Less Than 8 Percent Cast Ballots in Early Bond Voting

 

SAN ANGELO, TX -- There are 64,871 registered voters in Tom Green County and 60,590 of them didn’t cast a ballot for or against hundreds of millions of dollars in school bonds during the two weeks of early voting.  

According to Tom Green County Elections Administrator Vona Hudson, 3,075 voters cast ballots in person and 1206 ballots were mailed in for all three bond elections county wide.  That’s about 7.5 percent of registered voters.

Voters in the San Angelo Independent School District are deciding on a $149 million bond proposal while voters in the Grape Creek ISD are voting on a $10.75 million bond and Christoval ISD voters will decide whether a $9.5 million bond will be approved.  All the bond proposals are for new or improved facilities.

The San Angelo ISD $149 million proposal includes a new 3,000 seat gym for Central High School, a new McGill Elementary School and a new Bowie Elementary School, a new Alternative Learning Center, new baseball and softball facilities at Lake View High School, and a new track for Lincoln Middle School among other renovations and additions.  

According to the SAISD bond website, the bond would increase the tax rate by 14.25 cents which works out to $15.32 per month for the average homeowner.  

The Grape Creek Bond proposal is for building a new middle school and renovating the existing elementary school.  The $10.75 million bond would not affect the tax rate in Grape Creek because the district recently paid off earlier debt.  

In Christoval, the $9.5 million bond would provide for renovation and expansion of the elementary school and other improvements.  The bond would require a tax rate increase of 24.2 cents for a total tax rate of $1.4593.

Election day is Saturday, May 5 and 19 polling locations will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  For a list of polling locations, go to the Tom Green County Elections website.

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Those are some sad figures, hope that we see an increase in voting on Sat. Out of all the folks who have an opinion on the matter, it makes me ashamed to see the lack of participation... We have 64,871 registered voters in Angelo and a meager 4,281 have already voted... Take your opinion to the ballot box not the comment box on your favorite social media site. If your opinion isn't strong enough to cause you to vote then don't share it with me.

I agree with you Nate. Personally, as much as I would have liked to have voted early, my job has not made that possible but as I stated, "I have an opinion", and I for one will be able to back it up after I leave the polling station on Saturday morning. I hope the early voting numbers being small are attributed to people in the same situation as I and that those people get out and VOTE!

Yep, with only 4281 turning out to early vote means all tax payers just got a huge tax suppository shoved up their backsides, compliments of SAISD...........

What's sad is that it not just in Angelo. Abilene, Midland/Odessa have the same problem with turnout. Just a handful of the population decides for the greater good.

It is pretty disturbing to see thousands of people sharing their opinion on social media about these events and then you turn around and look at the number of votes cast at the polls and it makes you feel sick... I do agree with James... We are likely to see much more participation on Sat. and we should. I know that some will be voting contrary to the way I cast my vote but that's fine with me, I just want to see peoples convictions be the driving force for action, not just a topic for more trash talk.

I lost everything in my life and had to earn it all back slowly over a number of years so voting for me is viewed a little different because of the time I had no say in things... It is important to be involved with our communities and to take part in our civic duties by exercising our right to make the changes we want to see. I think too many folks have lost their faith in God and given up on the system. We do our duty by showing up and voting and if nothing was changed by our participation, so be it. It's not our job to do anything more than show up and vote... God will take care of the rest.

I'm all for paying more taxes to house criminals in a bigger jail but I have to shake my head at the idea of agreeing to further fund an educational system that has chosen not to be neutral in our origins, we still teach a worn out billions of years of evolution theory to kids when we used to teach the Bible in school. History has become severely redacted eradicating any notion of God as the inspiration for our great nation...

We haven't even begun to discuss the idiocy of believing that our governments care enough to actually fight for the safety of our kids on school grounds when there are simple solutions that would have more impact than trying to make legal gun ownership harder??? My children will never go to SAISD... They are already steps ahead of other kids at the same age and if you look at the data that is available, home schooled kids turn out to surpass their public school comparison's in every front academically.

Not to mention how difficult it is to pay a mortgage in this city at it's current standards... When these taxes continue to raise, people get kicked out of their homes because they can no longer afford to pay for their humble abode and then the banks turn around and sell them to people with bigger pockets. These kids have much nicer facilities than when I went to school here and we should be focused on the content of their hearts and minds not on achieving bigger and better facilities...

You send your kid off to school and rest assured that he or she will encounter porn among their friends and will fail to ever go to you as their parents for advice about sex... Do the research and ask yourself where kids learn about sex from nowadays... Even YouTube has trash content all over... No thanks, I don't want my children to go where perverted sins are acceptable and considered to be normal, not to mention all the battles you have to be involved in with school administration over their policies on how they handle issues concerning your child.

You pretty much have to give up your right to your own child and having your own beliefs and convictions to let your kid go to a trash hole where they aren't even going to allow them to be protected. Just look at the recent story about violence at Lincoln, the administrators want you to trust them because they have a system in place that tells them if they have an actual threat of violence or if it's just a rumor... Please, while you guys are investigating your rumors, violence could have erupted out of nowhere... I give them credit for trying, but their standards for safety fall extremely shy of what our children are worth.

I have no problem with opposing viewpoints, in fact, I hope that mine will shake some things up... I just can't be quiet about these things anymore... The story about the 2 sides of this bond that Yantis and Joe did even fell short of placing our kids hearts into the equation... I know that Joe said that the way our education system is run isn't up for election on May 5th, and that you can't change a system that is perpetuated by the state but I beg to differ. If we vote against supporting these "monstrosities" with our finances and pull our kids out for homeschooling we could change this system. I hope to have upset a few and that's fine with me, I'm only one man with only one vote and I'm not scared to share how I cast it... It seems a little Obi Wan'ish to avoid thinking that funding our school district any further than we already are doesn't have anything to do with the perpetuation of the system. "These aren't the droid's you are looking for". Although direct legislation changes aren't on the table, one way to affect this system is to say "NO" to funding it's growth. Joe is right, we didn't write the rules, but we can change them... Imagine how we could avoid all of the problems involved with public school constraints if we did go for a mass exodus and all pulled out for homeschool. The SAISD lost 10,000 for a few hundred kids missing school for one day! If we did not allow our kids in public school we could force change to occur, sometime's something radical has to happen to create a change that is radical. If we did not have to pay taxes for public education we could easily fund our own children's education at home... It really is about money and the love of it... We have to create more debt to sustain this system... Same thing with our Nation's debt, if we don't create more, we collapse.

This coming from the guy who pays into the system even when I don't benefit from those tax dollars, in fact, I spend more for education because I pay for your children's education and then my own kids education separately with no funding assistance. Regardless of the outcome of this election, I trust in God to make the most out of everything and I'll continue to pay taxes for education of everyone else's kids regardless I'm sure.

Can't wait to hear the responses to this one, going with the crowd was never my specialty, I didn't even fit in with the misfits.

https://exodusmandate.org/public-schools/top-five-reasons-not-to-send-your-kids-back-to-public-school

https://americanvision.org/1430/public-schools-get-out-now/

https://fee.org/articles/homeschooling-the-public-schools-invasive-species/

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