Maintaining the tax rate, tailgate on tap

Keeping the total tax rate the same, paying off bonds early and the upcoming tailgate party celebrating the 100th birthday of Ector County ISD.

In his media call Wednesday, Superintendent Scott Muri said the ECSID board of trustees voted to keep the tax rate the same at a total of $1.17 per $100 valuation.

The Texas Legislature compressed school district’s tax rates a few years ago.

“They’ve done that for the past three years, so I commend the board of trustees for their good stewardship of our dollars and for making a wise decision on keeping the tax rate the same. That will allow ECISD to continue to do the good work that we do to make sure that we’re providing quality education for our students,” Muri said.

In addition, at the last school board meeting trustees voted to prepay some of the district’s bonds to pay them off a little bit early.

“In fact, we’re going to pay off about $5.5 million worth of bonds. The good news comes from the amount of interest savings that will take place. We will save $2.5 million in interest payments by paying off that $5.5 million in bonds many years early. So again, due to the good stewardship of our trustees we were able to pay those bonds off early and then save the taxpayers $2.5 million over the life of those bonds,” Muri said.

On the celebration, Muri said the district is inviting everyone to Ratliff Stadium starting at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 8.

There will be food trucks from around the Permian Basin, Muri said.

A concert with Permian and Odessa high school students will be held followed by the Gatlin Brothers.

“… The Grammy award winning Gatlin Brothers will be live on stage on that Friday night, sharing their incredible musical talent,” Muri said. “As many of you know, the Gatlin Brothers are sons of ECISD. They were part of our community for many years and have gone on to experience great fame in the music world and will be sharing their talents with us that night.”

The festivities before the football game are free, but there will be a charge for the game, which starts at 7 p.m. Oct. 8.

The evening will conclude with a drone show.

“Some school districts will conclude a special event with fireworks, but we’re going to kind of one up that opportunity. We have a really exciting opportunity with drone technology coming in to provide a closing activity that evening for the entire community. That will be a pretty fun display,” Muri said.

Asked about the COVID tests ECISD was expecting from the state, Muri said they have not received the rapid tests yet so students and staff are not being tested with them.