CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — School administrators at Gregory-Portland Independent School Department were disappointed as their $242 million bond package failed to pass Tuesday night.
But how did that million dollar bond package fail?
G-P ISD Superintendent Michelle Cavazos said there's a lot of options on the table right now on what to do after the bond was defeated. One option is to call another bond election as early as next May .
"The soonest could be next May or next November, so when we're reflecting we will look at what's the right timing, but we also know costs and interest rates are going up," she said.
Cavazos said she and her staff are trying to figure out the next step after the $242 million bond failed. There were a number of improvements that it called for, such as a total rebuild of T.M. Clark Elementary. However, Portland voter Austin Thompson said he thought the bond was going to raise the property tax rate if it passed.
"It is a lot of money, but the only thing I really knew about it was that it was going to raise, or supposed to raise property taxes, or something like that," he said.
Cavazos said property tax rates were not going to go up because of the bond.
"The legislature passed a wall where on school bonds issued, only school districts have to put on that this is a tax increase, so that's confusing for a district like ours. We were not increasing the total tax rate," she said.
The district was also counting on the 2022 bond package passing, because it would have reimbursed the district the $30 million it had to spend to cover the bill to complete three bond 2020 projects.
One of those projects, is the agri-science building being built behind the high school. Costs overruns due to inflation drove those prices up, according to the Superintendent.
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