Video courtesy USD 489 News – Watch the full Feb. 15 meeting here.
By James Bell
Hays Post
A brief discussion about commissioning a survey to judge the public’s interest in a $94 million bond issue turned sour at the Hays USD 489 Board of Education meeting Monday as the Board discussed the possibility with Gary Brinker, director the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University.
“I’ve been working with the Board since early last year when they started talking about a bond,” Brinker said in an interview after the meeting.
“Even though the Docking Institute did a free strategic planning session for the Board completely pro-bono, I don’t understand why they have omitted us from the bond planning procedures.”
Brinker began talking during the meeting about unpopular aspects of bond elections and was interrupted by Board Member Sarah Rankin.
“This is why I worry about your bond and why I feel you definitely need to do one of these,” Brinker said. “You have a strong potential that those gyms that you have in your bond are going to cause it to fail.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think we need a lecture on what we should or should not do, if we could just limit this to the presentation itself,” Rankin admonished Brinker.
After a few questions from Board members, tensions further escalated when Brinker suggested resources could be saved if the survey happened to show a sales tax petition had virtually no chance of passing.
“I don’t think it’s wasting resources when you’re trying hard to accomplish something that you feel strongly about. I don’t like the term wasting resources. That is definitely not what this Board is up here attempting to do,” interjected Josh Waddell, board member.
After informing the Board he is offering a tool that would allow them to judge bond support, Brinker abruptly left the meeting.
“If you’re not interested in doing that, I’ve lost interest in doing it, frankly,” Brinker said.
Board members then heckled Brinker as he left.
“Nice attitude,” Waddell said. “Real impressive.”
Brinker expressed his concern with the Board on Tuesday.
“They expressed no interest in doing this bond survey,” he said. “The whole purpose of the presentation was to show how the bond survey could help them pass that bond.”
Without specific knowledge of support by USD 489 voters, Brinker said, the Board has no expectation it will pass.
“They’re willing to gamble the tax payers’ money to float a bond they have absolutely no assurance will pass,” he said.
“That is the crux of my frustration.”
He also said the survey would help tailor specific marketing for areas that are less popular.
“Bonds frequently fail and I think, for a lot of them, it’s for this reason,” Brinker said. “I’m very concerned that this bond is not going to pass.
“It troubles me that they are going to spend many times what the survey would cost to run this bond election, that, in my opinion, has a less than a 50/50 percent chance of passing as is.”
Brinker also had concerns the Board wanted to use a survey as a part of a promotional tool.
“I was getting the impression that they wanted to morph (a survey) into some sort of promotional thing, which I’m adamantly against,” he said. “I don’t want it to be a tool to promote a particular bond, I want it to be a tool to measure support.”