Austin ISD Trustees Approve $990M Bond Package And $1.4B Budget (UPDATED)

UPDATE: The Austin ISD board of trustees early Tuesday morning approved a list of 40 projects comprising a November bond referendum totaling $990 million. During the seven-hour board meeting that began Monday evening, trustees also approved a $1.5 billion budget and the sale of two district properties collectively valued at $11.8 million. Trustees voted to delay a vote to call for a November bond election until next week.

From June 19:

AUSTIN, TX — The Austin Independent School District board of trustees is scheduled to vote on a planned November bond package of up to $1 billion on Monday night.

The public portion of the meeting began at around 7:30 p.m. Monday evening. Given the packed agenda, the hearing will stretch well into the evening over the course of several hours.

In addition to voting on the mammoth bond package for November, trustees also are scheduled to vote on a $1.45 billion budget and set their tax rate for fiscal year 2017-18. Moreover, a vote is expected to be taken on a proposal to sell 10 district properties.

Watch a live stream of the meeting here.

The normally mundane meetings of the district trustees have lately gained more scrutiny after gaining the sights of the Travis County Taxpayers Union headed by Don Zimmerman, a former Austin City Council member ousted by voters last November.

The mammoth bond package has piqued Zimmerman's interest as has the ancillary shuttering of a school, according to reports. The Zimmerman-led tax watchdog group is calling for a halt to plan the demolishment of T.A. Brown Elementary School be halted, alleging that claims of structural damage to the building were exaggerated as a tactic to promote the bond package to voters, as the Austin American-Statesman and others have reported.

District officials shuttered the school with scant notice in November following reports about is structural integrity by engineers' assessments. The tax watchdog group claims the structural damage report was overstated "...for the political motivation of gaining voter sympathy and support for the exorbitant $1 billion bond contemplated for Nov. 2017.”

In other words, expect fireworks if you choose to watch the live stream of the meeting. As of 8 p.m., a handful of speakers in a long queue had begun addressing board members in expressing their views on the mulled bond package. An archived video of the meeting will be made available at the AISD website following the meeting.

Under the proposed bond proposal, the nationally ranked Liberal Arts and Science Academy will move out of LBJ High School to become a stand-alone school on the Johnston campus in East Austin, as the Statesman earlier reported. Eastide Memorial High School, currently housed at the former Johnston High campus, would move to the Alternative Learning Center, formerly the original L.C. Anderson High School, the newspaper reported.

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