A&M Consolidated junior Will Hargett is the school’s starting quarterback and also a pitcher on the Tiger baseball team. Currently, Hargett said limited space in the weight room means more people are assigned to stations which leads to longer workouts. A lack of shower space in the baseball locker room causes a line after practice in the middle of the day and cuts into their 30-minute lunch period.
Expanding Consol’s fieldhouse and locker room space are two items listed on the two propositions worth a combined $53.4 million centered on athletic facility renovations at A&M Consolidated and College Station high schools that are up for vote on Saturday, May 4. Early voting begins Monday.
While Hargett doesn’t turn 18 until June, he said he has teammates of voting age who plan to carry out their civic duty and vote yes for the bond to help future Tiger athletes, even if they themselves won’t reap the benefits if the propositions pass.
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“I think everything on the bond and everything people will be voting for is very needed with both schools, would be a great asset to both schools and would help both schools academically, athletically, and make people better students, better athletes and better people,” Hargett said.
Proposition A is worth $40.2 million and would renovate and expand the stadiums at Consol and College Station, along with the Consol field house. This proposition is the same as November’s Prop C, which failed to pass with 5,630 no votes (52.5%) to 5,089 yes votes (47.5%).
Seating at Cougar Stadium and Tiger Stadium would be expanded to 6,300 and both stadiums would receive a new digital scoreboard with a video display. Both tracks would be resurfaced, and one of the “D-zones” — the area between the playing field and track — would be covered in artificial turf.
Cougar Field’s press box roof would be replaced and exterior walls would be repaired. Tiger Stadium’s press box, restrooms and concessions areas would be rebuilt into one structure, similar to Cougar Field’s setup.
Consol’s fieldhouse would be expanded to around 8,000 square feet. The addition would be in the small parking lot next to the fieldhouse and include a new and enlarged sports medicine facility, baseball locker rooms and offices, concessions and restrooms for the baseball facility, and two classrooms. Interior renovations to the existing fieldhouse would create a freshman football locker room, relocate the coaches’ offices and expand the weight room.
Proposition B is worth almost $13.3 million and would be used to implement turf on the baseball and softball fields at both high schools and add LED lighting. Consol softball’s stadium would have expanded seating, a new press box and ticket booth, plus modified sidewalks and parking. This proposition is the same as November’s Prop D, which had 5,615 no votes (52.5%) to 5,088 yes votes (47.5%).
“This might ruffle some feathers, but kids in high school, they are not getting out of bed every morning to go to math class,” Consol head athletic trainer Elli Dinkmeyer said. “They’re getting out of bed every morning because they love their extracurriculars, whether that’s sports or band or the dance team. That’s why they’re coming and I think that is a big piece of the educational puzzle, so for people to say, ‘We need to focus more on academics,’ OK, that’s a piece of it, but this matters, too.”
Last November’s election was the second time in three years a bond proposition, in part to renovate and expand athletics facilities at both high schools, failed to pass. College Station voters approved two propositions worth $299 million that centered on renovating and expanding existing facilities and technology needs, which marked the largest bond passed in district history. While no items on either proposition changed from the November election, district officials and the district’s bond planning committee said all of the listed items are still needs.
“When you have four propositions and it’s $350 million dollars, there’s a lot of a story to tell and you want to try and tell the best story you can for each proposition,” College Station Superintendent Tim Harkrider said. “With two propositions, it’s easier to dive in and tell a deeper, broader picture and videos, picture evidence, interviews with all of our different groups that use these facilities of painting the picture of the need and showing what we have and why we feel like an area is deficient.”
One week after November’s Props C and D failed to pass, Harkrider told the College Station school board he wanted the district’s long-range facilities and bond planning committee — a 48-member group comprised of community members that created the bond package in spring 2023 — to reconvene in January to provide feedback on if the district should put the failed propositions back on the ballot in May.
Harkrider had arrived in mid-June as the district’s superintendent and discussions to put a bond up for vote in November were on their way to being approved by the school board. Harkrider said after the election he noticed how close the vote was — 2.5% and decided by 600 votes on each failed proposition. He noted only 17% of registered voters cast a ballot on the props in November.
Yet, he said he wasn’t sure if the district should put it up for vote again or wait. He noted the last thing he wanted to do was take a supportive community and lose their trust with the school district. That’s why he wanted to get the committee’s input and ask some questions: Are these items still needs? How did the committee view the November items now? Were they wants? Were they truly needs? Should they go again now? Or should they wait?
The committee’s unity gave Harkrider confidence to green-light a May election. He said the committee had good discussions over two meetings in January. At the end of the second meeting, he asked each committee member to place a sticky note on a board with three options on what to do moving forward: May 2024, November 2024, and Wait. In the end, 32 of the 33 votes were for May 2024. The other was for November 2024.
At February’s school board meeting, two committee members presented recommendations to the board before the bond props were given approval via a 5-0 vote. Two board members were not present for the vote.
“When it was all said and done, they felt like everything was a need and the only thing that would wait by us not putting something on a prop now is it was going to be more expensive when we decided to do it later. In their mind, it was, ‘Let’s go now,’” Harkrider said.
Opponents of the district’s bond package said they aren’t pleased the district is asking for the same things it did in November considering it was voted down.
“I feel like they didn’t really take the time to understand why the taxpayers were saying no,” College Station resident Nic LoGalbo said. “They kind of just assumed they would get it pushed through in an off-cycle election when there’s significantly lower voter turnout.”
College Station resident Lloyd Davis said instead of asking for the exact same list of items that failed to pass in November, he thinks a more successful approach would have been to pare down the list to items related to safety and serious maintenance issues to voters again. In Davis’ eyes, that list doesn’t include digital scoreboards or expanded stands.
“I believe there are better ways to do this, to plan and not continue to have this fire drill,” Davis said.
Both Davis and LoGalbo said they have concerns over the current state of the district’s finances. College Station, like many other school districts around the state, is running a deficit budget this year. At March’s school board meeting, the district’s outgoing chief financial officer Amy Drozd told the school board should the district end up with its expected $3.4 million deficit, the district has added over $5 million to its savings account in the last year to cover the difference. LoGalbo noted according to the Texas Bond Review Board, College Station’s district had a total of $432.1 million in debt between principal and interest payments for Fiscal Year 2023. That number will grow once the $299 million worth of bonds for the November 2023 election are sold.
“I get the value of sports, and nobody’s saying that they’re not valuable, they certainly are, but I’m asking the district to be prudent about what their asks are and to be transparent about what the cost is and propose other options that people can come to an agreement on,” said LoGalbo, who has two elementary-aged children who play youth sports and could play for district schools at higher grade levels. “They already asked for this six months ago. Did they take this back and revisit it? They didn’t do anything like that. They just put it back on the table in an off-cycle election. It’s not a good look.
“I’m not saying our kids don’t deserve the best, they do, but we have to operate within our constraints.”
Texas school districts are funded at the federal, state and local levels. Enrollment and local property values determine the state’s school finances, but Texas school districts have not received additional state funding on a per-student basis since 2019. The state Legislature had a surplus of funds earmarked for public education during the 2023 session, but no funding was given in the last session since a school voucherlike program was not approved. The school district’s tax rate is split into two components: Maintenance and Operations (M&O) funds, which are used to fund the day-to-day operations, including teacher and staff salaries; and Interest & Sinking (I&S) funds, which are created from selling voter-approved bonds.
Larger capital projects, such as building a new school or items listed on these propositions, almost always require school districts to pass a bond package to complete.
District officials say they can fund this bond package while maintaining a stable tax rate and be within the original 2-cent increase the district projected for its November 2023 election, meaning the bond package is estimated to not further increase the tax rate.
In the lead-up to last November’s election, school district officials touted what they see as fiscal responsibility in recent years and said the district tax rate decreased 43 cents over the last six years and had the entire bond package passed, the total tax rate would be 19.5 cents lower than it was in 2022. District officials also said even with a recent rise in property values, the average homeowner within the district will be paying less school taxes now than in 2017. District officials said College Station ISD has been awarded a “superior” rating in Texas’ School FIRST accountability system because of the lowered tax rate.
District officials also said the district spent around $60,000 in 2022-23 to use alternate facilities in surrounding areas when the district’s baseball and softball fields were deemed unplayable due to weather. District officials believe they could save over $213,000 per year in maintenance costs by replacing the natural surfaces with turf.
The district also could make money off turf fields. Last fall, a bond committee member shared a presentation with The Eagle that showed how the district could generate almost $400,000 in annual revenue between the four fields by hosting nondistrict tournaments, playoff games and rent their fields for select team practices and games.
“If we got turf fields, that would give us more space for our JV and freshmen players to work infield in the outfield with the surface being the same,” College Station baseball coach Chris Litton said. “Right now, all those guys, they get short-changed because we have one field. We have three teams and a lot of times the freshmen get kicked out to what we call ‘Puerto Rico,’ which is the low-lying lands behind the baseball field and they do most of their work out there because of a lack of facilities.”
In 2022, the College Station baseball team played a home-and-home playoff series with Brenham. However, the Cougars elected to play their “home” games in Navasota due to poor field conditions. This year, the College Station sophomore baseball team has had two games canceled because bad weather made the grass and dirt field unplayable. Last week, the Cougars’ varsity team almost had to move a game from Tuesday to Thursday because of field conditions. Litton said that would’ve put them in a bind for the next Tuesday with their starting pitcher on short rest as the Cougars seek a playoff berth.
“It’s real, it’s a competitive disadvantage playing on the surface we’re playing on right now,” Litton said.
Consol’s sports medicine facility has about 600 square feet of usable space and the school has over 1,200 students involved in athletics, band, cheer and dance that the school’s training staff is responsible for, Dinkmeyer said. She noted their facility has just five training tables that makes it almost impossible for them to provide the care they’re capable of given space restraints. This leads to students getting treatment on the floor or being turned away to return during a study hall or after school. Consol’s group of over 15 female student athletic trainers has to share a room with nine lockers and one toilet with the girls powerlifting team that has 27 members. The bond would add adequate space for training facilities and provide more locker room space for multiple sports.
“Athletic trainers are highly skilled health care professionals that specialize in all aspects of patient care, whether that’s injury prevention, injury diagnosis, injury rehabilitation, getting kids back to doing what they love doing and we can do that better with more space,” Dinkmeyer said. “We can see more kids with more space. We can have more kids in here with more space. We have maximized every square inch of this place with knocking down a wall here, knocking down a wall there or converting this garage to a storage space so we can have more tables. We’ve used it all.”
By having two propositions instead of four, Harkrider said he thinks the district has been able to do a better job of sharing more specific details and information about these propositions. He noted their job is to give as much information to taxpayers as possible.
“Getting that information out is key because it is a different cycle,” Harkrider said.
The fate of the propositions will be decided over the next two weeks. Dinkmeyer said regardless of the outcome, the items listed on the ballot are needs that are not going away.
“I’m really thankful we have an administration that recognizes that and isn’t afraid to ask one more time and try to get the community to understand the needs we have,” she said.