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The agenda for the May 6 2024 Mertzon City Council is below, with my agenda analysis and meeting analysis underneath. A. Agenda Analysis This is the first meeting where the language has been removed that warned that a public speaker could be called out of order if they attacked the character of a council member. See this post for analysis of this issue. The guardrails for public comment are not off, however. I predict that the turf war between the City of Mertzon and the Irion County Sheriff's office is going to become even more transparent with agenda items 5 and 6. The manhunt last month for a car jacker/murder suspect that started in Ector County and ended in Mertzon with a DPS officer involved shooting that killed the suspect in a private residence in Mertzon has brought to the surface some very real and longstanding tension between the City of Mertzon and the Irion County Sheriff's office. Add to the mix that there is no cooperation among the two for the enforcement of traffic laws within the City. I've been impressed with Mayor Stewart's willingness to mix things up with ICISD on flooding matters thus far, so anticipate a change in the status quo on these items. Agenda items 5 and 7, Fleming street repairs and 3rd and Fayette shoulder barrier, are connected in that both properties/residences border Irion County ISD. Now that we know the 2024 ICISD bonds have passed, it will be interesting to see if certain Council members are still as eager to spend City of Mertzon funds on repairing Fleming Ave. for flooding caused by the 2019 school bonds that these same Council members promoted. The District has committed thus far to spend $850,000 of the new bond money on parking and drainage. Which Council members now will be offering up City of Mertzon tax dollars to remedy the street flooding problems that they created by approving City Gym? Side note: I did not request that Fleming Ave be closed or reopened, nor have I requested that either of these agenda items be added to this agenda. I have been making it clear, however, since 2016 that what has been taking place on W. Fleming at this location is an unconstitutional inverse condemnation (taking my property without just compensation) by the City of Mertzon and ICISD; I made this argument once again in my recent post about the US Supreme Court ruling on inverse condemnation in Texas. B. Meeting Analysis (Pending) Here are the meeting documents for this meeting. (Also pending.) Public Comment: Two members of the public spoke in open forum regarding their concerns for having inadequate information during the recent fugitive incident. Because the City is small and rural, those on the outer boundaries and nearby to the city limits are quite vulnerable. Interactions with the Sheriff: Mayor Stewart extensively detailed two of his interactions with Sheriff Estes relating to an alleged unlawful bonfire and the fugitive incident. I am considering whether to post the audio of this portion of the meeting on my YouTube channel, but as of now I'm not certain that would do anything more than fan the flames. (As a privately owned and funded website, I am not getting paid for advertising and so getting page views from train wrecks does not advance my underlying goal.) Bottom line: there is serious disfunction among local government in Irion County. To the Mayor and the Council's credit, he has tasked himself, with their approval, to reach out to Judge Criner, Sheriff Estes, the Fire Dept. and ICISD to see about improving communications during critical events. Advocacy tip for government leaders: I've mentioned this before. You or a representative from your office need to attend the other's meetings, even if briefly at the beginning of the meeting before the meeting starts, to say hello, to be seen and to ask if they need anything. On the state level, one will often see various governmental agencies present at agency board meetings, particularly during a crisis. Elected officials and executive government leaders need to remember they serve the public, and being seen in public extending some civility goes a long way toward defeating turf battles. Stop signs and speed limits in the city limits, item 6: The council voted to remove speed limit signs, but not stop signs, within the city limits in 30 days. This is a move toward a "pro forma" enforcement of enforcing speeding laws in the city. The effect of this is significant. This is going to place the enforcement of state speeding laws in the hands of Sheriff Estes. City wide the speed limit will be 30 mph and 20 at the school. Expect to see public education efforts by the City in the coming weeks to communicate this change so that the public is made aware before the change is made. The significance of this change cannot be overstated. Mayor Bill Taylor stated it best years ago when he said the City's ordinances were nothing more than a book of promises because there was no enforcement mechanism. That is, there is no municipal police or municipal judge to administer enforcement, so speed limits within the city are meaningless. And, indeed, one consistent message from Irion County to the City of Mertzon is that the Sheriff's office will not enforce speed limits within the City of Mertzon. Under a pro forma enforcement, city speeding laws are effectively abandoned for state laws. It will be up to the Sheriff's office to enforce them and to the county to hear the cases and administer any fine. Council member Elliott made the motion to remove the speed limit signs, Council member Crutchfield seconded, and the vote passed with Lindley voting for and Holland voting against. I support this change. I look forward to see how the County Commissioners, Judge Criner and Sheriff Estes begin enforcing our state speeding laws within the city limit. I anticipate more coverage of this issue in the future. Fleming Street repairs and Third and Fayette shoulder barrier, items 7 and 9: The three council members who initially voted to close 4th street for the new gym, Holland, Crutchfield and Lindley, voted down Council member Elliot's motion to temporarily close the flooded portion of W. Fleming "in order to provide safety for our citizens". Council member Holland's views during the discussion are the most noteworthy. She continues to maintain that there is no problem if the District pours its stormwater runoff into the street. Her consistent voting pattern through the years on a variety of issues has been that she favors a weak city government with as little enforcement of laws as possible. (Her view on this street closure for the safety of citizens is consistent with her opposition to pro forma speed enforcement above.) Members Crutchfield and Lindley appear less inclined to libertarianism, but they certainly aren't backing away from their votes that allowed Irion County ISD to flood city streets. Otherwise, constitutional equal protect clause be damned, the Council took no action on the landowner installed shoulder barrier they had earlier approved at Third and Fayette. That the Council is treating property owners unequally when it comes to drainage and erosion (protecting that landowner while flooding me) is going to come back and rear its ugly head as soon as the bid is awarded for the 2024 school bonds. The stormwater runoff is going to have to go somewhere. One reason municipalities have stormwater plans and ordinances is that they help avoid unconstitutional taking of private property. They also support the equal protection clause in our constitutions because they force government to treat citizens equally. Without such plans and ordinances, our community becomes the plaything for outside private commercial interests (like the recipients of the 2019 bonds Jeff Potter Architects and WBK Construction, and, soon enough, the bid recipient of the 2024 school bonds) who look to profit from our oil wealth and governmental disfunction as they laugh all the way to the bank. Pending... Copyright 2024 G Noelke

Here is what the District released on May 1, 2024, with my commentary below: Twenty years is a long time at a school district the size of ICISD. I noticed a lilt in Ms. Chapman's step at a recent board meeting and thought that perhaps something was up. One barometer of whether an administrator is leaving their district is if they smile and appear more relaxed during school board meetings. (!) She did. Congratulations to her! So, here is what the Matagorda ISD lone finalist letter said about her experience at ICISD: "Ms. Chapman has 20 years of dedicated service in education, notably at Irion County ISD, and has embraced multiple roles that span both campus and district levels. She’s served as secondary principal since 2015 but also has experience as federal programs director (since 2012), transportation administrative director (since 2018), elementary principal (2012-2015), district testing coordinator (since 2009), classroom teacher/coach (8 years), and more." My coverage of the attrition at the District is an effort to create some accountability for its teachers, administrators and board members. Decisions in local government are made by individuals who are for the most part imperfect and cranky at times, generous and forgiving at others. But, if the public is not engaged in oversight of their governance and how they spend our tax dollars, then there is a tendency for things to go wrong and get covered up, and for the institutional values to get skewed. Of the roughly 6 years of attending school board meetings where she has served as the secondary principal, I can say that Ms. Chapman has never had to address any public criticism of the high school's academic performance in a board meeting. That's not because the performance has been excellent, it is because the Board and prior superintendents have perpetuated an apathetic community of parents and citizens unwilling to publicly demand academic excellence. One consequence of that apathy is that Ms. Chapman was part of the executive staff of the district who oversaw the expenditure of $18 million in 2019 bond funds, start to finish, without the construction of a single classroom. Indeed, roughly $15 million of that bond went to athletic facilities, with the largest chunk of that, about $9 million, spent on a new gym that was designed without any concern for stormwater runoff and that is a significant contributor to stormwater flooding in our community and at the District's football field. That flooding gives meaning and purpose to this website and energizes my goal for more sunlight over the District staff and board. So, for a limited time of 6 years of her 20 years at ICISD, what I can say is that she was part of a cog in government that was worn to the point of being misaligned by over valuing athletics. (The lone finalist letter mentioned she was a coach.) No doubt she does not bear all the responsibility, as she shares the blame with several others in this blog who served concurrently with her. My criticism here is not about her personally, but about her role in an educational institution that for decades has failed in its purpose to create opportunity and community. That failure ultimately rests squarely on the backs of the school board members. I wish her well. I look forward to meeting the new principal hired by Supt. Moore. With this still being the 4th year of 5 of Superintendent Moore's contract, this vacancy opens the door for her to truly shape the District with her vision. Watch here to see when the job is posted. Copyright 2024 G. Noelke

The case and its holding / The misrepresentations by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton about the case / The pictures / Why it all matters If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that its origins are from the stormwater runoff from my neighbor, Irion County ISD. The District passed a $19 million bond in 2019, of which $9+ million was used for a new gym that was designed to pour water into city streets and eventually onto my 110 year old home immediately next door to its campus. As of this month, this has been an 8 year advocacy effort on my part to stay dry. So, I have been closely following a recent US Supreme case, Devillier v Texas, involving inverse condemnation. Several Texas landowners are suing the State of Texas for its Texas Department of Transportation taking their property by flooding them and not paying for the privilege. I have taken some pride throughout these eight years that it was my IC ISD high school football, basketball and track coach, Syd McCown, who first taught me in high school Civics class that it was unconstitutional for the government to take property without just compensation. Throughout this ordeal, I have pointed out that one did not need to be a lawyer, as I am, to know that our government can’t flood our property. Indeed, I didn't learn about the "Takings" clause for the first time when I took constitutional law from Rodric Schoen at Texas Tech University School of Law. I learned it about it in grade school, as hopefully children do today. Why learn about - and support - the Takings clause today? Well, it really is a fundamental cornerstone of our democratic system. The King can't take our private property. Our Founders fled a nation, England, to be free from that. And, as Justice Egan so accurately stated last week during the oral argument of Trump v. United States, "The framers...were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law". No one is above the law, whether it be your local school district or the municipality where you live. So, the case at hand about the Takings clause, Devillier v. Texas (also see here), appears on its face to be a quite dull US Supreme Court case involving civil procedure. But, there’s a lot of meat on this bone. First, the US Supreme Court affirms a federal Takings claim under state law for inverse condemnation by flooding in Texas. Second, the Texas Attorney General put out some troubling (fake?) news about the case by saying he won the case 9-0 when he in fact lost it 0-9. And, third, it is a rare Supreme Court case with pictures that drive home the point of the plight of the landowners. A. The Case and its holding I recommend reading Tiffany Lashmet's analysis of the case on her Texas Agricultural Law Blog. (That’s a great blog, btw.) She writes the Court held, "the Texas state law inverse-condemnation cause of action provides the vehicle for a takings claim based on both the Texas Constitution and the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution." For my purposes of explaining it to my readers, what you need to understand is that technically there are 2 Takings clauses that prohibit the government from taking your land without just compensation - the Texas Constitution (Art. 1 Section 17) and the U.S. Constitution (5th Amendment). The landowners here used both in their complaint against Texas, and Texas tried to limit its exposure by arguing, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, that the U.S. Constitution did not apply because the landowners failed to plead their case to include a certain federal statute (Section 1983) My experience in doing state appellate cases in administrative law for the Texas Attorney General's office was to not get all hot and bothered about errors in pleading on appeal, especially where the errors could be fixed. Courts do not like to rule on technicalities, and they generally don't like novel theories. And, such is the case here. For reasons I might get to discuss in another blog post, the U.S. Supreme Court punted on the issue of whether the statute (Section 1983) had to be plead and said, look, Texas, your state case law already recognizes that the U.S. Constitution Takings clause applies, so go away and stop wasting our time. So, the Supreme Court "vacated" (made legally void) the appeals court ruling and sent the case back down to the lower court with a ruling that the landowners had both the state and federal causes of action for a Takings violation. To put a finer point on this, the Supreme Court ruled for the landowners on this procedural issue. And, remember, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was defending the Texas Department of Transportation (the State of Texas), whose position was to avoid paying damages to the landowner. Importantly, the Supreme Court did not say damages had to be paid because that part of the case hadn't been tried yet. This appeal was merely Texas' effort to boot the landowners out on a technicality. Texas lost, hands down. B. The Misrepresentations by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton about the case Call it a lie, call it fake news, call it gaslighting, call it what you will, but I am going to generously say the Attorney General's media release on the case involved, at best, some wordsmithing to the point of misrepresentation. Prevaricating. Now, in my earlier years when I was a baby lawyer at the AG's office I worked in the Consumer Protection Division. I had the privilege of doing some cases that warranted press releases. I know firsthand about the kind of wordsmithing that goes on between the lawyers and the press office to either limit the damage to the Attorney General after a negative event or to promote his image when there is a court victory. (A lot of effort is put into press at the Texas Attorney General's office.) But, I was never involved in a situation like Devallier v Texas where we converted an outright loss to a victory and then attached to it some clearly misleading quotes by the Attorney General. Indeed, Devillier v. Texas represents a loss by General Paxton, not a win. You would not know that if you read General Paxton’s take of the case, however. Here is a screen shot of the tweet on X by the Attorney General: And, some X context by its readers: And here is the verbatim press release, also posted on the AG's website: Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton Secures Unan­i­mous SCO­TUS Win on Texas Prop­er­ty Rights Case Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a unanimous 9-0 win at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case protecting the ability of Texas to handle compensation disputes under State law for any allegedly taken property. A number of citizens sued seeking compensation under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution after severe rain caused flooding in the Houston area in 2017 and 2019. According to these plaintiffs, the barrier between two sides of the highway served as a type of dam, preserving a flood-evacuation route but resulting in flooding of their property. Although Texas has long allowed citizens to bring such claims under state law, these plaintiffs insisted on bringing their claim directly under the U.S. Constitution. Because Congress has never authorized such litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected their claims. Long committed to the importance of property rights, Texas argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that the landowners should be permitted to seek relief so long as they do so under Texas law. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Texas. The Court also specifically rejected the plaintiffs’ mistaken interpretation of existing caselaw that they claimed would allow them to sue directly under federal law. The U.S. Supreme Court said: “Texas state law provides a cause of action by which property owners may seek just compensation against the State. As Texas explained at oral argument, its state-law inverse-condemnation cause of action provides a vehicle for takings claims based on both the Texas Constitution and the Takings Clause.… And, although Texas asserted that proceeding under the state-law cause of action would require an amendment to the complaint, it also assured the Court that it would not oppose any attempt by DeVillier and the other petitioners to seek one.” “For as long as Texas has been Texas, it has recognized that property rights are crucial to a free society. Under the U.S. Constitution, such claims should be pursued under state law unless Congress has said otherwise. I’m pleased the Supreme Court agreed with us unanimously that citizens should sue under Texas law,” said Attorney General Paxton. What?! None of that makes any sense. The landowners could have always sued under Texas law, and the Supreme Court said as much. They also ruled Texas (General Paxton) couldn't stop them from going forward with their litigation for just compensation from Texas. Full credit goes here to the law podcast, Strict Scrutiny, where I first learned about General Paxton's misrepresentation about the case when they offered their criticism of General Paxton's interpretation during their April 22 podcast at 54:46 minutes in. C. The Pictures It is quite rare for a Supreme Court case to include photographs in the body of the opinion. Usually, cases are text only, as words are our best tools to formulate arguments and resolve legal disagreements. Devillier v Texas is also noteworthy because the Supreme Court included not just one photo, but two photos of the landowners' flooded land and the highway that is the alleged culprit of the problem. Here are those two photos, with the first including a few sentences from the opinion: As I mentioned above, this case at this point relates to a procedural issue - must section 1983 be plead. The ultimate issue of whether an actual Taking has occurred has not yet been proven by the landowners. So, in legal parlance, these photos act as "dicta", or an observation by the Court that is not necessary to resolve the case. The photos are so severe, and yet completely unproven at this point, it is almost as if the Supreme Court is photo shaming Texas for taking this case so far in opposition to the landowners. For sure, one could certainly make a point with the publication of these photos by the Supreme Court might also be of the opinion that Texas is working way too hard to avoid its responsibility to pay just compensation to the landowners in this case. These are damning photos, and undoubtedly some of the most persuasive dicta I have ever seen in a case. Indeed, they counter the distortion of General Paxton's press on the case, if not explain why he would go so far to act as if he was a pro landowner attorney general. These photos are an embarrassment. D. Why it all matters These are essential times to be challenging government. Government officials seem more and more willing to use alternate facts to twist the truth...or to simply avoid the facts and the and the truth - and the law - altogether. Our community leaders and elected officials no longer even attempt to feign a request for forgiveness for their transgressions. They either expel gibberish on social media to create distortion or simply remain silent (as Irion County ISD has done until recently) and expect citizens to follow as submissive sheep. One can witness this as easily on a local level as on the national and world stages. All of this matters because of a worthwhile warning left us by journalist Edwin R. Murrow, who famously stood up to Joseph McCarthy: A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. You act the part of a sheep in this day and age and your government will take away your rights quicker than General Paxton can prevaricate with, "For as long as Texas has been Texas, it has recognized that property rights are crucial to a free society." The same can be said about women's reproductive rights, free speech rights, the right to vote and a host of other liberties being challenged today. Silence equals eventual loss of rights. "More light!" said German playwright, lawyer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his final breaths. I recommend both Tiffany Lashmet's Texas Agricultural Law Blog and the Strict Scrutiny podcast as sources to stay current on the law. You do not need to be a lawyer to access and question the law. Don't be wooly-eyed. Copyright 2024 G. Noelke

This is what the solar eclipse looked like from Cowboy Hill in Irion County on April 8, 2024. NOTE: This meeting was initially scheduled on April 15 but was rescheduled to April 22. The April 22 agenda is slightly different than the April 15 agenda, so I am posting them both. Here are the April 22 and 15, 2024 agendas for the Irion County ISD school board, with my agenda analysis here and my meeting analysis here. A. Agenda analysis: Budget amendments, item 6. I have argued elsewhere on this blog that the phrase "budget amendment" on an agenda, with nothing more, is so vague it is not reasonable notice. To prove my point, the last agenda with the phrase was in March. Only by attending the meeting and hearing CFO Helms' report did I learn that part of amendment was to pay the remaining bill for the elementary playground, which was not finished because the contractor went bankrupt. These funds were to have come from the 2019 bond funds, and those dollars are gone. Indeed, only by my reporting on this blog would one know that in fact the District went over budget with the 2019 budget funds. But, Mr. Helms is often quite vague during his reports, and he did not state the dollar amount for this amendment during the board meeting. So, I had to do a Public Information Request in March just to get the dollar amount. The amount was $123,417. So, by my calculations, the District went over budget at least $257,917 for the 2019 bonds. You won't find a disclosure by the District for this anywhere, even though Mr. Helms has consistently earned the District the highest marks on its FIRST reporting to TEA. Now, I'm careful to distinguish new and old leadership responsibilities and errors. Supt. Moore inherited Supt. DeSpain's wreck here. But, good luck to any citizen wanting to know the back story on any "budget amendment" agenda item. You've got to dog it, meaning you have to attend meetings and do PIA requests to figure it all out. This ought never to be the case. All of this is obviously public under the PIA. So, I re-urge my earlier proposed Taxpayer Bill of Rights for School Bonds. Taxpayers should have the right to know whether a bond went over budget, the amount it went over budget, what the money was spent on, and where the amendment money came from. This should all be posted on the school's website so that there would be accountability for the district. And, since districts are increasingly in the position of having "rolling" bonds, there should be a disclosure for each new bond that the district did not go over budget with any prior bond. Taxpayer Bill of Rights for School Bonds. We need one. Citizens shouldn't have to do all that I do just to get basic financial information. Teacher hires, resignations and salary: As mentioned last month, all this activity generally occurs annually during the spring months and can be found on this agenda at items 11, 14a and 16. Mr. Helms' report at 5a and item 11 on the salary schedule will be the meat and potatoes in terms of salary increases. Roughly 80% of the District's maintenance and operations budget is put towards salaries, so this is a significant outflow of public dollars. Inflation has just been reported to have ticked up to 3.5%, so it will be interesting to see if the pay raises are sufficient to keep up with inflation. (I worked for many years as a state employee earning less and less each year, so I am particularly sensitive to the plight of public employees.) As I said last month, now is a good time to speak up for your child's teacher during open forum. That a $55 million bond proposal is the back drop for likely yet another year of meager or no teacher pay raises underscores just how messed up the funding is for our public state educational system. The difference between the two agendas can be seen at item 14 where two new items are added to the executive session. In particular, note 14 c, Safety/security update. This is likely related to the very unfortunate incident of the shooter on the lam that caused the District to go into lockdown on April 15 and 16. A few of my observations during the event, since I am next door to the school: a. DPS' presence was heavy in the neighborhood at various times, but not at all times. b. The only reliable information that I received during the event was when I spoke directly to one of the DPS officers on campus. The information on social media and the call outs by phone from the County and City was not specific enough or unreliable. Neighbors on the perimeter of the District's property need a specific visit from law enforcement to alert residents and to share information. c. Judging from the location from which the officer was positioned, the currently closed street in front of my residence was a security advantage to the District. The officer had far less traffic to monitor and the perimeter was that much more secure and in plain sight to the officer. If the street is re-opened (as apparently desired by City Council members Crutchfield and Holland who wish to discuss reopening the street at the next Council meeting on May 6, 2024), the District in similar lockdowns should have at least another two officers present to monitor East/West traffic along its northern campus border. Please note that I did not request the temporary street closure; it is a flood related closure related to the 2019 bond build out. This is a meaty agenda. I may add more as time permits before the meeting or just wait to cover those issues in my analysis below. B. Meeting analysis: Mayor Aubrey Stewart and I were the only two members of the public to attend the meeting start to end. My meeting analysis is being updated and will hopefully be complete during the next 24 - 48 hours. 2024 bond election misinformation. The fact that the District is still paying on its 2019 bonds is going to be of concern to some voters regarding whether to vote for the 2024 bonds. There is some reasonable discomfort with the concept of always holding and paying down bonds from previous bond elections. CFO Robert Helms reported "there is a lot of misinformation out there on our [2019] bonds and where we are at." I was able to discern the following from Helms. Currently outstanding of the total $18 million in 2019 bond election is $12,248,000. There is a payment of $1,087,000 due in August. After that is paid, there will be $4.8 million remaining available to pay down some future years. That amount will pay off 8 years of callable bonds IF the board approves that within the next two months. My rough guess is that would bring the original $18 million down to roughly $7.1 million in 2024. That is not a bad pace at all for a pay down, but the question remains whether voters for the 2024 bonds understand the math sufficiently enough to think beyond the mental hurdle of the rolling bond concept. This is the District's first attempt at rolling bonds - that is, always having continuous bond debt. We won't know about the board's direction on this issue until after election day, May 4, because if this early pay down is done it can only be initiated in the May or June board meetings and those will be after the election. The Board missed an opportunity, nonetheless, during this meeting to express its intent for an aggressive pay off schedule as there was no discussion regarding any of this. A simple statement from a board member of "Lets get that on the agenda for next month because I want the community to know we are paying on our debt as aggressively as allowed by law" would have sufficed to project its intent and perhaps address any voter anxiety on the issue. Paying off bonds early means the expense to taxpayers is far less, and it reduces the timeframe for exposure to incorrect income assumptions. Incorrect income assumptions in bond proposals do occur (look no further than wind farms income projection in 2019 and the Moak Casey mystery, reported exclusively on this website), so there is good reason for voters to place high expectations on the Board in this area. The District's bond website does not address the rolling bond issues. Budget amendments, item 6: In a refreshing change of pace, Mr. Helms requested approval for two budget amendments that were explained and their dollar amounts given. The first amendment was to replace and repair band equipment totaling $4,000 and the second was an additional $700 for closing costs for the purchase of the lots last month. The band amendment merely moved money between line items, and Mr. Helms stated it would not impact the $8.1 million fund balance. Though not stated by him, presumably the $700 would be drawn from the fund balance. Why the detail by me here? I think Board members, Administration and even department heads need the reminder that necessarily comes with financial transparency - the money is not their money. These are public dollars to be spent prudently and in the full sunshine. This sort of transparency creates accountability, a good thing given the public doesn’t attend these board meetings. Teacher pay raises, contracts, resignations, new hires, hiring authority resolution - items 5a, 14a and b, and 16: The Board approved a 3% pay increase, best I can tell. Regretfully, for all of the new ground gained on the issue of budget amendments, we were back to cloudy skies on these matters before the board. Let me put it in context: Roughly 75-80% of the District's budget of around $21 million is spent on salaries, and a large chunk of that was spent at item 16 through this request for a motion from President Carlile: Do I have a motion to approve contracts, resignations and new hires as presented? Member Ashley Hill stated that she makes the motion and Member Rick Rey seconded. There was no discussion, and the vote of the Board was unanimous. And, just like that, millions of dollars of the public's money was spent and no one could possibly ever tell how much or who received it. One reason teachers are so poorly paid in Texas is because this process of hiring and granting pay increases is largely cloaked. There is very little transparency, and if I were not a regular attendee of board meetings I would never have had a clue about what had just happened. To be fair to Supt. Moore and CFO Helms, the budget/finance report given by Helms at item 5a and the agenda item 11 to approve the new salary scale included a 3% pay raise. Indeed, his report was revealing; he included the cost of that potential bump ($150,000) while appropriately pointing out that the legislature had not approved a funding increase since 2019. He also pointed out that limited ways to fund this increase (remember a "golden pennies" election in November, as I could be coming back to this in the future), and he even emphasized that his proposed pay scale was competitive statewide. Finally, his report also included stipend scale adjustments (relating to UIL events) that would also be increased; these increases were based on TASB's data. But, for all of his efforts, his pronouncements about what the pay scale should be, no doubt also approved by Supt. Moore before the meeting, are only the pronouncements of the CFO and the Superintendent. Say what he wants about how the District needs to take care of its teachers, the buck stops with President Carlile and the Board. This was only a 3% raise, which does not keep up with inflation. As I stated in A1 above, only last month inflation was reported to be 3.5%. So, this really wasn't a pay increase. Neither Supt. Moore or any of the board members made any statement during Mr. Helms' report or after executive session (these matters were discussed in executive session at item 14a) to indicated their views on salaries vis a vis inflation, how any bump could be afforded, or about what raise particular classes of employees would in fact be receiving. As I have mentioned, the dreaded "as presented" was used in the motion, so it is absolutely impossible to discern what the heck happened and, thereby, all public accountability was avoided. Who knew 3% wouldn't keep up with inflation or that Governor Abbott had totally hung teachers out to dry in a high dollar effort to create a statewide voucher system?! You couldn't have ever discerned during this board meeting that the economy was eating up the Board's meager efforts to help, while the Governor was betraying his oath to provide a state educational system as provided in the Texas Constitution. I would be mad as hell were I school board member in this situation! And, were I a teacher, I would be furious, especially with the possible $55 million bond in the hopper. In a similar vein, there was no discussion of the Board's approval of the hiring authority resolution apparently granted to the Superintendent at 12b. This matter was approved without discussion. The immediate questions arise: what does the resolution say, for what positions and were dollar limits included? Typically for governmental bodies the board hires the chief executive, and the chief executive hires everyone else. Any resolution granting specific authority to the Superintendent deserves more sun than this one received. Here are some recommendations for sunshine: a. eliminate "as presented" from all board motions; "as presented" is a total solar eclipse; b. make available to the public financially related meeting documents at the meeting; and then post them immediately online after the meeting (note that the check register is not being updated online); c. do not avoid board member discussion when coming out of executive session and before voting on matters in the "action items from closed session" item; debate and discussion after an executive session are the best evidence that matters were not voted on in the executive session; d. debate salaries, and set a higher bar for salaries than merely staying competitive, as was mentioned by Mr. Helms in his report on the salary schedule. If the Board is going to seek excellent facilities as it is with the proposed 2024 bonds and as it did with the 2019 bonds, the Board needs to pay excellent salaries. Otherwise the disparity between education facilities and educational performance and student outcome will rear its ugly head. Administrative Reports, item 5: Supt. Moore announced that there would be no report from Athletics. This continued the academic year long pattern of there being no presence at all from either the Athletic Director or his sub. Technically, Jacob Conner still holds the position according the District's release agreement, so this is awkward at best. Still, the silence about athletics at these board meetings is deafening. Given the tremendous showing of support of this department by the Board during the tenure of former Supt. Ray DeSpain, President Carlile's transparent lack of interest regarding Athletics is attention grabbing. Also notably missing from this portion of the meeting was the Superintendent's report. This is significant. Side note: Also not present at the meeting was the only school board candidate challenging a board member incumbent for the upcoming May 4 board election. To his credit, he did attend the bond community meeting that I attended a few weeks ago. I'm not making any endorsements on these races, whether challenged or not. I do want to raise awareness that any candidate for these positions, whether by appointment or by election, should be considered a more viable candidate when they attend board meetings regularly prior to their appointment or election. One huge downside to the Board's longstanding failure to attract the community to attend their board meetings is that candidates that show up only at appointment time or election season are missing a foundation that would be tremendously helpful for the position. Student Resource Offcer (SRO) resolution and safety and security update, items 9 and 14c: There were no updates given about the campus lockdowns last week that I mentioned above. There is so little reliable information available to the public. I'm not going to give the matter any more air time on these pages until something more reliable comes out. The Texas Legislature extensively updated school safety laws after the Uvalde school shooting. One new requirement is that schools are now required to hire a safety officer for each campus, unless they qualify for a waiver. One waiver, opted for by the Board at this meeting, is permitted if the District has its own "Guardian" plan. Here's a Texas Tribune article that addresses this Guardian waiver. School safety law is quite complex. If you want to do a deep dive check out the Irion County ISD school policy manual policies that start with "CK" in Section C of the Board Policy Manual. Just two days ago the State of Tennessee made national news for amending state law to allow for a similar guardian type program that allowed teachers and staffers to carry firearms. This issue is still quite controversial. I have grown accustomed to the reality of the presence of firearms on campus and in board meetings. I am more troubled with the fact that the District's security system uses a third party vendor who uses AI. AI and school security are the Wild West these days. No one is addressing that, and the area is unregulated. Copyright 2024 G Noelke

I’ve posted this before, but it is worth remembering as early voting starts next week (April 22) for the Irion County ISD 2024 school bonds. This City of Mertzon 2023 hydrology study independently confirmed what Irion County ISD’s 2019 hydrology study confirmed before construction even started with the 2019 bond funds. Areas 1-4 all drain to Area 5, City Park. And, it confirms what those of us who were raised here have known all along. All stormwater in Mertzon flows to City Park. What is at City Park? Our Community Center. Our arena. Our swimming pool. Our football stadium. Our park. We can do better with one another as neighbors, fellow citizens and local government leaders in 2024 than in 2019. Copyright 2024 G Noelke

A Parkhill representative presented this slide at the recent town hall meeting. It purports to show the planned construction at ICISD if the May 4 2024 bond election passes. In reality, these plans are far from final. If you know the topography as I do, you can readily see that what's missing are the flood control structures. If the bond passes and citizens and the other local government entities (City of Mertzon and Irion County) sit on the sidelines to wait and see if the School Board and Superintendent do the right thing, the environmental consequences to public and private property at lower elevations could be catastrophic. The City of Mertzon needs to be careful to not too readily accept ICISD's mere promises to improve the flooding problems until such time as actual plans are presented and evaluated by the City's own engineer. This discreet approach to flood control as evidenced in this slide ought to be a call for sunlight. Below is the City's agenda for the April 15, 2024 meeting, with my agenda analysis here and meeting analysis here. Access the meeting documents for this meeting here. A. Agenda analysis: The meeting is at 6:30 and conflicts with the 6:00 meeting of the school board. Attacking the character of a board member, item 7: a. I have been unable to locate any public meeting agenda that currently uses this language. Irion County ISD and the City of Mertzon used identical language from at least 2019 - 2023. I suspect the language was shared because of the common practice of rotating city council and board member positions between the two governmental bodies. b. I began publicly questioning the legal sufficiency of the language in November 2020 after former ICISD Superintendent Ray DeSpain called me "out of order" when I said at their public forum during a school board meeting that his legacy would be that future superintendents would have to drive through floodwaters to get to the superintendent's office. c. The language remained on the ICISD agenda until August 2023, when new ICISD Superintendent Moore replaced the language with a reference to the requirements of school policy BED. The District's policy manual is largely driven by a statewide association, TASB. BED is divided into two parts, BED legal and BED local. Neither part includes a prohibition against attacking character. BED legal nicely frames the ultimate issue: commenters at public forums have a 1st Amendment right of free speech. d. The word "character" is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual". The word is not defined by the City of Mertzon, and it should be if they were to ever try to enforce it. The word and its very definition are exceptionally vague. The enforcement of a prohibition against attacking the character of an elected or public official might be challenged as an unconstitutional prior restraint upon public speech because "character" is so vague. e. If, and I am not certain this to be the case, the prohibition has its origins in tortious libel/slander of a public official, even this area of law doesn't support it. See Texas Civil Practices Code section 73.002(b)(1)(D), which appears to give public officials some protection during an open forum. In contrast, however, also see New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark US Supreme Court case addressing a public official's right to sue for defamation. "Actual malice" would have to be proven by the public official, so a mere prohibition on attacking the character of a public official is of no real protection to the public official. The prohibition is meaningless in a libel/slander situation. f. The Texas legislature in 2019 expressly addressed open forum requirements at Texas Government Code section 551.007. At paragraph (e), the law provides, "A governmental body may not prohibit public criticism of the governmental body, including criticism of any act, omission, policy, procedure, program, or service." I think any prohibition on attacking character flies in the face of this language, though the degree of any violation is going to be determined by context. The City should weigh any language replacing its current prohibition with the entirety of section 551.007. g. I think the best practice is for the agenda to be silent on the issue, unless the governmental body has an attorney present at every open forum and can on the fly evaluate the conduct of the speaker and the content at the time of the speech. The risks for error on the part of the governmental body are too great, and the law is complex and always changing. Cities similar in size to Mertzon have no prohibition, nor does the City of San Angelo. Even state agencies, like TEA, are silent on what they consider to be prohibited speech. Frankly, the issue of shutting down speech during an open forum is a landmine. In all my years at the Texas Attorney General's Office advising state agencies on the fly during public meetings, I never had a single experience where it was necessary to prohibit or control speech during an open forum. h. I also think the best practice is to let the disgruntled citizen speak, then task a staffer with following up with that individual immediately to work with them to solve their complaint. Cooperation with citizens already bold enough to speak their minds in an open forum will likely yield a better result than trying to silence them in public. A governmental body should at all costs try to avoid the suppression of speech during open forum because, especially these days, citizens can so easily turn to the web on a website or anonymously on social media to express their views. Cooperation is a far better tool than suppression of speech. i. To date, Irion County ISD has refused to consider my request for an appeal or reconsideration of their former superintendent's 2020 determination that I was out of order during their open forum. B. Meeting analysis: First Amendment gets the win, but not without a debate. The Council voted 3-2 to delete the line in their agenda, "remarks that attack the character of employees or Council members are considered out of order". Council members Elliott, Lindley and Councilman voted for the removal and Council members Holland and Crutchfield voted against. Council member Elliott, who asked for the matter to be placed on the agenda, said "Somebody can come in here and take their 3 minutes and tell us we are all lazy and not doing our jobs, that's their right, as a citizen of this community. Directly criticizing government is how our Founding Fathers wanted it to be." When asked by Council member Holland how he would control the room without the language, Mayor Stewart replied that there is the 3 minute rule and "if they are impeding the meeting and just rambling on and exceeding their time and everything we would need to call law enforcement to have the person removed." When asked what the City's attorney (Jeff Betty) said about the language, Mayor Stewart replied, "Quite a few city councils have lost this battle before". Council member Holland raised the issue of how much speech is allowed and said "Everybody has a freedom to their speech, but there should be a cutting off spot." The discussion here moved toward the 3 minute time limit as a cutting off point. Mayor Stewart and Council member Councilman concurred with this, with Mayor Stewart accurately stating that time limits are permitted under the law. There was also some discussion and concurrence among the members that outright disruption and interference during open forum would not be tolerated. Mayor Stewart's position is that it is difficult to draw the boundary between free speech and disruption. I agree. When recognized to speak during the agenda item (citizens can be recognized to speak by the presiding officer) I stated that the sentence had curbed my speech because the meaning of "character" was too vague. Council member Holland pointed out that I limited my speech to my issue and that I do not make my comments personal. I appreciate that recognition, but I accomplish that in part by specifically controlling my speech prior to attending the meeting. All of my public comments are written in advance and carefully timed to be within 3 minutes. I believe in owning my public speech (anonymous social media cheapens democracy, in my opinion), so I have been particularly mindful of this prohibition given that Superintendent DeSpain used it against me back in 2020. I also praised former Mayor Taylor for not using the prohibition during his many years of service when I spoke while he presided. I attended 95+% of his meetings and spoke in open forum in most of those specifically opposing the City's position on City Gym. Not once did Mayor Taylor call me out of order. I also praised current ICISD Superintendent Moore for removing the prohibition from the school board agenda. All in all, it was an excellent debate about freedom of speech. Staff, the Mayor and several council members did their homework in advance to make the discussion meaningful and on point. The only surprise came in the form of the "no" vote to remove the prohibition from Council member Crutchfield, who never really engaged in the debate. As the member who recites the prayer for the Council at their meetings, a volunteer firefighter at the Irion County VFD and Troop Master of local Boy Scout Troop 116, I expected him to be more of a free speech advocate and willing to stir things up a bit. He did not. But at the end of the meeting at item 10 he requested that the matter of re-opening the temporarily closed Fleming Ave in front of my residence on the agenda for the next meeting. The City has temporarily closed a portion of the street, not at my request, to sort out the flooding remedies with ICISD and avoid damage to vehicles from potholes. There may be some flood politics going on here with Council Member Crutchfield, as I have indeed exercised my 1st Amendment rights both on this site and at Council meetings opposing his positions that allowed for the construction of City Gym. Flood politics are real, folks. There are consequences for opposing community flooding and speaking up. The next City Council agenda should be released on Friday, April 3rd, the day before the April 4 bond election that has promised $850,000 in drainage relief. The next regular meeting is on April 6, and by then the election results will be known. I may yet have another opportunity to write before the election about how the errors of the 2019 bond election and City Gym are visiting our community all over again in the 2024 bonds...and our elected leaders and citizens who are ok with flooding our neighbors' homes are faced with being responsible for also flooding our City Park if they vote against the 2024 bonds. It is a true irony, indeed. You can't make this stuff up. It is all the same water, we are all one community. That is what I said back in 2019. Pending. Copyright 2024 G. Noelke

ICISD's graphic for this meeting is getting buried beneath the fold, so here it is for all to see. The second town hall meeting for the 2024 bond was on Monday, April 8, 2024. I attended this meeting and you can find my analysis here, last updated on April 11, 2024. 2019 Bond History: Here's some 2019 bond history that may be helpful to some on how we arrived here. By this stage in the 2019 bond process, I attended a similar town hall meeting and presented the District with a substantive paper on how the community was already being flooded by the stormwater runoff from the District's campus. I have been proven correct back then with my very public prediction that the stormwater runoff would only increase and worsen our problems were the 2019 bonds be used to build a new gym. Multiple open records requests from me to the District in the intervening years showed that the District allocated absolutely no 2019 bond money to flood control. (As I have argued elsewhere, the District is literally flooding itself with its capital expansions, so this lack of attention to the obvious is difficult to fathom.) Key to the 2019 town hall process are the previous business and familial relationships that were already in place. First, here is who was at the board table when the school board approved the 2019 bonds. There wasn't a real community committee formed for the 2019 bonds, as Superintendent Moore has already done for the 2024 bonds. This lack of community engagement insulated some special interests and allowed them to avoid a central question: Since we are an educational institution funded by the public, shouldn't we spend some of this money on classrooms? Not a single classroom was built with the 2019 bond funds; the vast majority of the funds were spent on athletics. Second, Superintendent Gray, who left the district shortly after the bond election, had a previous relationship with architect Jeff Potter, who had designed the new gym build at Gray's prior school, Union Grove ISD. Indeed, Potter attended the 2019 town hall meetings in person, so he was made personally aware of the flooding problems that already existed in the community. I have previously published his drawing showing how much rainwater will be coming off the new gym. Put another way, those most standing to profit financially and professionally, some of whom were relatives, administrators, board members and local business icons, were at the table crafting the 2019 bond particulars, without community engagement, well before those town halls were even held. The deal was already done, the cake baked. And the District, in particular Supt. Gray and the Board, completely ignored my flooding forecasts from the moment I spoke up. (Potter, likewise remained silent, and he later collected over $900,000 in fees for his design work.) The 2019 town hall process, supposedly intended as an open exchange of information, was further cheapened when, at the 3rd and final meeting, the District used the opportunity to simultaneously host a spaghetti supper. Put simply, at that meeting my protests (and a few others who felt a 3rd gym was not necessary) were drowned out by administrators and parents prompted to speak in favor of the bond, all brought to the town hall table for ... free spaghetti! (I'll cover more below how the District can't lobby for the passage of bonds.) Well, these efforts by the District worked. The 2019 bond passed by a margin of 123 for and 42 against. (The District serves only 300+ students, and the population of the entire county is less than 2,000. Contrary to most of Texas, Irion County is generally decreasing in population, yet it is a "property rich" school district because of its oil and gas reserves.) There is reason to believe a similar margin will pass the 2024 bonds, in my opinion. If there is any comparison to the recent pro District local vote to re-elect Drew Darby, an anti voucher legislator, the District was able to secure a win with 254 votes for him and 133 votes against. If the parents alone get out the vote, it seems likely the 2024 bonds will pass. Moving forward to the present, my attention to detail here dredging up 2019 bond history is purposeful. I will update this page after I attend the April 8 2024 meeting to compare and contrast. And, for certain, I won't be presenting a paper at this meeting. I'll let Jeff Potter's drawing that shows how much stormwater comes off the new gym roof serve as my paper. I'll just be attending with questions. I encourage you to come with questions, as well. April 8, 2024 Town Hall Meeting Analysis: I have a number of insights regarding this Town Hall. Two of the three questions I asked related to stormwater flooding. I confirmed that $850,000 is indeed the amount currently dedicated in the proposed bond for stormwater flooding. (This is consistent with what Mayor Stewart said at this meeting. I doubt this will be enough, but let's set that issue aside.) Second, I confirmed that my read of the law is consistent with that of the Parkhill representative who spoke: the school’s new construction can’t dump more water into the basin (and thereby flood nearby homes) than is already going into the basin. I asked the Parkhill representative to repeat that for the benefit of community attending and, in particular, for the benefit of Loye Tankersley, who was in the audience with me. You see, Mr. Tankersley was also in attendance at this meeting, the 2020 meeting in which the school board held a special meeting to reverse the City of Mertzon’s refusal to close 4th Street for the new gym. He spoke at that 2020 meeting with real conviction that 4th street should be closed for the new gym and that he personally would intervene with the City. (Mr. Tankersley, it turns out, had unique ties with the City's mayor then, Bill Taylor. Mayor Taylor was also the Fire Chief at the Irion County Volunteer Fire Dept., while Mr. Tankersley was a fundraiser for and has served in various capacities for the nonprofit in charge of that fire department. Mr. Tankersley also privately sells well water to the City of Mertzon, without which the City would be in violation of certain Texas Commission on Environmental rules.) The rest is history. Within just a few weeks after Mr. Tankersley got involved, the City had released its hold on 4th Street and gave it away to the District for a song. I covered that here in my audio of Jacob Conner's presentation to the City Council. It then took me almost 3 years of PIA requests after that to find a document from the District establishing that the District’s engineer, Robert Maly, was of the opinion that the District was putting more water in the basin after the 2019 bond construction than before. Thus my continued reference to Mr. Potter's drawing of the gym roof runoff. So, bringing this back to this April 8 2024 town hall meeting, Mr. Tankersley's presence created an opportunity that I was not going to miss. I whispered this to him during the meeting, "Loye, that $850,000 is $850,000 that should have come from the 2019 bonds, and had it come from those bonds we wouldn't be in the position we are all currently in." To which he replied, "Good point." You damn right that is a good point! Every person at that 2020 meeting knew full well they were worsening a community wide flooding problem, and they chose to ignore it. They put athletics over community, and they pursued the largest ever school bond at the time that built no classrooms! And here we were on April 8, 2024 addressing the very problem they intentionally chose to ignore in 2020 to the tune of $850,000! And, Mr. Tankersley was not the only one in attendance at this town hall meeting who was also in attendance at that 2020 meeting. There were board members, administrators and teachers, all of whom share this grand mistake with Mr. Tankersley. And, not a single one at this town hall owned up to it. Not a one. The third question I asked, also intending to make a point to the community, related to who it is that is responsible for deciding to pay off bonds early. It is not enough that John Blackburn of Live Oak, seller of the bonds, preached the gospel about how the District has done it before and will do it again with these bonds. In fact, it is the school board who is charged with this decision, and they need to re-up their commitment publicly before the bond election to let the community know that they in fact hold the value that paying off bonds early is a must. Questions I did not have time to ask: - Will the District consider posting the data and findings of the post election bond accountability committee online for the community to see real time during the phases of the build out? (Only because I was sending monthly PIA requests to the District during the 2019 bond build out can I report here my findings that a) more water is going into the basin than ever before, b) the 2019 bonds went over budget, c) the school board failed to pursue a financial audit of the 2019 construction manager, and d) the 2019 buildings were not independently inspected pursuant to TEA rules. (Note: these findings are from when the District was under its previous leadership, though 3 of the board members remain from that period.) A private citizen like myself should not have to go to the lengths I have had to go to prove there was mismanagement of government funds. Internal procedures need to be put in place in advance, and everything needs to be in the sun as they go along. - What internal processes will be put in place to assure that disbursements of funds to the contract manager and other contractors are reviewed and approved by more than just the superintendent? (Supt. DeSpain could not have possibly had adequate time to thoroughly review the invoices I reviewed pursuant to my PIA requests. I likewise doubt that Supt. Moore alone has time to fully review the invoices related to a $55 million bond. Who checks the superintendent?) - Did the District budget its own plan inspector and on site construction inspector? Because the City of Mertzon has no building codes, TEA rules require these independent reviewers that are separate from the architects and construction managers. (None of the 2019 buildings were properly inspected pursuant to these rules, notwithstanding my repeatedly pointing this out to Supt. DeSpain.) Noticeably absent from the meeting was CFO Robert Helms and High School Principal Shannon Chapman. April 11, 2024 update: I neglected to mention in paragraph 1 above, upon information and belief, Mr. Tankersley was invited to that 2020 board meeting upon special invitation by a Board member. By all accounts, the goal of that meeting was to generate sufficient enough political force to reverse the decision of the City Council on its refusal to close 4th Street. Mr. Tankersley has not attended any of the board meetings that I have attended since that meeting in 2020, and I've attended probably 95% of their meetings. His name did come up, however, in a board meeting where Jacob Conner discussed who the new gym might be named after. (The gym has been named "Hornet Gym", while I've called it City Gym since the street was not closed properly.) April 11, 2024 update: The tour of the school facilities was worthwhile. It is easier to understand what the District's goals are when the plant is walked. I have some ambivalence, as the District will be raising some buildings that clearly have remaining life in them. (I've worked in a number of state office buildings not maintained nearly as well.) And, ironically, the old gym, the very gym that was declared absolutely essential when the District was criticized in 2019 for wanting 3 gyms, is slated to be raised and replaced with a new gym at a new location. So, if one studies the justifications used for the 2019 and 2024 bonds, well, there are a few inconsistencies. But, if I am asked, will the replacement of the site improve the learning environment and improve staff's work space, I would say "yes". The tour was not comprehensive, though, so I'm not able to give a full endorsement. (I don't ever anticipate giving an unqualified thumbs up. Remember, there are going to be bonds after the 2024 bond election, so the justifications are always going to be fluid.) Copyright 2024 G Noelke

If this part of the elementary building is raised as part of the 2024 bonds, the City Council will need to address where the roof runoff goes from the replacement building. One way or another, that runoff will cross streets, private property and eventually enter City Park. Studies already done by the City and the District prove this up. Here is the meeting agenda for this meeting with my agenda and meeting analysis underneath: Agenda Analysis: Note that the meeting start time is at 6:30 pm. This is a great example of a stock agenda for this council. The 7 items listed are on each and every meeting agenda and in the same order. There is no "new" business for the Council to vote on at this meeting. Why should you attend? The "Administrative Report" and "Daily Operations Update" are items where you can keep updated on the what city government is actually doing at the moment. Whether anything worthwhile comes out of "Items from the Council" is totally random. Sometimes matters are forecasted there, and other times not. That this agenda has no new business makes it a good opportunity to point out something the City does really well: it solicits citizens to ask to put matters on the agenda. The link for the "Agenda Item Request" form can be found on this page on the City's site. This form allows anyone to specifically ask that a particular matter be placed on the Council's meeting agenda. To my knowledge, there is nothing in Texas law requiring this, so I consider it to be a serious good faith effort at government in the sun. Consider this. Let's say you wanted to ask the City Council to care for some trees at the park and wanted more than 3 minutes of their time at the "Public Comments" portion of the meeting to make your point. This tool will allow you to ask the Mayor to put it on the agenda so you could have a discussion (deliberation) with the entire council over the issue. Remember, in Public Comment you can't engage in a conversation with the Council. Any type of exchange of information as a general rule has to be posted specifically as an agenda item. And, a governmental body cannot vote on anything you raise in Public Comment, so the tool for something that needs full council approval would be the Agenda Item Request. Though the Agenda Item Request form doesn't say so, I imagine the practice of the City is whether a matter appears on an agenda and its particular wording is at the discretion of the Mayor. Drafting agendas is an art form, in my opinion, and the content of agendas should always be at the final discretion of the executive officer of the council or board. The mayor or president should never totally delegate that power away to a citizen. Again, this tool is a rare bird. I have used it, and I have seen others use it. Don't be a mere complainer...engage your city government in a discussion by taking advantage of this tool. Meeting Analysis: Here are the meeting documents for this meeting. 2024 ICISD bonds: Mayor Stewart gave a brief update of his understanding of the status of the District's bond election in May. He reiterated the City's position that District's request to close 3rd Street is on hold until, first, the bond passes, and second, there is adequate money dedicated to drainage issues. His understanding is that of the $55 million there will be $850,000 dedicated to drainage. I noted some appropriate skepticism regarding the District's commitment to drainage. There is some reluctance in part because the District promised the City that when the new gym was constructed its roof would be tilted in such a way that not all the drainage would be sent north on 4th Street. The District also changed the pitch, against the City's wishes, on the repaving of Juanita street as a part of the same 2019 bonds. Add to all that the new parking lot, GMPL, which adds yet more runoff onto Juanita St., and I think his skepticism is well placed. Moreover, I've yet to have had a single ICISD board member say to me in private or even intimate during a board meeting that they have any regrets for failing to address drainage issues in the 2019 bond package. Inverse condemnation is merely another tool in their tool box for expansion. So, I already have a March 2024 Public Information Act request pending trying to get at the nub of the question: Is the current school board, led by Maegin Carlile, and current superintendent, Nikki Moore, committed to correcting the stormwater damage coming from the District's campus? The District is in a very awkward position, indeed. Any naysayers who might consider voting against the proposed bonds because, for example, they are the largest dollar amount ever or the 2019 bonds aren't yet paid off, are simultaneously saying they ok with the current level of flooding of City Park, the county's Community Center and arena, and the football stadium. And, any voting for the bond proposals without sufficient funds dedicated to prevent drainage from the campus are simultaneously voting for even more flooding of City Park, the county's Community Center and arena, and the football stadium. The City's and District's separate hydrology studies bear this out, folks. The more impervious cover the District puts up, the more City Park, the county's Community Center and arena, and the District's own football stadium are subject to flooding. This is a community wide problem. Thankfully, the City, as evidenced by Mayor Stewart's comments at this meeting, is on board this bond election to try to stem the tide. Pending Copyright 2024 G Noelke

There's some history about the namesake worth knowing about. March 25, 2023 update: I posted my emails with Barnett described below on this post, Two March Anniversaries. Now in its third year, the “Billy Barnett Holiday Hoops Basketball Classic” is a basketball tournament sponsored by Irion County ISD every year between Christmas and New Years. The tournament was posthumously named for Billy Barnett, former coach and IC superintendent. Local sports fans apparently revered Barnett.  But, I did not know him in that way. I knew him as the first ICISD superintendent that I contacted to request that the school district do something about the flooding originating from the campus that was invading my property. That exchange started on April 21, 2016, as Barnett was completing the construction of the new tennis courts between 4th and 5th streets on Juanita Street. Those tennis courts were paid for through the District’s 2013 bond package. The gist of my emails with Barnett in 2016 boil down to this: the tennis courts were already constructed, and, according to the architect and engineer (who later I learned designed the courts so that the stormwater from the courts would empty onto the then newly paved Juanita street) there was nothing that could be done. I should take my flooding complaint to the City of Mertzon, he said. In other words, tough luck, fella, is how Barnett responded to me.  Get used to the District’s water. He even acknowledged that he knew the flooding was a problem, but accepted no responsibility for the 2013 bond funds being used to direct water into the City of Mertzon streets and flooding those streets and private property like mine. And, he also took no responsibility for the fact that the stormwater runoff from the tennis courts flood the football field further downstream, which was known even at that time. Barnett left the District as its superintendent  in 2018.  To be precise, he left in May 2018.  Importantly, as he was literally walking out the door, according to Board minutes he secured the Athletic Director position for Jacob Conner in April and May, 2018.  No doubt the loyalty Conner feels for Barnett originates in part from this 12th hour promotion. In Barnett’s place came Superintendent Brian Gray, who was named in May, 2018. Barnett died in late 2019. I’ve credited Superintendent Gray elsewhere as the person who brought his prior relationship with architect Jeff Potter to the table to build out the 2019 bond projects.  Potter borrowed from the stormwater distribution concepts approved during Barnett’s 2013 bond efforts.  Specifically, Potter designed stormwater output from the new gym to dump directly into Juanita and 4th streets, just as Barnett did with the stormwaters from the new tennis courts paid for with the 2013 bonds. So, Barnett’s impact on the flooding of our streets, private property and football field continues to this day and allowed Potter to do the same. This also means that three ICISD superintendents, Billy Barnett, Brian Gray and Ray DeSpain, all share in passing along these problems to their successor superintendents. Thus, without any meaningful public oversight, each superintendent’s bond package, along with its different architect and engineers, built upon the mistakes of the earlier one. Even the build out of the earlier built Estes Gym had design flaws that to this day allow the dumping of stormwater directly into the city street. All the while, the City of Mertzon accepts that stormwater without protest.  Indeed, depending on the mayor, the City even encourages and makes it possible for the District to dump stormwater into our streets. (Mayor Bill Taylor, and Mayor Lisa Hight before him, paved the way, pun intended, for the water to be directed into the streets.) The chickens have come home to roost though, as now both the District’s and City’s independent surveys in 2019 and 2023 confirm that all the stormwater runoff ends up at City Park and the District’s football stadium in the park. This is irrefutable. (And, the role Conner played to locate the gym where it is is also irrefutable.) So, both the City and the District are literally flooding themselves with stormwater runoff. Billy Barnett, though not entirely to blame, was one among many of our local leaders and public employees who looked the other way on the terrible flooding issues our community faces today. With all this in context, it perhaps makes more sense why in 2021, as construction of the new gym was in full swing, Athletic Director Jacob Conner recommended to the school board that the new gym be named in honor of Billy Barnett. Barnett gave Conner his job, which landed him a new gym. That recommendation failed, as evidenced by the fact the gym is not named after any individual, but known by the District as Hornet Gym. (I call it City Gym.) Today, there is no Billy Barnett Gym, but there is the “Billy Barnett Holiday Hoops Basketball Classic,”  so named by Athletic Director  Conner under the leadership of former superintendent Ray DeSpain and Board President Vicente Flores, Jr. as soon as the gym was available. This certainly leaves one to wonder why, according to Board minutes back on January 16, 2017, Mr. Flores was the sole vote against the extension of Billy Barnett’s superintendent contract for that year… Swish! The floodwaters from the new gym hit nothing but net…at least until it ends up at the football field. Then that basketball bounces crazily off the football goal post and the whole community, under water, loses. That’s probably not what Billy Barnett would want to be remembered for. Copyright 2023 G Noelke

This coral fossil I found last week near Cowboy Hill reminds us that the presence of water in this area predates history. Before the month of March ends, I want to recognize two anniversaries. First, Government in the Sun is now 1 year old. The site is truly a labor of love, garnering me not a cent of income, an occasional troll and a private "thank you" here and there when I am out and about in Mertzon. I launched with this post on March 21, 2023. Second, March 18 marks the 8 year mark of when I first notified my neighbor, Irion County ISD, that it was flooding my property. To mark the occasion, I am publishing below my first emails trying to get it stopped. I also referenced these emails in my post, A Different Take on Billy Barnett. Barnett and Brian Gray were previous superintendents at the school, and each spearheaded bond packages that worsened stormwater runoff from the District. "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice." Theodore Parker, thought to be the inspiration for MLK's quote, "...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Thank you for visiting my site. Copyright 2024 G Noelke

If the Mertzon air has seemed particularly fragrant lately, it's because the native Agarita bush is in full bloom. We had a warm winter, and the bushes are unusually full of flowers this year. The berries, though difficult to harvest, make an excellent jelly . The most recent update was on March 20, 2024. Here was the agenda for the March 18, 2024 Board meeting with my agenda analysis and my meeting analysis. Agenda analysis: Be public about your appreciation of teachers. One reason to regularly read agendas is to spot the trends and learn the calendar. Each spring, for example, Texas school districts go through the process of renewing the contracts of their teachers, and tis the season at items 11b and 13 on this agenda. Something I recommend (and that I did when my own children were in school) is that parents attend this meeting in particular. Consider this: have prepared comments for the Open Forum which state your approval of your child's current teacher, your recommendation that their contract be renewed for the following school year AND that they receive a pay raise above any cost of living increase. Leave behind a copy of your comments with each board member, the superintendent and principal at the meeting. Then, immediately following the meeting, email a copy of your comments to your child's teacher and just tell them "thank you" and that you are in their corner. You do these few simple things and you will be absolutely amazed with the good will you generate and how that will positively impact your child's education. Particularly these days when our public education teachers are under attack from our Governor, public praise is exceedingly rare. (One reason I promote the use of open forums at public meetings is that I also see them as a positive tool for change, not a gripe session to tear down government.) Teachers need and want parental approval, and school board members, superintendents and principals gravitate toward positive interactions. This sort of approach makes its own gravy, if you know what I mean. Caution: I do not, do not, recommend using the public forum to recommend that a teacher not be rehired. I highlighted board policy BED relating to public comments in red above because I doubt that it is constitutionally robust enough to protect negative speech of this sort. Regretfully, I have personal experience of being called out of order by the previous leadership at Irion County ISD (Superintendent Ray DeSpain and board President Vicente Flores) for speaking critically in open forum on matters related to the 2019 bonds. I urge caution to anyone wishing to criticize anything during open forum. The law may well provide you with 1st Amendment and Texas Government Code 551.007 protections to speak critically of a teacher during contract renewal season, but how your speech might be misinterpreted on the fly without a lawyer in the room advising the school district is anyone's guess. (State agency board meetings have a lawyer present to immediately guide the the executive director and chair away from pitfalls, which is what I did professionally at the Texas Attorney General's Office. Texas school districts do have have such counsel available at board meetings, so at times their meetings are wildly unpredictable.) Budget Amendments on property and communications a. Property - item 8a calls for a budget amendment for a "property purchase". "What kind of property and where?" are my first two immediate questions. One can assume this is a real property property purchase, but if you are making assumptions then your next question as an advocate for open government is: Is this adequate notice under the Texas Open Meetings Act? For the moment, I'm going to take a pass on that question and leap to a guess: the District is about to purchase the old Lindley property immediately across the street from the new parking lot, the GMPL, at 5th and Fayette. Here is the listing for that property. If this is the property and if the 2024 bond election passes in May and if the District intends to develop this newly acquired property such that even more stormwater runs off onto 5th and Juanita streets and beyond, I will have much, much more to say about this purchase. In the meantime, some background reading on Takings by flooding (aka inverse condemnation) is this fascinating currently pending US Supreme Court case, Devillier v. Texas, in which the State of Texas' Texas Department of Transportation is making a questionable argument to get out of liability for flooding some farmers after some revisions to Highway 10 near Houston. Here is an interview of one of the attorneys representing the farmers in Devillier that nicely sets out the issues. More on Devillier later after the Court releases its opinion. For now, it is good background info for the proposition that, yes, taking property without just compensation can occur by flooding caused by government construction. This is consistent, by the way, with what Coach Sid McCown taught me in high school civics class at ICHS back in the day. One need not attend law school to be taught and understand basic constitutional law. b. Communications contract budget amendment. Item 8b is on the radar because these days communications contracts are likely part of school security, and thereby part of our legislature and governor's unfunded mandate that is a response to the Uvalde school shooting. Billions of dollars are being spent statewide on school security, so don't be mislead by the property breaks being given to property owners. We are all paying for protection from mass shooters at schools. This amendment may be as simple as renewing the service provider for the telephones, but I'm not going to miss the opportunity to alert folks that on agendas "communication" also means "security". Athletics Report. This is the first time since before Jacob Conner's departure that the Athletics Department has been on an agenda. This is an excellent time to ask: what does the public need to hear about in an Athletics Report? Since the Athletics Department received the lion's share of the 2019 bond funds, I think reporting on facilities and expenses is far more important in a report to the board than wins, losses and schedules. From my perspective of following the 2019 bonds from start to finish, the Athletic Department manages a lot of money in the dark. Board members at monthly board meetings don't need to hear about wins, losses and schedules because by and large they are attending the games or managing social media accounts covering such things. If the Board wants a more academically focused budget, then there needs to be sunlight on Athletic Department's budget, expenses and academic praise of student athletes during this report. The Athletic Director position should of course report on the finances of his/her department during this part of the meeting. Excellence in athletics is more than about wins and losses. Excellence is also about coaches acting first as public servants as teachers, while being good stewards of taxpayer dollars. Dress Code Revisions - Items 5&6 may deal with the new CROWN act, relating to banning race based hair discrimination. Here is the law passed last year, HB 567. Remember, there's always the local Board Policy Manual that has to be considered when changing the dress code for students. Here are the relevant sections: FNCA (Legal) and FNCA (Local). Neither appear to incorporate HB567, so perhaps the principle drafter of these codes, TASB, needs to consider a policy update. Here is a Tribune article on a school district already being sued over the Crown Act. Closed session on health insurance - see below at # 6. Meeting Analysis. I attended this meeting and was the only person from the community to stay from start to finish. Here is my analysis: How much? Probably the most troubling part of this meeting was that a dollar amount was not stated for any of the 3 budget amendments or for a total dollar amount. Generally, the amendments relate to the purchase of two vacant lots behind the former child care center (not the Lindley home I described above), finishing the elementary playground (a project started with 2019 bond funds but not finished because the contractor went bankrupt) and contracting for a new communications consultant. There's no reason for the Board and Supt. Moore to be discreet about these dollars. These are public funds, and failing to state the amounts only lends an appearance that there is some hidden financial exigency. The public ought to be able to hear how much (as in a specific dollar amount) of their tax dollars are being spent any time a vote is required on a budget matter. In addition, as I have argued in other posts, any budget amendment motion that includes the phrase "as presented" is too vague and does not provide sufficient notice to the public. (All that is required to remedy this situation is for the superintendent and board president to confer in advance of the meeting to craft proposed motions so that the president can guide the members on specific wording that will be needed for motions during the meeting. If anything, using "as presented" in a motion shows a lack of advanced planning by the president and superintendent.) Athletics no show. The department commanding the largest amount of our tax dollars, Athletics, did not have its interim AD present to give a presentation after all. The board is missing an opportunity to show that it values academics over athletics when there is no board meeting presence by this department. There needs to be standardized report each month by this department, regardless of the AD's whereabouts. Student athletes excelling in academics need to be added to the student recognition portion of the meeting so that community (and especially the other students present receiving recognition at the meeting) can readily see that academic excellence is especially valued by the Board. There remains a long road to recovery for the District to have not built any classrooms with that last injection of $18 million in 2019 bond funds. Those funds were largely spent on athletics, and with each passing month in Jacob Conner recovery the silence becomes more and more deafening. Government growth. One thing that came into focus during the meeting is that the business purchasing the lots (discussed in 1 above) happened in the background outside of ear shot and not in an open meeting. My understanding of the last meeting on February 14, which I did not attend, is that the only public meeting business conducted was the vote on the bond election. Necessarily, this means that the board's agreement to purchase the lots occurred since that time, without a public vote, and all that was left to do at this meeting was to move the money in the budget. This is troubling because the public had no notice that the District was even in the negotiating stages of purchasing land. It might not have mattered a whole lot as the Open Meetings Act allows for an executive session for real estate, But, the Board might have at least given the nod to the community that it was expanding its footprint. As I discussed above, the reason to be concerned is that the more impervious cover the District puts on its land holdings, the more our community floods. In my 2019 presentation to the District prior to that bond election, I urged the governmental stakeholders to meet and address how large the District could be and still maintain the park and football stadium without flooding. (There's mutual interest in City Park between the City of Mertzon, Irion County and Irion County ISD.) That never happened, and there appears to be no interest in it today. So, if you ever wonder years how the District's footprint got to be so large and how its environmental impact went unchecked, the purchase of these lots is a case to study. The government is growing, even under conservative leadership, and no one is noticing. Communications contract. The District approved a contract to hire a communications consultant. I generally think this is a good idea. As I've said before, the Board appears to me to be tone deaf on issues related to relations with its neighbors and those who are not tied into the District with school age children or staff. The District also has a long history of being athletics, not academics, focused. (The District's college signing day last year was limited to the coaches' kids playing ball at Sul Ross.) And, if the bond passes, there will be a lot of issues to message. I hope to be learning more about this new contract. Teacher contracts and pay raises. The District's annual budget is $21-$22 million, and according to CFO Robert Helms 80% of that is made up of salaries. The largest part of those salaries are teachers, and all of that budget money got committed last evening without as much as a whisper of community engagement or concern. The apathy is painful to watch, frankly, and nary a one of the board members took a position. The meeting ended after executive session with President Carlile requesting a motion to "approve the contracts as discussed and presented in executive session". The motion was made by board member Rey and seconded by board member Rainey, and it passed unanimously without discussion or even an utterance that these were teacher contracts. Not a single teacher was named. It was all done in the darkness of executive session. Troubling. Insurance. "I am shocked by Region 15's promotion of a hair brained scheme to entice not only this school district but other school districts in this area to leave TRS Care," is what State Representative Drew Darby said when he visited the District back on February 23 when he was asking for votes. In fact, last year Supt. DeSpain and the Board opted for the TRS Care alternative plan with the understanding at the time (I recall the board meeting when this was done) that it would be cheaper. Apparently the plan either wasn't a legitimate plan or there is some insurance fraud, because the plan has entirely failed. The consequence has been that the District has essentially become a self-insurer for its employees health care expenses. According to Helms, the total owed to Shannon by Spring Break for healthcare to ICISD employees was $302,00. He negotiated that down to $120,000, meaning that for the moment a budget amendment would not necessary. This rivals the snafu last year over the blown 313 income projections, folks. Dress code revisions. An enlightened discussion was held with the Board and a number of students from the SSAC. The students, in coordination with Supt. Moore, accomplished a number of revisions to the student dress code. Supt. Moore and the students had a great rapport with one another, and the students' presentations were well thought out and reasoned. I've never seen this board so engaged. It was refreshing to see. That said, the Crown Act that I mentioned at #4 above did not come up in any discussion. Here is the difficult truth: the entire county was comprised of only 1.8% African American in the 2022 census. The white population comprised an astounding 94.2% of the total in that census. All of the students present at this meeting were white. They likely had no basis to consider the cultural significance of hair as it relates to the dress code. 2024 Bond election. Crickets. No news to report. Copyright 2024 G Noelke

The irrigation gate near the dam at Harkey's Crossing on Spring Creek is being rebuilt. My ancestors, the Lackey's, were among those who initially dug this irrigation ditch that still feeds the farms from this point through Sherwood. Here is the agenda for the March 18, 2024 City Council meeting, with my agenda analysis and meeting analysis below. Agenda analysis: Time. The meeting is at 6:30 and conflicts with the ICISD board meeting that starts at 6:00 on the same day. Digger Derrick. The jury is still out on whether this purchase has a gremlin that just won't go away. I've avoided criticizing whether the ongoing expense of this purchase is necessary because I'm just enough of a tool nut to know that the biggest part of any municipality's maintenance and operations department is going to be to have the right tools around. For myself, though, I avoid mechanized augers and post hole diggers at all cost. The closest near death experience I ever had as a child on the ranch was when the auger on the back of the tractor swung wide coming out of the hole and caught the jeans on the back side of my knee, narrowly missing those tendons behind the knee. Amazingly, I was left with only a small scratch on the back of my knee. The cowboy running the tractor, Elton Howard, nearly fainted on the spot. When we got back to Mertzon that day my father had me quickly throw away the jeans (there was a gaping hole behind my knee) before my mother saw them and, well, you know. There were also all those post hole diggers and crowbars I used when we built fence during the summers that left an impression on me. So, one of my life goals as an adult has been to at most keep only 1 shovel and 1 gardening trowel around as my sole digging tools, while avoiding the purchasing of augers, post hole diggers and crowbars. I've generally been successful at this goal, even with my current wildlife management duties on the ranch. So, more power to the City for their efforts at hole digging efficiency, but it might be in the long run that they learn that owning less is more. Meeting Analysis: Pending Copyright 2024 G Noelke