Voters on Saturday rendered a spilt decision on the Austin school district’s $892 million bond proposal, approving Propositions 1 and 3 while rejecting their even-numbered counterparts, Propositions 2 and 4. Proposition 1 proposes spending $140.6 million to renovate cafeterias, replace old air-conditioning units with energy-efficient ones, buy new school buses, computers and science equipment, and possibly put a $10 million solar project on an old landfill. Proposition 3, the biggest of the four bond propositions, proposes spending $349.2 million on repairs, renovations and maintenance. The two approved bond packages total $489.8 million.
The American-Statesman editorial board, of which I’m a member, recommended voters reject the four propositions. (You can read our school bond editorial here.) We struggled with the decision to oppose the bond proposals but in the end couldn’t bring ourselves to support any of them given the district’s rush to put the proposals together on a nine-month schedule rather than the typical 18, the questionable cost estimates spread across all four propositions, and the inclusion of several half-baked ideas (see, for example, the above-mentioned solar energy project: You can revisit the Statesman’s exploration of the four proposals here.) Several bond supporters countered that no bond package is perfect, which might be true, but the district’s propositions kept perfection at a distance, and never appeared to set perfection as a goal.
The meaning of Saturday’s results is muddled by the bond election’s mixed outcome, and by how narrowly each proposition was approved or rejected. The divided and tight results don’t speak well of the district’s leadership, though to read the results as a referendum on Superintendent Meria Carstarphen’s tenure or the school board’s direction is to read more into the results than probably is there. Maybe the one thing we can say is voters did their best to separate the district’s needs from its wants and leave it at that.
Turnout Saturday was 10.25 percent, which, though pathetic, was significantly higher than the 3.5 percent turnout for the last school bond election in 2008. It’s interesting to note where the votes for and against the propositions occurred. (Go here for a precinct-by-precinct look at Saturday’s election results.) With few exceptions, voters in precincts west of I-35 and south of Texas 71 strongly rejected all four bond proposals. The bonds also were opposed by voters in precincts north of U.S. 183, though opposition in North Austin was not as consistent as it was in South and Southwest Austin. Far North Austin voters clearly did not like Proposition 4, which proposed spending $168.6 million on career and technical education programs, fine arts and athletic facilities and a male-only campus, but were more divided on Propositions 1-3, especially in the precincts along MoPac north of 183 and south of Parmer Lane.
Central and East Austin voters generally supported the propositions, though voters in downtown precincts north of Lady Bird Lake, south of MLK, west of I-35 and east of Lamar Boulevard did not. And Precinct 210, in wealthy Tarrytown south of Windsor Road, again stood out as a West-Central Austin exception Saturday, just as it did last fall when voters there rejected the city’s $78.3 million affordable housing bond proposal, which failed citywide. Curiously, Tarrytown voters in Precinct 256 north of Windsor Road supported the school bonds and last fall’s affordable housing proposal. I’m not sure what to make of this Windsor Road divide, but here’s a note to self to watch it moving forward.