Frisco ISD has proposed a new 2024 Bond Vatre which the district and the so called “Vote For Frisco ISD PAC” are pushing hard for. They want us to vote on four (4) propositions that they claim will fund important projects. What is a VATRE? A VATRE is triggered when a board adopts a tax rate that exceeds the district’s voter-approval tax rate (VATR). The VATR is determined for each district by a statutory formula and is the highest tax rate a board can adopt without holding an election. A district’s adopted tax rate has two components: its debt service rate or its interest and sinking (I&S) rate, and its maintenance and operations (M&O) rate.
While a bond election authorizes the issuance of bonds to generate funds for a district’s buildings and infrastructure and to be repaid from I&S revenue, a VATRE approves an increase in the district’s M&O tax rate, which can only be used for items related to programs and people, such as teacher salaries and stipends, training programs, educational programs, and other student activities, such as extracurricular programs. Confused yet?
The school district and the Vote For PAC are selling it to you on the basis that the priority has shifted from building new schools to maintaining the district’s existing facilities. A key piece of the proposed bond is refreshing aging schools and the supposedly includes a refresh for 20 Frisco ISD campuses that are 25 years old. The VATER portion according to the district’s website is needed to increase teacher pay and be more competitive. The district claims this will affect every campus, but they promised similar things in the 2018 bond, and we question if the money was used as they promised. Now they are back, asking us to trust them again but remember they DO NOT HAVE TO USE IT FOR THE REASONS THEY ARE ASKING FOR NOW. That means you can vote for it and then they can change how they or what they use the money for just like they did in 2018.
Getting the information out to the public about the upcoming propositions is not cheap. In fact, principals and the district are trying every avenue possible to get the information out, from using the PTA’s to hold informational sessions to ADVERTISING! Community Impact is one of the largest community papers for Frisco and for a long time we have thought they are in bed with Frisco political powers. We have never seen them write a hard-hitting story or an investigative story, instead most of the articles are “watered down” informational pieces. We have always had one burning question when it comes to Community Impact, how much does it cost to advertise during campaign season. I mean we know Jeff Cheney can afford it because he always owns the back cover for his business – but at what cost?
We started looking into these questions awhile back and set what we had found to the side until we saw a post on social media asking, “How much did Frisco ISD pay for the four-color glossy sticky notes located front and center in the recent Community Impact?” The paper has several different avenues of advertising such as an insert, sticky notes, direct mail postcards, online presence, and in-paper display ads. If our research is right, we can tell you!
We were sent a copy of their Frisco Elections Advertising PDF and according to the document, Community Impact goes out to 85,264 mailboxes in Frisco and their online presence in Frisco hits about 10,176 daily subscribers. Not bad coverage for a city with voter apathy! You can also bet they are working their inside connections in the Desis community as they alone can decide this vote.
Drum Roll Please…… Sticky Notes cost $0.15 each! If the district did 85,264 sticky notes to the Frisco readers, then the district spent $12,789.60 for one paper. Additionally, inserts are $0.15 each, sticky/insert combo is $0.25/set, and direct mail postcards are $0.26 each. If they decided to use the website ads on communityimpact.com it would cost $300/month per market for 30 days. If they choose to advertise via the morning impact email newsletter that goes out to 10,176 subscribers, it will cost $500 for the top of the newsletter and $450 for the middle of the newsletter.
We have a lot of questions:
Should the district be paying $13k for advertising when there is a Vote For PAC who has organized?
Are they advertising clearly, correctly and honestly? For example, on the districts website it reads “100% of bond funds stay in the district and is not subject to recapture by the state.” Will it really stay “IN THE DISTRICT” such as our schools and facilities, or will any of it (even $1 dollar) go to one of the public-private partnerships they have? You might have heard the City of Frisco approved a $182 million renovation for Toyota Stadium, but did you know Frisco ISD pays part of that bill? The recent headlines don’t alert you that the ISD is paying part of that BIG BILL!
That is right, $77 million of the $182 million comes from the public-private partnership TIRZ for the City of Frisco and Frisco ISD. They just did stadium improvements in 2016 for Toyota Stadium. I thought the point of all these public-private partnerships was to make money not just spending it. They also have a TIRZ / public-private partnership for the PGA Golf Course, Ford Center, Expansion of Dr. Pepper Arena, etc. Read more about it on their website.
While they are claiming 100% of the bonds are staying in the district, they are not telling you the VATRE is subject to recapture. According to Community Impact, “the new tax rate would generate an additional $11.5 million in revenue for the district. In total, the increase would generate $19.5 million in revenue, but $8 million would go to the state in recapture.” But they are not advertising that, are they? FISD voters last approved raising the M&O portion of the tax rate by $0.13 per $100 valuation in 2018.
We are just diving into the ISD stuff but as of right now we are not sold on voting for this bond/vatre. Just a few concerns include, we question if Waldrip the Super Intendent is the right might to lead the district as the last city he was in didn’t want him. We also don’t trust the school board President who has a history of personal financial problems to oversee tax dollars. We also don’t believe Frisco ISD is being smart, transparent or effective with the money they have now and we are unsure if throwing more money in the pot is the best solution. Last but not least our ISD needs to explain if any of this money will ever be used for public-private partnerships because if it will that makes it a no for us!
There is a magical art behind asking for something you want and then getting it! I read an essay many years ago that talked about how culturally it was not always the norm to ask directly for what you want and when we do, we are usually bad at it. People tend to hem and haw and often walk away from asking because we cannot clearly articulate the message. For example, many are uncomfortable asking their boss for a raise or salary bump.
Persuasion tactics are strategies that can help you convince people to see things your way and being good using these tactics is usually an art form. To be good, or to be great you must first know exactly what you want and what you need others to “buy in” to. Second you must ground yourself in why you are doing it and make sure it resonates with you so you can “sell it from the heart.” Third, you must be able to state clearly and with no confusion what you are asking for or trying to sell to the people. It must be direct, clear and specific. Lastly, you must be selective and targeted about who you ask or when you announce it.
In Frisco, one man is very good at Persuasion Tactics and his name is Mayor Jeff Cheney. When he “wants” something in Cheneyville, well he gets it! He is very good at “telling you” what you want versus “asking” residents what they want. For example, he has put together his team and he has been gathering his clan of supporters to push for the Performing Arts Centre. When he hit a no with the public/private partnership with the school district and Hall Group, he didn’t stop. Nope, he just changed course and came back at it again with his little clan in toe. Next thing you know he will get what he wants, residents will bitch, and no one knows the wiser of how we ended up here.
The talk of a Performing Arts Centre is not new, but what is new is we are curious “How much has this cost taxpayers?” The city has spent $1.6+ million on the current Theatre Projects assessment or feasibility study, but how many others have we done in the past? What were the costs to taxpayers in the previous studies? Why are we doing so many studies? When it comes to wanting studies and assessments what is the magic number of how many we will do before we say enough is enough? We did some research, and this is what we found:
Feb 17, 2015: Under the consent agenda for the city council meeting item 17 reads, “Consider and act upon approval of publishing a RFQ for the development and implementation of a study to examine the feasibility of a performing/theatre arts facility within the corporate limits of the City of Frisco.” We looked high and low and could not determine how much any of this cost. We could not even find the RFQ they approved to publish.
2015: Frisco Association of the Arts commissioned a “Facility Programming Report” by Page Southerland Page. According to the minutes for the Citizens Bond Committee on 01/26/2015, Tammy Meinershagen provided an update that a feasibility group has been identified to conduct a study for the PAC in Frisco. She went on to say it would take about six (6) months to complete the study and has an estimated cost of $200,000 dollars.
2018: The City of Frisco commissioned a “Needs Assessment” by Webb Management Services and Parkhill Smith & Cooper (PSC). According to a Community Impact article, the study showed there 14 performing arts groups that have 667 days of demand for performance facilities in Frisco. According to the study, the majority of this demand—466 days—calls for a facility with 225 to 500 seats while 177 days of demand calls for a facility of 1,001 to 1,750 seats. At the June 2018 Council Summer Work session, PSC Associate Michael Howard presented the findings and told the council there is not enough capacity in Frisco right now. At that time Cheney told Community Impact that “it was council’s preference to use available bond funds to build a 300- to 500-seat facility to meet the current demand of community arts groups with the hope of working with a private partner to build a larger performing arts center.” Of course, Cheney always changes his tune later! The CI article goes on to say the Councils “Performing Arts Committee is in the middle of a feasibility study to determine the size and needs of a potential PAC.” HOW MUCH DID IT COST – We don’t know! We can’t find anywhere in an agenda search where this shows up from 2017 to 2019.
August 2020: Frisco ISD commissioned a “Programming Report” by Schuler Shook. We can’t determine how much this one cost our ISD Taxpayers either. We have sent a PIR asking for that information.
October 2020: The City of Frisco and Frisco ISD commissioned a “Feasibility Report” by Garfield Public Private and Schuler Shook. Well Shocker – we cannot find anywhere what this one cost taxpayers either!
September 2021: Frisco Arts Foundation commissioned a “Market & Feasibility Study” by Theatre Projects Consultants, Inc. We cannot find out how much this one cost either. However, we are guessing since each year the city “FUNDS” the FAA through Hotel/Motel Fund somehow Taxpayers still paid for it.
May 2022: City of Frisco, Frisco ISD, and Hall Group commissioned a “Space Analysis Narrative by Corgan + Studio Gang. In February of 2022 the city council authorized an agreement for services in the amount of $175,000 dollars. Remember in late June of 2021, the city and Frisco ISD entered a public-private partnership with developer Craig Hall to construct a $67 million performing arts center. The city has agreed to contribute $14 million in voter-approved bond money, while Frisco ISD will contribute $43 million from the 2018 bond package, and Hall will contribute $10 million. Remember this is the one that “FELL APART” and truly if the city had wanted a PAC would have been the best option for everyone involved but we have learned from city insiders that “to many chiefs got involved” which caused the band to break up.
July 2022: Hall Group commissioned and performed a “Proposal and Outline” and we could not find out what the cost of this study was.
January 2023: The City of Frisco commissioned and executed an agreement with Theatre Projects Consultants, Inc., for consulting services related to a performing arts venue in the amount of $99,300 which was to be paid for by Bond Funds
September 2023: The City of Frisco commissioned part two of the agreement with Theatre Projects Consultants, Inc., in the amount of $1,415,500 dollars. Recently in 2024 after some CLARITY they Upp’d that amount to $1.6 million as we told you in our last article.
We did learn a few interesting facts along this deep dive…
According to the Dallas Morning News, “Frisco leaders also launched the HEARTS Project initiative — an acronym for Hall, Education and the Arts — to crowdsource an additional $100 million in donations for auxiliary upgrades. The amenities could include a large video screen facing The Star in Frisco, box suites, a VIP arts club with membership benefits, Frisco summer musicals, and a restaurant or bistro, according to the campaign website, but would not contribute to additional seating.” The 2021 article went on to say that “although city officials have previously said the center could host professional performances, the petition states that the limited seating capacity is too small for consideration by Touring Broadway. Experts recommend between 1,750 and 2,000 seats, according to the petition, which cited Theatre Projects’ market assessment and feasibility study for Frisco.
Next, we found it interesting just a few years ago in 2021 Frisco ISD had committed $43 million from a 2018 bond package and now they are back in 2024 asking voters to VOTE FOR the new 1-billion-dollar bond because they are broken penniless poppers! Just a few years later, they are begging for us to vote in favor of the bonds so the Frisco Kids can have an 11,000,000-tennis center.
We also learned Keating was a huge fan of the arts from a 2018 article in Lifestyle Frisco. He is quoted as saying Deputy Mayor Pro Tem John Keating said, “This is our chance to blow it out of the water, Frisco style!” Remember, Keatings motto in his last re-election we are #1 this, #1 that, #1 here, #1 there! Now he is closing on his house in The Preserve at Fields the #1 most exclusive community in King Cheney’s Frisco.
In closing, the city has buried how much these things cost deep in agendas, under nicknames and code words, hoping that you or I will give up looking. We did but what we can tell you with the most recent study in 2023 plus the other three we are at about $2 million alone in just “STUDIES, ASSESSMENTS, ANALYSIS” done for a Performing Arts Center. That means we are going to keep paying money for these via the bonds, hotel/motel tax fund, or something else until King Cheney gets his Performing Arts Center. You can bet little pretty Princess Tammy will be right next to him the whole way. Trailing behind will be their wingman “John “The Infamous Cheating” Keating.
Diving into all this has taken a lot more time than we expected and unless you understand the arts and all these studies it is a bunch of well-pitched jargon crap to confuse the residents of Frisco. We will continue our deep dive into this because we know the city is about to hit us with a bond. It will be through the City or the secret weapon “THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD”. Just wait and see…. the EDC will make the pitch because the city has been called out.
Did you know each new day brings us 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds. When we were kids, my mom used to say don’t waste a damn minute of your life because each second, each minute, each hour, is loaned to us by God. One day when you meet him, he is going to ask you how effectively you used that time. I developed the same fascination with time and when my kids were growing up, they would always say, “dad, do you have a minute?” I would reply with a poem I heard or learned (can’t remember where or who wrote it).
I have only just a minute, only 60 seconds in it;
forced upon me; can’t refuse it;
didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.
But it’s up to me just how I use it.
I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.
When you waste time on a useless task, activity or endeavor you are essentially choosing to squander 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds. Now you are probably wondering why we are writing about time, well lately we have been pondering how much wasted time it will take our City Manager – Wes Pierson, Mayor Jeff Cheney, Bill Woodard, Angelia Pelham, John Keating and the rest of the council to “man up.”
During the most recent election for council John Keating knowingly spread false accusations about his opponent from any microphone handed to him. We were curious after knowingly spreading false lies and false accusations saying Retired Fire Chief Mark Piland was fired and the cause of the problem in the Fire Department, will he “MAN UP” now and publicly apologize after reading the 50+ page In-Service notes? I mean he has the 2011 Climate Report and now 50+ pages of In-Service notes all pointing to the same person – Chief Lee Glover! According to his own soap box moment he should step up and do the right thing for our firefighters and former city employees because in a few years he is going to ask us to vote for him for MAYOR!
In the world of a firefighter seconds and minutes in a fire fight are very important and as they are risking their life. That is why reviewing these 50+ pages of notes from the mandatory June In-Service Meeting are so important. For them to do the job well they need to understand the training and vision for the department. According to the most recent in-service notes, the most alarming statement made was that the firefighters still have no idea of Glovers “vision” for the department outside of the Strategic Plan.
Communication or should we say the lack of communication was the next big topic. Firefighters have concerns over the lack of visibility and communications from Chief Glover. It was noted that Chief Glover does not even take the time to send an e-mail to motivate the department after catastrophic events. They also don’t believe Glover listens or consults with his committees which could help him build relationships with those under his command.
After reading the part about communication I thought back to a recent story on the news about the storms hitting Fire Fighter Row in Celina. Imagine you are a firefighter enjoying a nice sleep and you awake to alarms and the sound of wind pushing in the walls of your home. You quickly realize your entire street is in the eye of a tornado and when it is all over, several neighbors who are also firefighters in the same department have their homes destroyed and your normal life just became chaotic in minutes. Would you expect a phone call from your Chief asking how you and your family were doing? Would you expect an email to go out from the Chief asking the command staff and front-line members to pray and donate their time to help with the clean up or whatever needs to be done? As the Chief, would you grab your clothes and tools and head out the door to support your brotherhood in person? The Frisco Firefighter’s Association showed up, raised money for the families, spent countless days cleaning up and lending hands. How long do you think it took Chief Lee Glover to do any of these things? Tick Tock, Tick Tock the seconds and minutes pass and the hands just go around the clock!
The firefighters feel they are on a path with the Fire Chief and City Manager of do more with less which the In-Service notes say is destroying morale. The frontline feels they are falling behind and going backwards. One comment was the firefighters have been left to drowned and the emotional and mental beat down is affecting the whole department.
What will it take for City Manager -Wes Pierson to drop his arrogant attitude, “MAN UP” and simply do his job?What will it take for the Mayor and City Council to admit the problem was never Fire Chief Mark Piland but a problem of their own doing that was 1000% avoidable? Rewind the clock and go back to the 2011 Climate Report that we talked about in our article Humpty Dumpty, which stated that then Fire Chief, Mack Borchardt and upper management command staff had run the department into the ground. That report led to the city council demanding he be “let go” but his good ole buddy City Manager, George Purefoy got him a nice and rather large retirement package. Then Purefoy gives him a golden parachute job in the City Manager’s office so the two best buddies could be together forever. Well, Purefoy retired but Borchardt is still with the city, in the same job today, making 6 figures and has a city vehicle?
The 2011 Climate Report also named Assistant Chief Lee Glover at the time as part of the problem which is why he was not named Chief in 2012, and the city brought it in Mark Piland. Now they want to you to believe Piland is the problem – yet the Association did not go for Civil Service under Piland. There are no 50+ page reports of Piland’s bad leadership and his yearly EVAL’s have him top notch. We are not saying things were perfect nothing ever is but it does seem the department was making changes and progress in the right direction. Now the City Manager and Council want you to believe Piland is a disgruntled employee and the “cancer” that plagued the department, because they had to hide that HR falsified documents. Even though they knew Glover’s past and previous issues (of which there are many) they choose to make him the new Fire Chief. Now that the bubble has burst and the public knows the systemic problems of 2011 followed Glover (old dogs don’t develop new habits) into his role as the current Fire Chief, they want you to believe a new story. Now everything is the fault of the Frisco Firefighter’s Association because they want more personnel to do their job safely and better workman’s comp benefits.
Here is where we are hung up, why, in what world or universe, did the City Manager Wes Pierson or the Frisco City Council think making Lee Glover the new Fire Chief was a good idea? A wise man once said if you repeat the mistakes of the past don’t expect a different outcome! After slowly making progress and change the last 10 years, in a department filled with trust issues, today our fire department is back in 2011. They are unhappy, the days of fear and lack of trust have resurfaced, have a City Manager who could not give two shXts and a City Council who blames the issues on the men and woman of the association, which is almost our whole department for the problem.
IT IS TIME FOR A COME TO JESUS as my mother used to say with the belt in her hand. Every single member on our city council, minus Brian Livingston have spoken against the men and woman in our Fire Department. Our City Manager has an ego bigger than the State of Texas and according to insiders in several departments, his arrogance is destroying the city from the inside out and he turns his nose up to the concerns of the Fire Department. At this point they will all have to pull a rabbit out of hat to blame next because we are pretty sure they are running out of employees to blame it on as they clean house to cover things up. Want the STEVE AUSTIN “COLD HARD TRUTH” …. The CITY COUNCIL IS THE PROBLEM; THE CITY MANAGER IS THE PROBLEM AND THE CURRENT FIRE CHIEF LEE GLOVER IS THE PROBLEM! Until citizens “wake up ” we will just let the clock go “Tick Tock, Tick Tock!”
Our team members have filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General in regard to the City of Frisco and Public Information Requests. The city has been notified and we will see how things roll out in the coming weeks.
Time after time we send requests to a city who likes to claim they are TRANSPARENT when really, they are using every avenue to withhold information from the public. We are hopeful the Texas AG will see that the City of Frisco is using their office to weaponize and withhold public information.
Do you love Amazon? It is hard to believe that there is one website where you could literally scroll and find anything and everything you want. Half the time, you can find items to buy that you did not even know you need, until low and behold your eyes see it! The dangers of scrolling can hit the pocketbook. We like to look at how the city spends our tax dollars, and it is kind of like Amazon. They spend money like they are shopping on Amazon, adding items to the cart and when they are bored they just look for something that tickles their fancy.
Imagine our surprise when scrolling through the city agendas, we found another interesting item from the July 2nd City Council Meeting related to purchasing authority. Daniel Ford, Director of Administrative Services sent a memo to the Mayor, Members of the Frisco City Council, and cc’d in Wes Pierson – City Manager and E.A. Hoppe – Assistant City Manager asking them to consider a change to the ordinance granting purchasing authority to the City Manager or his/her designee for all budgeted items not exceeding $100,000.
In 2017, the City Council approved a threshold increase from $25,000 to $50,000. Why are they now wanting to change it to $100,000? The memo states the request is being made to streamline the contract approval process, expedite routine non-controversial purchases, and to reduce the administrative burden on staff, while maintaining compliance and transparency.The word transparency made us laugh!
The memo goes on to read that in 2018 the purchasing of items on the consent agenda was 117 for the full year. Now they claim it has gone up to 245 for the full year and this change would reduce the administrative and processing time for putting council items together by almost two weeks. It also states the increase would allow more flexibility and efficiency to handle these agreements. HOW DOES MAINTAINING TRANSPARENCY AND FLEXIBILITY GO TOGETHER?
Would you be surprised to learn that Agenda Item #30 passed and was APPROVED 6 – 0. The new ORDINANCE 2024-07-32 basically allows the city to spend more with less oversight. How is that transparent? Who determines what is a ROUTINE AND NON-CONTROVERSIAL purchase? Oh yeah, the city determines that that! If one of the council members knocked on your door and said I need 100,000, don’t ask questions, just trust me, would you? The staff is asking to reduce the administrative burden they face so they want to be paid the same but have their workload made easier or do less work.
Does anyone besides us see an issue with this Ordinance? Interesting how they threw it on the agenda before the Summer Vacation break, don’t you think? Why does the city always claim they are taking steps to be more TRANSPARENT, yet they send almost every single PIR to the Attorney General and hide information from the public? If you think this is a bad change then you should email your city council and city manager. Now they claim in this memo they want to spend more with less oversight to be more transparent.
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