Board Vote on the Roundabout -- why I voted NO!

In the last board session, before the community, I voted against the money being allocated to the City to help build a Roundabout at the planned Bray Central and Bossy Boots intersection. My intent during my discussion was to highlight a question as to whether or not the Roundabout was part of the ISD property. I got mixed answers in that a majority of the board (you notice that I sit on the right side of the board and not the left) stated that it was not part of the property and was in fact a "gesture of good deed to the city". I don't have an issue with showing some support for the city. What I do have an issue with is the following:

• BAA (Legal) RESTRICTIONS ON BOARD POWERS AND DUTIES
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•  The Board may not:
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• Enter into an agreement authorizing the use of District employees, property, or resources for the provision of materials or labor for the design, construction, or renovation of improvements to real property not owned or leased by the District. Education Code 11.168 [See CE]

The text above references "BAA (Legal)". If you go to the Allen ISD Trustee website you can look up the "Manual" that we are suppose to follow. In short, anything with the term "Legal" means that it is actual law and is dictated by the State....not this board. Anything labeled "Local" means they are additives to the State law and were put in place by the board. The board can't change the law in any shape or form.

With that said, and getting back to what I was saying, if the ISD doesn't own the land we can't spend money on it.....its written in the State Law. So, that means even if we wanted to make a nice gesture to the City we can't.

The point I was trying to make is that in the prior board meeting I was under the impression that the reason for building the round-a-bout was due to our expanded property line and the fact that we impact the traffic patterns...regardless of my personal belief that we shouldn't even be considering the Service Center at this point in time or not. But, what I got was that the payment to the city was a "good deed gesture" and not actually part of the ISD property, which makes it illegal for us to consider......ahhhhh.

Personally I don't think that the Service Center should even be on the table for discussion until we meet the higher priority, and direct, needs of the overcrowding of the High School and the sub-par facility of the Lowery Freshmen Center, which by the way, per State Law is doable with the current bond allocation for the Service Center. But now we have a more pressing issue.

With the obvious mismanagement, and accusations of fraud, the decision process of prioritizing what the ISD should be focused on, is in my opinion, flawed and in fact may have been manipulated by the administrations prior financial dealings, so much so that it influenced what items the board should be considering when pursuing contracts for the student body --- thus the reason to question why we would even be considering the Service Center at this time. Don't get me wrong, I am not stating that the board was in fact flawed...I am stating that it may have been influenced and thus flawed.

The real truth is that anybody put into the situation I was asked to be involved with, would, or should, ask for further investigation and discussion on the topic as to obtain further clarification before any further board votes on expenditures, especially those expenditures related to the bond approved by the voters -- thus my NO vote on the $27 Million to start construction.

To further the cause I have asked to freeze all current activity and to form a bipartisan committee, made up with non-ISD related staff, to look into all that has transpired. Let's see what happens.

Dr Michael Myers

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