A public hearing on whether the school district should donate the old Bonham campus to Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos has been postponed “indefinitely,” according to a memo to the San Marcos CISD trustees.
Miguel Arredondo, the trustee who had requested that a public hearing on the issue be put on the board’s April 15 agenda, wrote on Twitter that on Wednesday, immediately after the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce’s State of the City luncheon, he contacted Board President Clem Cantu and Superintendent Michael Cardona to withdraw the agenda item about donating the former Bonham campus to Centro. The public hearing will be canceled as well.
“As an elected official, we sometimes are forced to make calculated decisions about whether or not issues we are passionate about will receive the necessary number of votes to pass when acted upon,” Arredondo tweeted. “I will go on the record to say that I support the cultural significance of the former Mexican School and the great work being done by Centro and would have voted enthusiastically in support of the donation.”
Earlier this month, Arredondo had tied the decision on the fate of Centro and the old school to the board’s pending decision on a new central office location, for which $4.5 million has been budgeted. At the board’s March meeting, Arredondo noted that someone had asked what it would take for some of the trustees to be more comfortable with making a decision about the central office, and those trustees had said they wanted reassurances about the future of Centro and the district’s property on LBJ Drive.
“Again, the question was asked, what’s it going to take for some of us to be more supportive. … That is what my response to that is. Assurance that … the building is left untouched and unsold, regardless of who the tenant is and whatever organization it’s donated to,” Arredondo said at the meeting.
Besides pulling the Centro item, Arredondo tweeted that he will ask the other trustees to postpone a decision on the central administration building until after the current legislative session.
“As our district quickly becomes eligible for recapture, and because the future of public school finance at the local, state, and federal level is unknown, it is fiscally irresponsible and short sided to make such an important decision so quickly,” Arredondo wrote. “If we look at our district’s not too distant history, we were once at risk of not being able to pay for normal operating expenditure and payroll. At least one of my colleagues was on the board when this financial mismanagement took place. If we are truly committed to keeping students first in our decision making and doing what is best for all stakeholders, we cannot vote to spend an excess of $4.5M until we look for additional ways in which to fund this project.”
