time, the lesson to all was that nothing good happens in a small town after the curfew. The Nightwatchman must have looked away during that year when kids were getting paid top dollar for varmint hides. Roll upon roll of the waste turf for a short bit was stored on the stadium parking lot. If you know where to look in town you might find where some of it was relocated / liberated. B. Meeting Review Repeal of ordinances, item 6: The Council made quick work here and repealed all three ordinances. For the specifics on what was deleted, see pages 3-17 of the meeting documents . Notably, this process was undertaken as an internal review of the City's ordinances. According to the presentation by City Manager Rabenaldt, the two ordinances providing for rewards came under review because using taxpayer dollars in this manner is no longer viewed as a favorable use of taxpayer dollars, according to the Texas Municipal League. As to the repeal of the curfew , the reason for this repeal is that the law changed last session so that juvenile curfews are now prohibited by state law. See Local Gov't Code 370.007 . I would like to delve into this, but simply don't have the time. I suspect that such curfews have been found to be unconstitutional. (Even if only bad things happen after curfews in small towns, our young folks have the Constitutional right to go partake in it!) Miscellaneous: the broken clarifier at the wastewater plant has been repaired and relief from the terrible smells should be forthcoming in the next week or two. This is the rock base under the old turf. When I played on this field it was all grass and the kids enjoyed getting muddy during the games. And, it never flooded. C. Commentary Something important happened at this meeting that shouldn't be overlooked. The Council repealed law, and they did so with an intent to be more efficient and to operate within the bounds of higher law. Put another way, the Council is operating by the rule of law . You might have heard phrases as "We are a nation of laws, not of men". That gets at part of what our Founders intended for us. I consider the phrase, "We are a nation of laws, not of kings" more easily understood and more important. Consider what did not happen at this meeting: Mayor Stewart didn't put his six shooter down on the table in front him and say, "Ok, here's how we are going to change these laws!" Mayor Stewart is neither a king or a sheriff, but a representative of we the people and is operating under a set of laws as guidelines. This is a signal to us all that our representative form of government is functioning. It's functioning, in part, because there were some well thought out and just concepts put into place by our Founders. See my More about the Magna Carta page for a deeper dive. Careful study will show, however, that what the Council did at this meeting, though extremely important, was not extraordinary. What they did was good governing, and it is regularly taking place at all levels of our government. How it is done, though, is at varying degrees of efficiency. I am most familiar with the state level, where state law specifically requires that agencies review their administrative rules every few years. See Texas Government Code 2001.039 , which requires a review to make sure the reasons for initially adopting the rules continue to exist. Importantly, citizens get an opportunity to comment on that review process, as well as the adoption of any new state agency rule. Each week the Texas Register is published, and there you can read, for free, how agency law is being made and repealed. (Click on the "Current Issue" link of the Texas Register any Friday and you can go all in on how our administrative laws are being made and repealed. It is an amazingly civil, orderly and regular effort, and not a bit of it requires a six shooter to accomplish.) There's also a regular review of whether state agencies should continue to exist. You can learn more about that at Texas Sunset Advisory Commission . I have represented state agencies while they have gone though sunset, and it is a very rigorous process. Again, six shooters are not used in the review. And, citizens can participate . I'm less familiar with the federal side, only because I didn't practice there. But, there is a similar federal administrative process. Here is the Federal Register , where the federal rules are constantly being adopted and reviewed. Citizen participation is also allowed at this level. There's also a federal statute, 5 United States Code 610 , that calls for periodic review of federal rules that is similar to 2001.039 on the state side. It's purpose, though, is to protect small businesses from over regulation. (We hear all the time how small businesses are over regulated. Well, the law is already in place to protect them, so throwing the baby out with the bathwater by eliminating all rules is an over reaction. In time, history may judge DOGE as a failure because the law to make government efficient was already in place! DOGE is more in the nature of a regulatory capture than a true effort at reform with citizen mandate.) There's also the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the Office of the Law Revision Counsel that are both intended to mandate government efficiency as to our laws. Presidential executive orders are also used by U.S. presidents, I think improperly, to attempt to in some way regulate how rules and laws are interpreted, enforced or ignored. This is highly political, as any president can undo the executive order of any of the previous presidents. I think this method of reviewing our laws is the least efficient because it is so political and is done without any substantive citizen involvement. The more citizen involvement the better, in my opinion, and this process fails on this point. The take away here is that what the Mertzon City Council did at this meeting is something that is taking place at various levels in our government. Best of all, it was apolitical, no six shooter was involved and, don't miss this point, they did it on their own initiative without the oversight of a higher authority mandating a scheduled review. That's called good government . I think it is important to publicly recognize when government is working, and working efficiently, so as to not fall prey to those whose goal is really to financially profit from government by constantly proclaiming how broken it is and then attempting to use that false narrative to reform it to their ends . Sometimes this form of government our Founders left for us works well, and you need only look at your local government to see it. I'm using this platform to criticize local government when I think it deserves it, sure, but I'm also going to hold it up as an example that not all is broken. Each of us have a civic duty to not allow the trashing of the system of government our Founders so wisely left behind to us. A democratic government operating under the rule of law is a very good thing, and I say we best not lose it by taking it for granted. Put party affiliation aside and do your part. I’m not sure just yet, but it appears this is what will be going in under the new turf. Copyright 2025 G. Noelke

Agenda Analysis  | Meeting Review  | Meeting Documents | Commentary  | Last Meeting The lots between Duncan and Fleming on 5th Street in Mertzon were purchased recently by the District from David Harris. The District has cleared the brush and will be using them as a construction staging area during the build. Agenda for this meeting A. Agenda Analysis Budget amendments, item 6: As noted many times before, I always encourage citizen involvement when a governmental body amends its budget. It's especially important here because the public gets no substantive notice about how the budget is proposed to be changed. "As presented" here means, in effect, the public gets notice if, and only if, it shows up at the meeting. I have protested this language many times before and will continue to do so. Let's say, hypothetically, this amendment involves the budget line item related to energy costs (electricity). Then, this particular item need only read, "Budget amendment related to energy costs." All budget amendments, no matter how complex, can be synthesized down to a general matter it relates to. 2. Approve total sheet and prime contractors, item 7 : This is a follow up to the special meeting where the Board approved an initial list to avoid the Trump (not approved by Congress) tariffs . This should be a comprehensive approval of the prime contractors, presented by Parkhill, upon their review and recommendation. 3. Superintendent approval to sign contracts, item 8: You might not think about it much until an item like this pops up. Superintendents serve at the direction of the Board. She isn't the ultimate boss, they are. I'm not going to research it, but I would guess that this item is a statutory requirement for bond related construction contracts. It is a good thing because it creates accountability for the Board and the Superintendent on high dollar contracts. 4. Administrative reports, item 5 : Each and every report at each and every meeting is important. 5. Raises for 12 month employees, item 9 : I don't see how anyone gets a raise with the chaos taking place in Austin. I hope I'm wrong. If I'm consistent on anything, its that communities need to support government employee pay raises regularly and above the rate of inflation. 6. Letters of reassurance for paraprofessionals and aides, item 10 : If these folks were getting raises for next year, they likely would have been added to item 9. Also, typically paraprofessionals and aides are "at will" staffers, so they don't have protection of a contract with the District. I am assuming that this item is about giving those folks some assurance that they still have a job next year. While that may only be an assurance, in the face of the headwinds of a pending Trump tariff related recession, it might mean a lot to some folks. 7. Closed session, action from closed session, items 13 and 15 : I'm guessing the "approve" part in item 13's "Discuss/ approve resignations/new hires" is an oversight. This Board and Supt. Moore know that they can't formally "approve" anything in closed session with a vote. ("Approve" typically calls for a formal vote, which is not permitted in closed pursuant to the Open Meetings Act.) But, as I've said before, don't be fooled. Achieving a consensus in a closed session can and does regularly happen. Here, the formal vote will come at item 15, in open session. I will be listening to see who is resigning and whether the new band director is being hired. The buildings marked with X are the ones being demolished and replaced. (Though I did not mark teacher housing.) First up will be the cafeteria extension, not pictured here. B. Meeting Review Approve total sheet and prime contractors, item 7 : Ashley Foye, and estimator and cost manager with Gallagher , presented the total sheet with some analysis of the meaning of the numbers and categories. I have not reviewed her sheet at the time of this review, but I anticipate posting it as I did the previous one  on April 28. Probably the most significant part of this meeting  was the Board’s response to Ms. Foye's presentation. Just like their consideration back on April 28, the Board was spot on with their questions. Several members drilled down to get additional information from Ms. Foye, and she answered best she could but sometimes could only promise “I can get you that information.” For my “how to read an open meeting” series, the dialogue in this item is a perfect one to point out pregnant pauses during discussions. Pay attention to pregnant pauses during discussions over money. They speak volumes about the comfort level board members have with the answers, and here some of the pauses were in their 9th month. At the end of the discussion and just before President Carlile called for a vote, Board member Ashley Hill landed the perfect question: In the future can y’all give more information? The correct answer by Ms. Foye was given - yes of course. In fairness to Ms. Foye, what the Gallagher folks may not appreciate is something I am keenly aware of. The previous Administration, Board, architect and construction manager operated mostly in the dark with the 2019 bond funds. I can say that with some authority, as I had numerous PIA requests back then get outright ignored by the District, and several sent to the Attorney General’s Office to get quashed. I sense that some of these board members don't want a repeat of those dark days, and certainly Supt. Moore and President Carlile don't. Thus, the extra questions. Also, I can tell this Board and Administration are more fiscally conservative than the past. And, they should be . Some of the problem supply chain and recessionary indicators are present today that were present during the pandemic when the 2019 bonds were being spent down. We have been here before . Gallagher and Parkhill need to carefully navigate this terrain. I will post more on the actual numbers in Ms. Foye's document once I have obtained it. In the end, the Board approved her list, but not without hesitation. They also gave Supt. Moore authority to sign the contracts under item 8, a matter that is a practice of Gallagher's and apparently not a statutory requirement according to the discussion. Open forum, item 4 : Sara Lindley and Erin Douglas presented their concerns about how the District has handled recent transfer rejections. Some 20+ citizens attended the meeting apparently for this one issue. I haven't seen this kind of community attendance on a school conflict since 2020 when the Board organized the community to overturn the City of Mertzon's refusal to close 4th Street for the new gym ! I detected a sense of chumming for sharks, which has been unheard of at IC ISD meetings since that 2020 board meeting to close 4th Street. (Chumming occurs at large school board meetings all the time, in my experience.) In fairness to both sides of this dispute, let me confess I don't have the time or the resources to delve into this issue. And, this blog is not really about reporting on the conflict of the day with local government. It's intended to promote civics and interaction with local government, among other things. My thoughts on the issue behind this open meeting? Advocates on this transfer issue should get off Facebook and regularly attend the school board meetings, first. Social media is where ill intentioned chumming gets started, and then gets promoted by folks who have their own agendas. Organize in a group text if you have to, but in 2025 it is time to dispense with Facebook as an organizing tool. Second, there's nothing better than a direct one on one meeting with the Superintendent to clear the air before airing the laundry at a board meeting. Superintendent Moore excels in one on one conflict resolution, in my opinion, whereas the previous superintendent was rather Trumpian in his authoritarian style of doubling down with resistance and excluding dialogue and information. If discussions didn't happen before this meeting, then start over. Trust sometimes has to be built from scratch. Advocacy tip: if the law at issue says “there is no appeal”, then asking for a one-on-one with the superintendent is likely going to be denied. One’s only option then might be what was done here: speak to the board in an open forum. But, even that approach has limitations. A board can’t just invent a remedy where they had no authority in the first place. Time permitting, I’ll look further into the appeal ability of transfer decisions. In her comments to the Board, Erin Douglas eloquently said, "Transparency is a foundational principle of public institutions." And there you have it - that's the sum total of all that is contained in our Open Meetings Act and Public Information Act laws. And so, while I stay on the sidelines on the particulars of who is right and who is wrong on this transfer debate, I support wholeheartedly the freedom of these citizens to assemble, speak and ask for transparency. Whether you realize it or not, what all of us are ultimately asking for when we lodge a complaint with our government is increased transparency. Transparency is the sun. Here are the folks that attended this meeting: Meeting attendees. Raises for 12 month contracts and letters of reassurance, items 9 and 10: During a discussion of the potential raises I engaged the Board in a manner I usually don't recommend. A sidebar discussion (private) on the board caused a stall, more sidebars occurred, then the audience started talking, and within a flash it was impossible to tell whether the board members were speaking publicly or privately. And, it was impossible to hear because the audience began to chatter. So, I asked the Board to please speak up. I don't like interruptions from the audience during public meetings (technically the Open Meetings Act doesn't permit it), but sometimes it is necessary because board members shouldn't deliberate in a manner that the meeting can't be heard. Here my interruption was important because the Board was backing into a practice of giving employees a raise of only once every three years. The language of the motion did not contain explicit language to that effect , but the discussion approved the 3 different categories of employees getting raises on a rotating basis every three years. While the economic reality may be that grim, the practical effect of such a practice - backed into without a full discussion - is not something the Board should endorse. The Board, rather, should take each year on its own financial merit so that each year all employees, regardless of category and whether contracted, are considered for pay increases . In end, the Board approved the pay raises at item 9. Item 10, the letters of reassurance, were as I expected - letters telling employees they could come back next school year. To put this in perspective, the practice backed into, if implemented, means the 12 monthers would not be eligible for their next raise for another 3 years , whiled those who got their letters of reassurance would be eligible, I think, next year. Teachers would be eligible in 2 years, if I understand the calendar correctly. Who wants to work under those facts?! Advocacy tip: perhaps a better way to ask for board members to speak up is to ask a staffer at the meeting to ask the chair to raise their discussion volume. This adds more civility to the exchange, and civility is important because I have seen meetings go south where even just one member of the public starts to yell. Yelling encourages yelling, unfortunately. Sometimes, though, just blurting out that you can't hear is as good as it gets. Much more and in certain situations you might be encouraging a riot. Budget amendment, item 6 : Ms. Lakey reported on the need for a roughly $6,000 increase in the budget for special education services through the Menard co-op. The Board approved. Upon hearing about the purpose of this item, I with my analysis above at A1. An agenda item that reads "Discuss/Approve budget amendment as presented" is entirely too vague. It could easily be amended to be more public friendly by changing it to, "Discuss/Approve budget amendment related to special education services". This would generally give notice to the public about the nature of the amendment. Administrative reports, item 5: a. The meat on Principal Jessica Parker's report was that enrollment was: Elementary 210, Secondary at 139, for 349 overall. Attendance for both is just under 97%. b. Asst. Principal/Athletic Director Morrow reported on various track awards, but money part of his report was about the replacement of the field and track. Demolition at the stadium will start on May 14. The entire field and track are being replaced, and once started will take about 7 weeks.   Here is the offer document from the construction firm, Hellas. The Board approved Proposal alternatives 1 and 2 on page 2, for just over $1 million. In keeping with my commentary below that I do not want to see the field wasted (again) by flooding, I had a brief conversation with Mr. Morrow before the start of this meeting where I said that the cement wall acting as a foundation for the fence adjoining the field house was not built to keep out flood waters. Parkhill and Gallagher , please make note of this. The cement wall was built to hold up the fence that sits on top of it, which was a requirement of the School Safety Commission a few years ago. c. Supt. Moore's report, bond wise , addressed the clearing of the lots for staging, pictured above, as well as the two lots behind the current admin office at 5th and Juanita. She mentioned several oak trees were saved and replanted, a matter I discussed at the last City Council meeting here at B4 . These lots are being used for sea containers for storage of various things during construction. Another portable will be coming at the end of July to be placed on street in front of the High School. Closed session, items 13 and 15: The closed session lasted approximately 2 hrs and 40 minutes, an especially long time for the posted items of accepting resignations and new hires. The Board approved the following, without discussion: Resignation: Darla Tillman New hires: Kimberly Williams, Ashley Nutgrass and Tommy Nutgrass. No mention was made whether any of these were the new music director, and I assume the position is still unfilled because it remains listed on the District's vacancies page . Meeting Documents: I have not yet submitted a PIA request for them at the time of posting this on May 14. When received, I will post on this page. Especially relevant to this page will be the final prime contractor sheet used by Ms. Foye. Advocacy tip: Documents talked about and physically shared in the open portion of a public meeting will almost always be available through the Public Information Act. Miscellaneous: The Board was in full force with all in attendance at this meeting. Watch this part of this page for anything else that I might add in the near future. This page is getting a larger than normal number of views, so I may need to update. The stormwater was still flowing at the Field House several hours after a 1.5” rain fell this week. The new storage extension will be added at the end of this building. If the County increases its impervious footprint with a new Community Center, this location will be the first to see increased flooding. C. Commentary The Irion County Commissioner's Court is evaluating community input for the new Community Center. In response to question 4 asking "What would you like to see in a new Community Center?" I stated: I would like it to be environmentally and tax friendly. Please do not take out oak trees or flood City Park or the Stadium with storm water runoff. Please coordinate with the City and IC ISD and develop a comprehensive storm water management plan before undertaking Community Center improvements. I have been asking for greater coordination among the the District, City and County since April 2019, before the passage of the 2019 school bonds. To date, I haven't seen any movement on the issue. I raise it now for two reasons. First, it is readily transparent that if the County expands its impervious footprint at City Park the first to receive the stormwater will be the District's football stadium. Though the District is flooding my property upstream, I am not small enough to favor their getting flooded down stream, especially by another governmental entity, the County. I am a taxpayer upstream and downstream, and community wide flooding impacts us all. (My advocacy is about more than my own property.) Second, I see an increased need for local government to coordinate given that President Trump is attempting to decommission FEMA . One way to interpret what is happening in Washington is that the Whitehouse is decentralizing its key functions, which may include absence of federal resources and money even in an emergencies . This potentially means that we all are going to need rely more on local government in dire circumstances. Let's hope our local folks are coordinating on more than just stormwater management. None of us have ever been here before. See also Local Officials Brace for Loss of Disaster Preparedness Funding . You can respond to the County’s inquiry here . The deadline is May 15. Copyright 2025 G. Noelke

A few months back I mentioned on the My Pick of the Month portion of my site (found at the bottom of the home page) that I was reading some of the Magna Carta . Honestly, I felt a bit too lawyerly when I referenced it. Who has the inclination to read about an ancient foundational document about democracy except a lawyer? My purpose in doing so, to bring this home right away, was to make a larger point that the concept that my local government can't take my property, even by flooding it, without first providing me due process was born from the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta came to life again this week when Harvard Law School discovered that their copy of the document was in fact authentic. I'm going to turn over the significance of this to historian Heather Cox Richardson and publish below the entirety of her May 15, 2025 newsletter that addresses the find. This is an essential dive into the foundations of democracy, folks, but worthwhile because it is difficult to find anything as concise. Here it is, with her links at the bottom if you wish to dig further still: Perhaps in frustration, this season’s writers of the saga of American history are making their symbolism increasingly obvious. Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law . King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed to the terms of the document on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow a little less than an hour from London near the River Thames. After the king had raised taxes, barons rebelled, insisting that he was violating established custom. There were rumors of a plot to murder the king, and the barons armed themselves. Those two armed camps met at Runnymede, where negotiators for the king and the barons hammered out a document with 63 clauses, mostly relating to feudal customs and the way the justice system would operate. But the document also began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies. The Magna Carta established the writ of habeas corpus—a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment—and the concept of the right to trial by jury. Famously, it put into writing that: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” It also provided that “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.” The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends. The original charter did not last. King John convinced the pope to declare the document illegal because it circumscribed the power of the monarch, and in reaction, barons fought for the rights outlined in the Magna Carta. After the death of King John in 1216, the Magna Carta was confirmed and reissued, becoming an accepted part of the understanding of British rights. In 1297, and then again in 1300, King Edward I reissued the Magna Carta and confirmed that it was part of England’s law. The copy in Harvard’s possession is from 1300. Harvard bought the document after World War II for $27.50, about $500 today. It is one of seven original copies of the 1300 Magna Carta, and in the United States of America in 2025, it is priceless. In the early 1600s, King James I and King Charles I both reasserted the power of the king. Jurist Sir Edward Coke used the Magna Carta to insist that longstanding English customs guaranteed liberties to British subjects and required the king to comply with the law. There were limits to a king’s power to tax his subjects and his power to punish them. This legal struggle was unfolding just as British subjects were colonizing the North American continent, and the charters of the new colonies echoed Coke’s arguments. The 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, for example, established that colonists and, crucially, the children they might have in the colony, “shall have and enjoy all liberties and Immunities of free and naturall Subiects.” As constitutional scholar Mary S. Bilder notes, lawyers and political figures put into the documents of the early British settlement of North America the belief that liberties were the birthright of English subjects. That belief informed colonists’ opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, which imposed a new tax to which they had not given their consent and called for those who violated the law to be tried not by a jury of their peers but rather in admiralty courts. The Massachusetts Assembly declared the Stamp Act to be “against the Magna Carta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.” British politician William Pitt told Parliament: “The Americans are the sons not the bastards of England.” In September 1774, as tensions between the king and the colonists intensified, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and wrote a declaration of rights and grievances, claiming the liberties guaranteed by “the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” Showing the unity of the colonies, the Congress published an image of 12 arms holding a column crowned by a liberty cap and resting on the words “Magna Carta.” In 1776 the colonists threw off the monarchy to establish a government based on the idea that all people must answer to the law. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense : “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. ” In 1776 the new states were writing their own constitutions that defended their liberties, including their protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law. That concept went directly into the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment provided that no “person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment applied that principle to the states as well as the federal government, saying: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Harvard document is not the only Magna Carta in the U.S. In 2007, philanthropist David Rubenstein bought a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta from former presidential candidate Ross Perot. It was the only copy in the U.S., and Perot had permitted the National Archives to display it. Rubenstein bought the document for $21.3 million, hoping to keep it in the U.S. “to ensure that Americans could continue to see it, and to thereby be continuously reminded of its importance to our country.” He promptly lent it to the National Archives for public display, “as modest repayment of my debt to this country for my good fortune in being an American.” And yet the fundamental principles on which the government of the United States is based are under attack. In an interview that aired on Sunday, May 4, President Donald J. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he “didn’t know” if persons in the United States had a right to due process. When Welker reminded him that the right to due process is written into the Fifth Amendment, he said: “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Musician Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded as they are in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, yesterday, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]... abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.” And yet, Springsteen told the crowd: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so will survive this moment.” — Notes: https://apnews.com/article/harvard-magna-carta-rare-copy-97754aee08aaab65a36e49bedebd5992 https://www.parliament.uk/magnacarta/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-32828251 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/magna-carta.html https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass03.asp Mary Sarah Bilder, Charter Constitutionalism: The Myth of Edward Coke and the Virginia Charter,” North Carolina Law Review 94 (June 2016): 1545–1592, at https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/magna-carta/legacy.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/magna_carta https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/politics/trump-meet-the-press-interview-due-process.html https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/magna-carta-and-the-us-constitution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/world/europe/harvard-magna-carta-original.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/03/31/the-man-who-owns-a-magna-carta/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/15/entertainment/bruce-springsteen-trump-criticism-scli-intl https://archive.org/details/commonsense50pain Copyright 2025 G. Noelke, except the entirety of Ms. Cox Richardson's newsletter, of course.

Agenda Analysis  | Meeting Review  | Meeting Documents  | Commentary  | Last Meeting Sunrise over IC ISD on May 2, 2025 looking down Juanita Street. The tennis courts, completed in 2016, are on the left. The pavement was paid in part from 2019 bond funds. Juanita Street was unpaved prior to the construction of tennis courts, which were part of 2014 bonds. Agenda for this meeting. A. Agenda Analysis 1.Budget amendments, item 5 : If you are a regular reader, you know that I always point out budget amendments in public agendas. If meetings like these and at the IC ISD school board have no public participation, then the members too quickly forget that it is not their money . They are handling the public's money . Public attendance at meetings is a simple check on their fiscal authority, and governmental bodies like a city council or school board should welcome that oversight by the public. The City of Mertzon has always welcomed that oversight, in my experience. What Juanita Street looked like prior to 2015. It was a caliche road. I took this screenshot in 2021, and I forgot about it until finding it accidentally this week. B. Meeting Review 1. Here are the meeting documents for this meeting. 2. Ordinance 11.28, item 5 : The Council approved the ordinance that addresses the transfer of contingency funds for re-use elsewhere. The matter had been formally addressed back in March. 3. Fleet leasing report, item 6 : Probably way too expensive Ms. Chappell advised, and after a short discussion the Council agreed. 4. Administrative Reports, Item 7 : a. The Greening of Mertzon : Ms. Rabenaldt reported that Supt. Moore had contacted her last week to let her know IC ISD was saving and replanting some of the oak trees on the lots recently purchased by them. I can confirm the same, as Supt. Moore reached out to me as well on this point. Elsewhere in this blog, I have been highly critical of what appears to be a decades long, if not century long, practice of the District removing Live Oaks from its campus and adding impervious cover. This practice has unquestionably put more stormwater runoff into our entire community because there is less green cover available to take up the stormwater. Moreover, because the District has used a different architect and construction manager with each of its bonds, there has been no consistent approach to managing how the District's impervious cover is impacting our community during rainfall. (The architects are generally charged with moving the water away from the buildings, though an architect can't design a building on behalf of a school and expect to avoid the school's responsibilities under the Takings clause of the Constitution.) I'm very appreciative of Supt. Moore's efforts at saving oak trees. For certain, there's nothing in her contract with the District that says she is to work cooperatively with the environment and make an effort at saving Live Oaks. This shows she is trying to remedy some past wrongs of the District, and that should be recognized by all. Practice tip: I have planted and subsequently killed a number of Live Oak trees that I purchased from big box stores and planted on my property. I have since gone to searching out new growth oaks and watering them in place. They are thriving with the extra water. Just add water. b. Mandatory reporting to TCEQ: There was an unauthorized discharge of treated effluent water on April 29, and you can find the City's mandatory reporting to TCEQ of the event on pages 10 and 11 of the meeting documents . Here's more on mandatory reporting to TCEQ . This is an endlessly fascinating area of the law, in my opinion. Counselors, nursing homes, day care centers and schools, for example, all have various legal obligations to report certain violations. Indeed, it was a mandatory reporting incident at IC ISD that lead to this situation with Jacob Conner. c. Frontier brouhaha/kerfuffle: Mayor Stewart announced that Frontier had contacted him and rescinded their demand for payment from the City relating to a severed line. I covered the incident here at 4.a because it seemed to be out of character for this company to get so exercised over a roughly $1,000 fee. The amount they would have been paying in legal fees to extract this blood would have exceeded the fine amount in about 30 minutes of legal work. The good will Frontier needs with the City of Mertzon is well worth getting this incident behind them. My Public Information Act requests sometimes get quite specific, such as here where I obtained Parkhill's Lidar study of the IC ISD campus. If you know what I'm looking for, this part of their study that includes Juanita Street speaks volumes. C. Commentary Nothing good can happen with this recent Executive Order from the Whitehouse , particularly this paragraph: Sec. 4  . Using National Security Assets for Law and Order.  (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, s hall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement. [Emphasis added.] Do not overlook that I have previously said " Total party loyalty, for either party ,  is irresponsible in these circumstances ," at my Commentary here . The military build up allowed in this Executive Order might be used in a martial law type situation. Please see my earlier Commentary on martial law . Consider this: the essential loss of rights during a martial law situation is a loss of due process under the Constitution. (Notably, one can be jailed without access to lawyers or civil judges.) This makes President Trump's recent statement that he "didn't know" if he had to uphold due process rights under the Constitution quite significant. This October 2015 photo shows the tennis courts still under construction. The end of this caliche shoulder at the top left shows the intersection of 4th and Juanita. Noticeably absent is the new gymnasium. This shoulder was paved over in 2016 to the state it is in today - an impervious skirt on the east end of the tennis courts. See also the March 21, 2016 email from former supt. Billy Barnett . The District knew about the flooding even as they were putting more impervious cover around these courts. Copyright 2025 G Noelke

Agenda Analysis  | Meeting Review  | Meeting Documents  | Commentary  | Last Meeting A cowbird dive bombing an antlerless buck. The Irion County ISD board agenda for this meeting. A. Agenda Analysis 1. Approve the prime contractors, item 3 : This is a single issue meeting to award the winning bids for Phase 1 of the 2024 bond construction. 2. How to read an agenda: "Special" meetings, as I've addressed before, are meetings called because there is some deadline that has to be met before the next regular board meeting. I am aware in this instance that this is a tariff beating effort, and saving money is a certainly a good enough reason to have a special meeting. 3. More on how to read an agenda : Every "public" meeting where official business is conducted must have an open forum for the public to speak. See item 2. This includes "special" meetings. 4. Still more on how to read an agenda: This is obviously going to be a quick in and out meeting. One way to tell is that a closed session is not scheduled. But, even if a closed isn't posted, the Board can still hold one if there is a legal reason. See the paragraph immediately following the adjournment. This adds up to about 1.5” of rain since December, including the bugs. Perhaps Elton or Jose, who worked for my father and grandfather, were making a cruel joke decades ago and wired it shut so that it always reads 33 inches. B. Meeting Review 1. Approve the prime contractors, item 3: Here is the letter to the District from Gallagher identifying all bidders, scope and amounts. Below is from page 3 of that document and shows the contractors approved by the Board in this meeting. Winning prime contractors Attendance: Again, this was a "special" meeting, which typically means a bare quorum will be present. President Carlile and VP Rey both were absent, so the Secretary, Ashley Hill, managed the meeting. Discussion: The Board was spot on in its discussion of the bids. The question all taxpayers want asked was asked: Why weren't the lowest bidders being recommended in those areas where the more expensive bid was recommended? The Gallagher VP gave an adequate response, perhaps not as detailed as it could have been, but the point was made. Certain board members may at future meetings drill down and test Gallagher to make sure it is doing its job to analyze the bids and hold costs. Transparency: In contrast to the way the Board and Administration managed the spend down of the 2019 bond funds, this meeting was a bright sunny day. Realistically, the real number crunching happens in Supt. Moore's office, not in a board meeting like this one. But, there was some board member sentiment at this meeting indicating the board itself was relieved to have these numbers disclosed to them. The previous administration kept things under wraps and there was insufficient Board oversight. The type of detail in the image above far exceeds the level of detail ever disclosed during the entirety of the 2019 bond spend down. Tariffs: The Gallagher VP presenting was transparent with the pressure they had received from the bidders. The bidders could not hold their bids if their orders were not placed on or after May 1. This foretells the future, doesn't it? After May 1 the prime contractors are expecting to pay more for all that they need to do the build out. Noticeably missing from his presentation and the discussion of the Board was name "President Trump", as in these tariffs were initiated by President Trump. This is my jumping off point in my commentary below. Before the meeting: I had a few minutes with the Gallagher VP prior to the meeting. He asked some appropriate questions about flooding, and he was obviously concerned about what I consider to be the real dilemma they face: how do they add more impervious cover without adding more stormwater to the basin. I gave him a brief history of the school's growth since I was a student, where the water was coming from and the flooding of my home. (Yes, floodwaters have gone under my home, which is why I pay for flood insurance.) More importantly than all that, I identified the problem as a community wide problem - after the flood waters leave my property they flood other residences, the football field, the County's property in City Park and City Park itself. I also said that I have been saying this since 2019 before those bonds were passed. I am leaving nothing to chance here. Everyone knows, just as they did in 2019. Please read my commentary below . Typically, the does fight one another over food by rearing and pawing at one another. The bucks fight using their antlers, except in the spring when they are antlerless as these two are. Unfortunately, the two coons are having the last laugh. C. Commentary The purpose of this meeting was not just to award the bids, but to do it in a timely way so that the big ticket items like steel could be purchased before Pres. Trump's tariffs kick in. And, there's the rub. Not only did no one mention President Trump's name at this meeting, no one dared complain about having to be present to engage in this extra time sensitive meeting in the first place. The Board appeared either resigned to the inconvenience or perhaps just let silence set in because it might have been perceived as disloyal to complain. And, no one was present to speak at open forum to ask the painfully obvious: Why are we even here in the first place?! Who is taxing these contractors?! Why?! Is it possible we may not be able to afford this expansion?! I am at least hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually rule that President Trump does not have the legal authority to use tariffs in the manner that is impacting these 2024 bond projects. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution granting the President tariff authority. What statutory authority he is relying on is narrow in scope, and he is using that law without a sufficient emergency basis. But, it could take a couple years for the Court to reach such a decision. Moreover, there's very good reason to believe that once we reach that decision, there will have already been multiple decisions from the Court on other matters that he has outright disregarded. Yes, he is presently setting up multiple cases now to test how far he can go in defiance of the Court. Consider this essay about the limits to what the courts can do about President Trump by law professor Kate Shaw. These are terrifying times, indeed lawless times, if you believe in a constitutional democratic form of government in America. Frederick Douglass said, "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress." This is to say that a tyrant's power lasts only so long as it is endured by those who are being oppressed. In context, these tariffs last until the public says, in the multitude of ways that we can , "No" to President Trump on tariffs. My message is this: Say his name. Say that these are President Trump's tariffs. Do not be silent about who is responsible. He issued these tariffs in his own name, without the cooperation or involvement of Congress. Total party loyalty, for either party , is irresponsible in these circumstances. This special meeting should have never been necessary, and we are acting like sheep if we fail to publicly call that out. Remember, it was Edwin R. Murrow who said, "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Say his name, and don't be sheep. Copyright 2025 G. Noelke

Agenda Analysis  | Meeting Review  | Meeting Documents | Commentary  | Last Meeting Construction fencing at IC ISD The first of the construction fencing went up this week around the part of the elementary school that will be razed and replaced with 2024 bond funds. Two of the new classrooms will be designed for STEM learning, according to Supt. Moore in her report to the Board this week. Meeting Agenda A. Agenda Analysis 1. Ordinance 20.03, item 5 : This appears to be a revision to the new council pay ordinance passed at the last meeting. 2. Customer water line damage, item 6 : This is a first, at least since I've been following the Council. The City is going to consider requesting payment for payment for damage done by a customer to a City water line. 3. Meet Ms. Chappell: This is the first agenda signed by the City Administrator Assistant, Brittany Chappell. Now that she is full time, you'll also see her at the Council meetings. Everything to the left of the curb is 3rd Street, currently owned by the City of Mertzon. As a reminder, the closure of this street during construction is pursuant to an MOU between IC ISD and the City of Mertzon . B. Meeting Review 1. Here are the meeting documents for this meeting. 2. Ordinance 20.03, item 5 : This is an ordinance amendment limited solely to taking away a provision that allowed IC ISD to have a reduced "summer rate" for its water bill. The Council unanimously approved an amendment (see meeting documents) deleting the summer rates, without opposition from IC ISD. Recent significant water bill increases at IC ISD apparently brought this pay provision to the attention of City staff. 3 Water line damage, item 6: A city ordinance (11.2 at page 3 of meeting documents) allows the City to charge users who damage the city's property. In this case, a resident was turning off her water at the meter to save money in her bill from a leak in her home. The repeated opening and closing of the city's valve caused $300 in damage. Pro tip from the City: turn your water off on your side of the line and NOT at the meter. 4. A few more things: a. Call before you dig kerfuffle with Frontier: Frontier says the City cut a line, and the City says they did the "call before you dig" thing and Frontier said go ahead. An irate and unprofessional Frontier rep is trying to strong arm the City out of roughly $1,000. I raise it here because I was surprised to hear about Frontier's strong arm tactics and unprofessionalism over a penny ante to them $1,000 bill. Be a good neighbor, Frontier. The City has documented its good faith efforts. I'm a Frontier customer, and I'm embarrassed for them for the way they are handling this. (Referring it to their attorney?! Over a $1,000 fee?! ) They need to waive the darn bill and get on down the line. b. Spring Creek Pavilion Lions Clube project update: The Lions Club foundation pad for the new pavilion is going in at the river. I raised back here when it was proposed that no discussion was had about the Lions Club long term commitment to upkeep and improvements. Mr. Dolan, Club member, certainly didn't offer up any long term support in his initial pitch for the project. A discussion about the matter was raised by one of the Council members at this meeting. Perhaps one of the other Council members who happens to be in the club will be going back to the club and will get some commitments. It is clear to see from the location (near the baseball fields) that the facility is going to create long term drainage and road maintenance issues alone from the stormwater runoff and extra vehicle traffic it will bring to the area. And, without law enforcement patrol, it also has potential to increase loitering in the area. Commitments by the Lion Club need to be firmed up right away (before the cement is poured), otherwise the City is going to be burdened for decades to come. Public park structures like this one eventually become eye sores when neglected. (Don't think what it will look like in 2025 but in 2050 if it is not well tended to.) Taxpayers should not be burdened with upkeep and maintenance of charitable capital improvements like this one without a clear understanding on the front end of the charitable commitment. c. Next meeting: should be Monday, May 5. This Lace Hedgehog cactus on Cowboy Hill bloomed this week even though this drouth is now 5 months long. C. Commentary This week the Texas House voted to approve its version of the school voucher program sought after by Gov. Abbott. I have had on occasion addressed my opposition to the school voucher concept in these pages, even though my next door neighbor, Irion County ISD, has so aggressively pursued publicly funded capital improvements that are flooding my property. So, it is with a real sense of disappointment that this week State Representative Drew Darby of San Angelo voted for SB 2, the current Texas bill that will create school vouchers . You can read about my support of his primary race here , when I praised him for being a staunch opponent of vouchers and beating back Gov. Abbott's heavily financed efforts to see him out the door. I especially admired him for speaking the truth about vouchers when he said, while visiting Mertzon on a campaign stop, that vouchers were racist and would lead to segregation in our schools . (I agree with him on these points.) There is some indication that his change in heart on the issue was over a larger Hobson's choice involving rural school funding . Whatever the truth is on that point, it is equally important to put his decision in proper context of the political realities of the day. This week when addressing why Republicans in Congress were unable to stand up to President Trump, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski famously said, "Retaliation is real." (Gov. Abbott even posted his phone call with President Trump just before the SB 2 vote in the House.) If anyone knows about political retaliation, it is surely Rep. Darby. But, fear of retaliation is no excuse. I supported Rep. Darby even without an ounce of support from him. I expected him to be as much of a purist on school vouchers as I am a purist on how wrong it is for a public school to take its neighbor's property by storm water. Both are wrong, both have protections found in our constitutions, and both are worthy of staunch and unwavering advocacy. (Indeed, I might have also added to my Milestones page that I am continuing my advocacy notwithstanding the total lack of support from any of my elected officials, including Rep. Darby. In these 9 years, I have yet to find an elected representative to champion my cause. Elected folks will not speak out against a school district, even in situations where the district is not only flooding its neighbor but also flooding its community and itself!) Of course, Rep. Darby is also part of the institution - the Texas Legislature - for funding IC ISD. What school vouchers are certain to do is to take more from the wealth of Irion County than ever before. The District already turns over $9 - $15 million per year in recapture funds. (See page 5 of this document for the top 10 largest taxpayers in the county.) The community ought to be incensed that so much wealth is being transferred out of district, especially now that our local wealth is the process of being dedicated to private educational programs that are sure to undercut funding to IC ISD. Don't kid yourself. This all is nothing more than a transfer of local public wealth to private hands. One reason in Irion County that there has been no community uprising over this travesty of funding, as I have written before in this blog, is that the school board has failed to engage the community in its meetings. Why is that? Well, dissent is frowned upon in a small community of less than 1,000 folks. When folks want to challenge how public dollars are being spent it gets uncomfortable for the board members and administration. (See how far you get by challenging a $9+ million gymnasium!) The public, particularly parents, know that there will be negative consequences. Why even show up at board meetings and take that risk? It's not as if Rep. Darby himself is in the trenches at school board meetings defending taxpayer rights. He's not there, either. Senator Murkowski was right. Retaliation is real. And, it is hyper-focused in a small community like this one. Perhaps there is some hope on where to go from here, a place where cynicism breeds, in these words by Edwin R. Murrow: “The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.” Murrow also said these words: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." And, finally, he said these words: "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Don't be sheep. Copyright 2025 G. Noelke

Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Board Documents | Commentary | Last Meeting IC ISD Fieldhouse at OK Wolfenbarger Stadium This fieldhouse is going to be extended for storage as part of Phase 1 construction. You can see the plans here . Irion County ISD agenda A. Agenda Analysis 1. Meeting location: Cafeteria. 2. Administrative reports, item 6 d, 2nd quarter investment report: Ms. Lakey is a regular at nearly all the meetings now, but she isn't often listed on the agenda. To put this in context, this meeting is being held only 12 days after President Trump implemented the Liberation Day tariffs . Her report is not likely to be positive...and a lot is riding on investment returns. The District gets to keep in its own coffers the investment interest off unspent 2024 bonds. 3. Bond construction, item 5: This is the standard posting for the Board's construction. 4. Teachers, employee contracts, item 14 : This item comes at the end of the meeting after the closed session session and action items from closed session. 5. Closed Session, board training, item 11b: If all the Board members are Guardians, I suppose there are instances where board member training can be kept private. Otherwise, I don't know of an instance where training would be confidential. Cement jungle on IC ISD campus. Again, here's one source of our community's stormwater problem. This is on the south end of the District's campus. Each successive engineer has to address stormwater that originates at the beginning of this blue arrow and travels several blocks away, across my property and the private property of other landowners , to the fieldhouse pictured above. Thus far they have each built upon the errors of the ones that came before, while all have taken full advantage of the fact that the City of Mertzon does not have a stormwater management plan. Then they leave town. Well, mostly. SKG Engineering is out of San Angelo, and they worked on the new gym and are currently working on the 2024 bond projects for Parkhill . B. Meeting Review 1. Bond construction updates: From Supt. Moore's report, item 6c, the construction fencing and abatement around the old elementary building will start this week. The District received 50 bids (through Gallagher), and those are currently being evaluated. The acceptance of any bids will be done at next month's board meeting. 2. CTE dollars, item 6 c : Also from Supt. Moore's report, the District is more strategically targeting CTE dollars. The District has increased its revenue from $2500 in Perkins funds ( Title 1 from the Dept. of Education ) to $62,000. These dollars are not subject to recapture by the State, meaning the District does not have to return anything to the State. Here's more about CTE, Career and Technical Education, from the TEA website . Kudos to Supt. Moore for being more strategic about these dollars. My read is the the District has been leaving significant dollars on the table until now. Time will tell with the current administration in Washington (responsible for gutting the Department of Education, without congressional approval) whether these Title 1 funds will continue to flow without major concessions from states. From my vantage point, President Trump and Governor Abbott are both not friendly to education. My public information requests in the background include trying to get at whether the feds are already in the process of withholding money. 3. Investment Report, item 6d : I read this item to be an anticipatory report about the 2nd quarter, but this was a report on 1st quarter earnings. It boils down to this: there's a lot of interest earnings that stays with the district when there are millions of bond dollars. Indeed, Ms. Lakey reported there was $157,000 in interest off of $30 million in January alone. There are two reasons why these dollars matter. First , as has already happened in this bond cycle, the Board can on the fly adjust for construction budget shortfalls with projected interest earnings. Refer to item 2a in my Meeting Review where the Board approved additional square footage to the elementary totaling $1.7 million to be paid for out of anticipated interest earnings. Second , these interest earning matter when there is a budget mishap, as I wrote here where the District paid down a $800,000 budget shortfall with investment earnings. (Coincidentally, I learned from a recent PIA request that one reason for that shortfall is that the State and Board approved a very favorable tax abatement to the wind farm in their 313 agreement, but more on that later.) Here's my concern about this part of the meeting: Not a single board member dared ask what the projected earnings for the 2nd quarter might be. The economy, which is transparently in a downslide, was not discussed. There are potentially some troubled times ahead, and the impact is not readily known. The Board needs to worry about the future. 4. Census, item 6a: Principal Parker reported 210 in elementary and 134 in high school, totaling 344 for the district. Why am I monitoring this? Again, the District will not be able to afford an influx of new students . And, Texas, with its favorable business climate, is certain to grow. Consider this response to Pres. Trump's tariff war on China: Nvidia is going to produce its AI computers in Texas as part of a $500 billion US investment . Texas is going to continue to grow, and that means more and more pressure on rural areas. 5. Fairview, item 8 : The Board agreed to join the school cooperative Fairview, associated with Wall ISD , for its DAEP (Disciplinary Alternative Education Program) for $39,000 for 250 days of services. I will be learning more about this in the future, so stay tuned. 6. All the rest: The Board, at AD/Asst. Principal Morrow's request, approved a roughly $10,000 subscription for sports video services with HUDL . Hold the thought of whether AI will be used. The Board approved the probationary contracts at item 14, and there were no other closed session items voted upon. Otherwise, Board member Ashley Hill was the only member not present at this meeting. And, finally, don't forget to visit my updated Documents page . I've been neglecting it until this last weekend. I will post this meeting's documents in a few weeks after I receive them in my next PIA request. Horse Crippler Cactus in bloom It is spring in West Texas, and one sign - if you are lucky enough to see it - is a horse crippler cactus in bloom. This one is at the Mertzon Cemetery at the grave site of my Great Great Grandmother, Alice Patterson Blackwell Noelke, 1847-1912. I have posted photos of other horse cripplers in bloom here and here . C. Commentary Democracy is an ideal in progress made possible in part by an intangible faith that a rising tide should lift all boats. When our leaders, be they national or local, intentionally anchor some boats so that they necessarily flood at high tide, then it is only free and fair speech that can return the democratic ideal that we are all created equal with inalienable rights. Our Founders never promised us a democratic tomorrow. Speak up, speak out, be heard. Copyright 2025 G Noelke

Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Meeting Documents | Commentary W. Fleming and 4th Street in Mertzon facing south. This December 2021 photo of the new IC ISD gym under construction is a not so distant reminder of just how many resources are required to construct school facilities...and how timing is everything . The pandemic hit at just the wrong time during this build out, and costs skyrocketed and it went over budget. The first bid date for the 2024 IC ISD bond projects is this week, April 10, the week immediately after President Trump's world wide tariff effort ("Liberation Day") . What will the impact of the tariffs be on the bids and the time it takes to complete the build out? A. Agenda Analysis 1. Council pay, item 5 : The Council may be reaching back to its last decision on this issue so that it can formalize their pay with an ordinance. The prior ordinance, 3.01 , is dated. 2. Records retention policy, item 6 : The area of government records retention is highly regulated. Government created documents are the people's documents, and by law they have to be kept for a certain period of time before they are destroyed. A "custodian" is also required, and this person is typically charged with overseeing the records. Record retention made the news recently in the United States government group chat leak ("Signalgate"), where the chat conversation was set to delete in a matter of days. Retention periods differ according to the type of document, but they typically last for years. IC ISD campus facing east. The arrow points to an area slated to become a parking lot. As with other new impervious cover being added to the campus, this will ultimately send more stormwater runoff to City Park a few blocks away. B. Meeting Review 1. Here are the meeting documents for this meeting. 2. Council pay, item 5 : This was as I suggested above. The Council's purpose was to memorialize by ordinance their earlier vote on the amount of pay for the mayor and council members. I covered this issue at B.1. on this page . You can find the ordinance in the meeting documents. The vote was 2-1, with Lindley and Councilman "for" and Crutchfield "against". Mayor Stewart did not have to break the tie this time as Councilmember Holland resigned since the original vote. To be clear, the City of Mertzon Mayor gets paid $150.00 per council meeting, and the Council members get paid $100.00 per meeting. 3. Record retention ordinance, item 6 : The council approved the records retention ordinance, found in the meeting documents, as required by state law. Here's a suggestion: records relating to municipal real property will withstand the test of time in a retention policy only if such records are filed at the courthouse. (Lesson: sewage line easement documents that show a crossing over private property will not be forever lost if filed as a public document at the county courthouse.) 4. Administrative report, item 9 : The stench from the Waste Water Treatment Plant will continue. The necessary parts have been delayed, so the timeline has been bumped to mid May before a repair can take place. (No fault of the City.) C. Commentary You pretty much would have to be under that pile of limestone rocks next to my house in Mertzon to not see that our federal government is behaving differently than ever before. In part, this is because some in our federal government (less than a majority) are advancing what is known as the " unitary executive theory " as a way to increase the authority of our president. I have argued here (at Commentary) that our president has been engaged in a bullying effort to create dissent and disunity to eventually satisfy one of his ultimate goals: declaring martial law . This bullying is one of the tools being used to advance the unitary executive theory. To be clear, I am not predicting or desiring a federal declaration of martial law. Moreover, I am not a fan of the unitary executive theory. Our Founders created a system of three co-equal branches of government with intended checks and balances so that we never became a monarchy. Our Constitution spells this out. Some background: I became interested in martial law as IC ISD last year began to ramp up its Guardian program ( here at B. 5 ) that effectively allows for public tax dollars to pay for a private police force in the name of protecting school children...all perfectly lawful under state law. The secretiveness of this force has caused me to pay more attention to what conditions might have to exist for a larger scale civil emergency (state or federal level) that would form the basis for a declaration of martial law. One condition necessary to call marital law might be a violent citizen uprising. I make the point here that the elimination of DEI in the government setting is intended to create disharmony among citizens . The manner and methods being used to eliminate DEI in government, indeed, I view as inherently racist and misogynist. This racism and misogyny, in time, I fear will become key ingredients for civil unrest. There is reason to be hopeful that such will not be the case, however, with the recent peaceful protests, nationally and world wide, known as Hands Off . These first protests were peaceful . What about future protests? Consider taking some time to learn more about martial law. (Here is a Google search for martial law ; I urge you not to stop on that page with the AI interpretation.) Bear with me, as I intend to scatter a few posts about it here and there. I've learned about an instance in Texas where martial was used, and the consequences were shocking . I will share that in time. What other conditions might exist to justify a declaration of martial law? Who might benefit from a declaration of martial law, and who might pay the price? Why might we want to avoid it entirely and never go there? Copyright 2025 G Noelke

No matter how cold the winter or how dry the spring, in this part of West Texas each March you can count on the native Agarita bush to bloom. I've taken to occasionally watering the ones behind the gravestones of my Great Great Grandparents, Alice and Ferdinand Noelke, in the Mertzon Cemetery. As I wrote twelve months ago, I recognize two anniversaries each year in March . This website and my advocacy efforts to end the storm water flooding in my community are a year older. Government in the Sun has been online now for 2 years . And, I've now been working to end stormwater flooding in my community for 9 years . "Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely," said German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear ," said George Orwell . These two ideas capture the slow, steady and frank direction of my efforts in these pages this past year. Here are a few statistics for the year. I wrote 53 posts in the last twelve months. (There are now 140 posts total on the site.) Of those 53, the vast majority covered Irion County ISD Board meetings and Mertzon City Council meetings. Each post this year involved 1 to 3+ hours of attending the meeting, and another 2 to 4 hours of writing and analysis. Each post about an IC ISD Board meeting also involved a Public Information Act request each month to Dr. Nikki Moore, Superintendent. (I address her, and other superintendents, as "Superintendent" in these pages for historical convenience.) Each of those requests required 15-25 hours of writing, analysis and legal research. There were 3,755 post views of the entire site this last year . The top two most viewed pages were this post about former Athletic Director Jacob Conner and this post mostly about the IC ISD budget . I continue to manage the site entirely on my own. I have no staff, no editor (though on occasion I've used Chat GPT as an editor to tighten things up) and I do my own photography, including drone shots. I receive no subscription or advertising fees. The site itself has never been about earning an income, though my advocacy effort has certainly been about ceasing the economic damage to my property, my neighbors' property and the public property we all share and pay for with our taxes. I continue to avoid using social media to promote the site. I'm not interested in the anonymous swipes and extra grief that it will bring my way. Thankfully, fewer folks this past year have trolled me. This might be because my practice is to not engage in debate with folks who want to argue anonymously. (That would be anti-sun , maybe even cloudy .) My intent is to create a record of simultaneously supporting local government and public education, while at the same time being critical of it. If you are reading these posts as if I am a "hater" of government then you likely are misunderstanding me. The most important accomplishment for me this past year has been that my presence at public meetings and this blog have played some role in getting IC ISD and Irion County voters to dedicate over $800,000 of the 2024 bond funds to stormwater management. The Mertzon City Council has also been more proactive on flood issues than ever before. Their MOU with IC ISD is an example of their resolve to remedy flooding issues that have for too long been ignored. This also says a lot about the positive character of the leadership at IC ISD and the City, Supt. Moore and Mayor Aubrey Stewart. At the same time, the last 12 months have seen other factors at play initiating change. There is no doubting that the free market drive to get a piece of the tremendous ad valorem wealth of Irion County was one factor in the dedication of the IC ISD bond dollars to stormwater management. I wrote this year that there were still some on the IC ISD Board not wanting address stormwater flooding, and more likely it was Parkhill and Gallagher , the design and construction team, who initiated the change of direction. Private companies earning their way with public dollars want no part of construction projects that flood homes, and they especially don't want the reputation of helping government flood itself. It's bad business, isn't it, to live off of the public dollar while helping destroy government by flooding it? They don't want either the hit to their business reputation or the potential legal liability. Governmental immunity is not a sure bet when the dangers are so well known, as I've also written here and here . That said, since the previous IC ISD board, superintendent, athletic director, contractor and architect knew about the flooding before/during/after the previous bond (2019) build out and still made the flooding worse , I am compelled this upcoming year to continue to write about the construction at IC ISD. I continue to believe that citizens who sit on their hands when there is this much money involved ($18 million in 2019 and $53 million in 2024) will have their homes washed down to Spring Creek. Here's my post about the school bond industrial complex , perhaps instructive on my point that our community is but a drop in an ocean of money and special interests. In short, I fear our community is getting played , and there may be hell to pay for local taxpayers when we no longer have the income to afford to pay for all these school buildings and their maintenance. So, expect more posts about the construction at IC ISD in the upcoming 12 months. I would rather spend my time feeding the deer up on Cowboy Hill or biking down on the border . But, Irion County News (on Facebook) and The Irion County Newsletter (monthly, available locally only in paper) are not enough of a 4th Estate to challenge IC ISD and the City of Mertzon to do the right thing and be a good neighbor. And, that's really what I've been asking in these pages. Be a good neighbor . I also anticipate posting more documents from my monthly PIA requests to IC ISD . Of course, I will also continue to attend City Council and Board meetings. Time permitting, I will attend County Commissioner meetings. The County to date has been absent on flooding issues , but it may become an flood actor as it moves to rebuild the Community Center this year and next. IC ISD's football stadium is in the direct path of the County's stormwater runoff , so the time is closer to seeing whether there is yet another chapter in this government flooding itself story. This year I have also asked the County to be responsible about flooding issues . I will also continue inserting some commentary here and there about state and federal government in the upcoming year. For example, I recently opined that the federal efforts to abolish DEI was really a bullying effort to create public dissent because our President wants to declare Martial Law . I'm not going to ignore what I consider seismic changes currently taking place in our democratic system. As a lawyer by profession, I have a unique opportunity - and I think responsibility - in these pages to preserve the representative democracy currently under attack. And, let me be clear as I start up the next 12 months - I do believe our constitutional foundation is being challenged like never before. Thank you for reading these pages the last 12 months. “ The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself - always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity. ” President Jimmy Carter Enduring 10 -15 degree temperatures in January and no rain since mid-December, this Agarita still found a way to bloom this March. Copyright 2025 G Noelke

A new portable classroom on the IC ISD campus This week legal scholars have started debating whether our federal leadership in Washington have caused our country to go into a constitutional crisis. All of the talk to overturn DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, is in my opinion a very intentional false flag to ferment disunity so that we lose faith in our government and our fellow citizens . I'm not buying it. Remember, there are meritorious examples of "inclusion" everywhere, like this ramp that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act rules. Two decades of education in a public setting and two and a half decades as a public employee taught me lots of important lessons, not the least of which is that inclusion as a governing concept is a net positive. Below is the agenda for this meeting, and underneath that are my Agenda analysis and my Meeting review. Here are the meeting documents for the Board members for this meeting, received pursuant to my PIA request. IC ISD Agenda for this meeting. A. Agenda Analysis 1. Meeting Date and location : Note the meeting is on Wed, Feb 12. The location is the cafeteria. 2. 2024 Bonds, item 6 and 7 : Item 6 is the placeholder that allows the Board to approve an unplanned item. I'm less clear on 7 - is it to approve the process of electronic bidding of the projects, or are they approving particular bids that have already been reviewed? 3. Ideal Impact, items 8 and 9 : Ideal Impact is a private company being contracted with to help lower electricity costs. I covered this issue at the last meeting in my Meeting Review at B3 . I keep electricity costs on the front burner because they are an easily understood factor in increased maintenance and operation expenses after a bond build out...and these costs aren't disclosed to the voters before the bond vote. Think about that big yellow sticker on the side a refrigerator when you buy it that says what the annual electricity cost is expected to be... It's there before you buy. 4. Administrative reports, item 10, a-c : Always important. 5. TASB policy change 124, item 11 : Call me a board wonk if you will, but I think the most important role a board, governmental or nonprofit, can play is to help its executive implement and execute on policy and mission. Board members are supposed to be big thinkers, not big do-ers. I covered this extensively at B 4 here . I think these TASB items ought to be considered by the Board in a two step process. This month I found an example for this in the meeting notices for Hearne ISD , where they show the following on their agenda for their second reading: A screen shot of the Hearne ISD agenda for February 2025. This is an ideal posting because it shows both a two step process and notifies the public, staff, parents and students that these are the policy items up for a change. All of the policy items are important, but I've highlighted two. Certainly all school staff need to know in advance what changes are being considered. And, the community likewise needs to know their conduct may need to change. Though not shown here, these items on the agenda are under a topic heading called " Governance " suggesting to me this board understands it role in helping govern the school. Heady stuff? No, not really, so long as you accept that board leadership is a thinking role to assist the executive. Again, I think the greatest failure of the 2019 IC ISD board is that it passed an $18 million bond and then failed to build a single classroom . That suggests to me that they failed to execute on policy and mission. So much of the build out of City Gym can be attributed to raw unchecked self interest to have the best athletic facilities and the best win record in the district. No one was ever thinking about classrooms. 6. Closed session, items 16 and 18 : There's a lot of meat on this bone! I highlight item 18 to make the larger point that we'll know nothing about this closed session unless the Board votes on a specific matter. A few of these look like voting matters, and important ones at that, so here is my standard advice: always stay to the end of a public meeting in situations where you know or think a matter will be voted on after a closed session. This kind of advocacy comes with a price, and it is a steep one . Time . But a governing body that knows the public is apathetic will merge a closed session into a free for all and ultimately superintendent and board member self interest will reign supreme. The interests of the community becomes the last priority when the public is not present. Stormwater diversion done with 2019 bond funds. IC ISD board members may have some sticker shock when the bids for stormwater diversion start coming in April. The only 2019 bond money spent on campus for floodwater diversion was for this caliche berm along the alley and this cement wall along a new parking lot, the GMPL. It undoubtedly would have been cheaper to have done this right by using the 2019 funds on the front end. B. Meeting review 1. Closed session and action on closed session, items 16 and 18: a. Contract extensions : After a roughly 1.5 hour closed session, the Board came out of executive session and voted to approve an additional 1 year contract extension to Supt. Moore. My take is this in effect turns her 5 yr contract into a 6, thus giving her 4 more years with the District. (Here's a copy of her contract on the District's site .) Given the relative slow start up pace of the bond build out, this is likely a good turn of events because she will be accountable f rom start to finish for the expenditure of the 2024 bond funds. (A significant failure of the 2019 bonds was that then Supt. Brian Gray proposed and got the bonds approved, and then he left the District within a few months after the election . Then there was an interim superintendent, and then finally Supt Ray DeSpain was appointed...and he left under a budget fiasco within a few months after all of the 2019 funds and more were spent.) The Board also approved 1 year contract extensions for Principal Jessica Parker and Asst. Principal/Athletic Dir. John Morrow. This is likewise a good thing in that they, too, will spend more time being accountable for the the spend down of the 2024 bonds. They were present, though in different capacities, for the entirety of the spend down of the 2019 bond funds, so there is some institutional knowledge and relative accountability for those funds as well. b. Guardians : The Board approved the Guardians discussed in closed session, which is to say the names of the guardians were not stated in open session. This sort of secrecy is allowed under the law, but I think it is nonetheless troubling. First, guardian approved schools effectively have an approved secret militia paid for with public dollars . Second, since I monthly do a PIA request for the District's check register, I know that our tax dollars are being spent on ammo . (In Nov. 2024 the District purchased $1,665 worth of ammo.) And, third, I think our federal government and our constitutional form of government are currently becoming unstable . (Congress is not controlling the purse as it is obligated to under the Constitution.) So, knowing who is on the secret militia that is publicly funded in your community might be handy . For more reading, here's some info on Martial Law . You can see a photo of the District's warning sign about it being a guardian campus at the bottom of this page . 2. 2024 bonds, items 6 and 7 : No action on 6, and the Board voted to approve item 7 related to electronic bids. This matter was merely to accept the bidding electronically, as opposed to by paper form. The IC ISD bidding page is on this page . 3. Electricity, Ideal Impact , items 8 and 9: The District paid just over $20,000 for its December energy costs, so this effort to reduce energy costs is much needed. The Board approved the service agreement and payment plan agreement. 4. Administrative reports, item 10 : a. Supt. Moore: Plans for the band field and drainage should be complete by mid march, with electronic bids going out the end of March or early April. The elementary will likely not be ready for bid until May. Abatement of the current elementary is starting the end of Feb. Teacher raises update : the pending SB 2 potential raises are not going to be handed down through basic allotment but through teacher incentive allotment, which IC ISD does not currently participate in. The District will have to apply and be approved (a potential 2 year process) to receive these funds. The change here, essentially, is to base teacher raises on performance, not merely years of service. Otherwise, there is some legislative threat to the District's fund balance, so the fox is scratching on the hen house door. The District is going to lose a lot of flexibility if it has to hand over some of its fund balance to the State. The District has more in its fund balance than the required 3 mos. of expenses. More on this later. b. Principal Parker: Enrollment in elementary is 206, high school 133 = 339. Attendance 97.03%. 5. TASB policy change update 124, item 11 : I don't know what changes were approved, and I attended the meeting! 6. Fees for transfers, item 13 : The Board thought through aloud how to recoup bus expenses related to the transfer students. They approved a fee structure. 7. Miscellaneous : Board member Ashley Hill attended the meeting late and left early, so she didn’t participate in the closed session. Otherwise, Maegin Carlile, Ricky Rey, Tony Martinez, DJ Rainey, Taylor Douglas and Chad Koonce were present. Finally, keep in mind that as these projects like the bus barn and elementary go out for bid, the architects and engineers have already determined by mathematic formula what the water runoff will be. Here is an example of just how detailed these drawings have to be, Jeff Potter's drawing of City Gym . There is nothing mystical about how to protect our community from self inflicted flood damage. It's math. The roof of City Gym in 2021. That is a lot of steel. Will the new steel tariffs impact the costs of construction for the 2024 bond build out? Copyright 2025 G Noelke

2024 Bond Banner Below is the agenda for this meeting, and below that are my agenda analysis and meeting review . Here are the meeting documents provided to the Board members for this meeting, received pursuant to my PIA request. A. Agenda Analysis 1. Pending construction projects and square footage change, items 6 and 7 : These are the bond related items. 2. TASB policy changes, item 10 : My ongoing issue with the District's policy changes is threefold. First, a private association, TASB , drafts them, not the District, and the District appears to have no real involvement with TASB. Second, they aren't published either on the District's website or at the meeting so that if a parent, student or member of the community wanted to comment on them during open forum (before they are passed) they couldn't. Finally, typically board members don't read them in advance of the meeting and, instead, rely on the superintendent's cursory review at the same meeting they are passed. This means there is more often than not no substantive board discussion of what the policy changes mean and board members are clueless about the content of the policies. There's a lot of meat on this bone. Here's a link to the IC ISD policy manual . You might be amazed at what all is in there. Sometimes one can Google the policy update to see if another ISD has posted something online about it. Here are some explanatory notes I found from Katy ISD on TASB update 122 . Here are some explanatory notes on Update 123 from College Station ISD . Look, it could be that only a lawyer could enjoy reading and questioning policies (I do), but alarm bells should be ringing when there is simultaneous board member and public disengagement on policy matters...and a private association is doing both drafting and interpretive comments . Who is really in charge? Are school board members leaders or followers? 3. Closed session and action on closed session, items 14 and 16 : I always highlight this portion of each agenda. The District, as is apparently the case with most school districts, does not have a lawyer present in closed session to make sure that their discussion about personnel is within the boundaries in the Open Meetings Act. This part of the meeting is always a cloudy day if you are for government in the sunshine... or if you are a teacher . The Irion County Community Center is roughly 75 yards away (and slightly higher) from the IC ISD football stadium. The Irion County Commissioner's Court is considering whether to expand or rebuild the Community Center. Read my public comments about that at B1 here . There's good reason to be concerned about our community's self inflicted wound of local government flooding itself: If the impervious cover of the Community Center is expanded, then that additional stormwater will flood the IC ISD football stadium. The improvements made to the football stadium with the 2019 bond funds were minimal at best. See the last photo on this page to see how close it was to flooding just a few months ago . B. Meeting Review Open forum, item 5 : A truly inspired speech was given by an IC ISD student on how to re-purpose the turf at the football stadium once it is removed. He read from his prepared remarks, he was organized and he was concise about what he was recommending. We all recognize in some way that we have a right under the Constitution to petition our government. But we perhaps do not know that the interpretation of doing so to "redress grievances" has been given a broad interpretation. A grievance doesn't have to be a full blown human rights violation. Indeed, as it was here, it was a playground issue - the playground has stickers and the turf would cover them up. "Petition" has broadly been interpreted as a request that government use it powers to serve the interests and prosperity of the petitioner. Best of all, there shouldn't be a petition cop at the door of a school board meeting room telling citizens what they can and can't say in open forum. The general rule is that prior restraint of speech is illegal. (But see 551.007 of the Open Meetings Act for what speech is allowed.) So, kudos to this student for exercising his free speech rights. Read more on right to petition government here . Bond matters, items 6, 7, 9c and 11: a. There will be additional square footage (3,000 to 4,000 sf) added to the elementary design to accommodate potential future growth, at a likely cost of $1.7 million. It's not certain just yet where this money will come from. Hold that thought! b. Demo of elementary will start in mid-March. c. End of January will be when bids are published for construction of the bus barn, Estes Gym and cafeteria expansion. The drainage, detention pond and practice field for band will be a separate phase and those bids will be published in March. The band practice field location has been moved from the west side of the band hall to the east side of the band hall , which appears to explain why there has been a delay on getting the bids out on the drainage and detention projects. This also means that the City of Mertzon and IC ISD have not agreed to the MOU that closes a portion of the street . d. Football field turf and track : The Board accepted a $1.03 million offer from Hellas Construction for new football field turf and track. Here is the offer document . The Board approved Proposal alternatives 1 and 2 on page 2. e. Order of operations: The prayer fence needs some editing: Add " Don't pray for rain". Here's why. Like the build out with the 2019 bonds, the construction at the football stadium is coming first. That construction will start in May/June this summer (2025!) and will take only about two months. The football stadium is the IC ISD property at the lowest elevation, and it is the most vulnerable to flooding. See my topo map on this page . We typically get a summer monsoon in July or August, so the new turf and track are going to be vulnerable right away. Next up, according to the bid schedule as described by Supt. Moore at this meeting, will be bus barn, Estes Gym and cafeteria extension. I still can't report how much additional stormwater will be added to the basin from this construction, but there will be more runoff that will flood our streets, our homes and our new field and track. The next bidding will be the drainage and detention pond and the band practice field. (The timing of the bidding for the elementary and parking lot construction was not discussed.) Time will tell whether the flood control structures should have been built first, not third, to protect our streets, homes and City Park from flooding. And, as I explained to the County Commissioner's Court , I am suspending my opinion about whether the flood control structures will even be built. So, none of this is written in stone. Administrative reports a. Cost of electricity - I've been requesting the District's electricity bill via the PIA for some months now. My reasons are straightforward: One of the school bond reforms that needs to be adopted is that voters need to be informed what the additional expenses to the school's Maintenance and Operations (M&O) increases are expected once bond build out is complete. Those added expenses grow over time! The way these bond packages are presented to voters when they are proposed is that homeowners will not see an increase in the Interest and Sinking (I&S) taxation of their property value . What isn't discussed are the long term M&O costs that the taxpayers will have to bear. How much are we talking? The October 2024 monthly invoice from TXU for electricity for all the District's properties was the highest its ever been at $24,982.28. The same month back in 2006 was $11,330! Of course, electricity was cheaper then, but the District also had less square footage to heat and cool. Electricity for City Gym these days can vary from $2,000 to $3,000 a month! Add to that the expense of maintaining its specialty AC system, and over time the District has placed a huge tax burden on its citizens ...after having told voters before the bond election that they wouldn't see any increase in their taxes for I&S, the pot of money where the payment for the bonds comes from. b. Superintendent Moore's report at this meeting included an update on her work with Ideal Impact , a company that modernizes campus heating and cooling with centralized smart technology. She gets kudos from me on this issue. I was forecasting to her predecessor, Supt. Ray DeSpain, that the District was going to be experiencing high electricity costs for the new gym while it was still being constructed...and he ignored me. I'll be continuing to look at the M&O costs with the 2024 build out. If the District doesn't control its M&O budget, it can't pay off these or the 2019 bonds early. In hindsight that will make the whole rolling bond concept of always issuing bonds to have been one colossal mistake. That is, the District will not be able to pay off its bonds early if it can't afford its M&O expenses . Put another way, the Texas legislature's funding mechanism that permits wealthy school districts like IC ISD to keep its I&S wealth local will have backfired . c. Enrollment is at 203 in elementary and 134 at secondary, totaling 337 students in the District, according to Principal Parker. 4. TASB Policy updates 122 and 123, agenda item 10 : These updates were handled as I discussed above at A2 above . Supt Moore during her presentation explained that the District would have to send the proposed policy changes to their own attorney if there was to be any change by the Board. No doubt that would be added expense to the District. However, it is also important to consider the role of the Board. Is the board a doing board or an executive board involved in assisting the superintendent in evaluating and executing policy? One way to answer this question is to look at time management during the meeting. What agenda items do the board spend most of its time during its meeting? This meeting was a perfect example. The Board spent way more time discussing the new football field and track proposal, even going to the extent of physically handing and evaluating the field padding with the vendor, while spending no time discussing the TASB policy updates. I contend that it was the Board's doing of athletics in 2019, as opposed to executing policy (executive management), that caused it to spend most of a $18 million bond on a new gym and football stadium upgrades, while spending no money on classrooms. One solution here might be to adopt future TASB updates in a 2 or even 3 step process. Introduce the amendments one month, adopt them with board review the next month. Forcing a one meeting adoption process for complex policy issues ( and there was lots of complex issue in these updates ) is a lot to expect for the average board member. These are complicated changes that deserve more opportunity to read, comprehend and discuss intelligently. I will be reviewing these changes in the future with a PIA request. 5. Closed session, items 14 and 16 : My schedule didn't permit me to stay through to the end of this meeting, so I did not attend the return to open session at item 16. Supt. Moore has advised me that no action was taken. 6. Attendance : All members were present at this meeting, so attending were Maegin Carlile, Ricky Rey, Ashley Hill, Tony Martinez, DJ Rainey, Taylor Douglas and Chad Koonce. My RadRover bike cockpit view off a cliff’s edge at Seminole Canyon State Park. Copyright 2025 G Noelke