Rockdale ISD trustees met in regular session Monday evening and adopted a $16.253-million budget for 2020-2021, based on a 9.6-cent increase in the school tax rate.
Board members met in the junior-high commons, rather than the Central Administration Building, in order to maintain social distancing.
INCREASE—A tax rate of $1.4147 is currently proposed to fund the budget.
The current rate is $1.3183.
Supt. Dr. Denise Monzingo said the increase reflects lingering effect of the loss of Luminant’s Sandow plants.
The power went off at Luminant’s Sandow Power Station on Jan. 18, 2018. That left the Rockdale ISD and Milam County, the two entities which collected taxes from the facility, without a considerable portion of tax revenue.
All of the proposed increase is in the Interest & Sinking (debt service) portion of the budget.
Proposed INS rate went from the current 25 cents to 36 cents, an 11-cent hike.
The overall proposed increase is 9.6 cents because the Maintenance & Operation (M&O) rate is falling slightly, from $1.0683 to $1.05471.
‘NOT A FACTOR’—“The I&S tax rate increase has been an ongoing situation since the Luminant lawsuit in 2016 and then the eventual close in 2018,” Dr. Monzingo said.
“For the past two years the district has been using fund balance to fully fund our 2007 bond payments,” she said.
“With the legislative changes from HB3 starting 2019-20 we are now at a point where that fund balance has been depleted and we have to tax at a rate that will provide enough tax collections to cover the annual 2007 voter approved bonds payments.
Those are the bonds which assured a new intermediate campus and renovation-expansion of the high school among other projects.
Dr. Monzingo said the new Tiger Stadium, built in 2018 did not affect the big INS increase
“This is paid out of our M&O side, “Dr. Monzingo emphasized.
The tax rate will be adopted in August.
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