Monday marked the beginning of early voting for the May 7 local elections across the State of Texas, allowing voters to approve or reject over $18 billion worth of bond propositions. Early voting ends May 3.
In total, 207 bond proposals will be on the ballot in counties across the state; 83% are from local school districts. The largest bond proposal is from Forney Independent School District, which is seeking $1.3 billion. The bond would build five new elementary schools, expand two existing elementary schools, build four middle schools and expand two others, and construct a new high school.
Forney’s bond proposal notice states that the district projects it will gain 35,000 students over the next 10 years and that the bond “will not increase the district’s tax rate” for Forney residents.
However, Forney is not adopting the no-new-revenue rate, which means the bond would increase property tax collections as appraisals increase.
The top five most expensive bonds that voters will consider are for school districts wanting to construct new buildings. The highest non-educational measure to be considered is San Antonio’s, a plan for street, bridge, and sidewalk improvements that will cost $471.6 million.
Over $400 million is requested by schools across the state seeking to build new stadiums for sports and marching band practices. The most significant stadium request comes from Klein Independent School District, which seeks $75 million to build a new football field as part of an overall $1.1 billion package, including new buildings, transportation upgrades, and other requests.
On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest bond considered by voters is from the East Texas city of Winnsboro, whose population was 3,455 in the 2020 United States Census. Winnsboro is seeking $360,000 to build and improve parking lots across the city. However, seven additional bond measures are on the city’s ballot, allowing voters to approve or disapprove in whole or in part over $11 million in bonds.
In last year’s municipal elections, local governments proposed $10.8 billion worth of bonds to Texas voters, and for the first time in a decade, a majority of those bonds were rejected. No polling is conducted for bond elections, so whether the trend will continsue this year is unknown.
Texas voters can view their local bond elections and previous local bond election results from around the state by visiting the Texas Bond Review Board’s Local Government Bond Elections Database or the Texas Open Data Portal.
