Some voters in North Texas successfully voted against several large school bond proposals in Saturday’s local elections.
Granbury ISD’s $161 million bond failed by about 400 votes, with 52% opposing it, according to the election results posted by Hood County. results.
The bond received significant attention after Steve Biggers, the chair of the Hood County Republican Party, organized a “No Bond Bus Tour” campaign, which led to his arrest. This was reported by The Dallas Express.
Biggers, who used a retired school bus to campaign against the bond, was arrested in April for supposedly “altering a government record.”
The Hood County Sheriff’s Office stated that he provided “false information into a government record to obtain a temporary registration [for the bus] from the Hood County Registration/Tax Assessor’s Office,” according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.
The previous bond election for the school district in November failed by two votes, The Dallas Express reported.
Likewise, members of the Big Springs ISD community campaigned against two bond proposals totaling $219 million, as reported by Texas Scorecard. The opponents of the bond adopted the slogan of Granbury ISD’s bond opponents, “If you know, you NO,” to convince voters to reject the bond.
Both proposals were rejected by a two-thirds majority of voters who participated in the election.
On the other hand, voters in Cedar Hill ISD, located in Dallas County, approved a bond for the first time in 12 years. Unofficial results indicate that the district’s $282.4 million bond was approved by “a nearly 2-to-1 margin,” according to Cedar Hill ISD.
Several other proposed school bonds were approved by Texas voters, including four propositions in the Georgetown ISD totaling $649 million. Voters in Mansfield ISD approved two out of the five proposals in the district’s $777 million bond package: Proposition A passed for $584.5 million, and Proposition B passed for $4 million.
Nearly 250 bonds totaling $15.5 billion were on the ballot across the state, as reported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Currently, school districts in Texas have an outstanding debt of almost $120 billion in voter-approved debt supported by property taxes, according to the Texas Bond Review Board.
