04/18/24
May 10, 2016
Texas City Will Build $62.8 Million High School Football Stadium: Voters in a school district in McKinney, Texas, north of Dallas have approved $62.8 million to build a new high school football stadium. The 12,000-seat facility will be the most expensive high school stadium in the country, according to Sports Illustrated.
At least it won't be like the Olympic facilities in Sarajevo.
That is some first class shade throwing there - that's like saying "at least it won't be like the Titanic" or "at least it won't be like Chernobyl."
The rest of your comment is also 100% accurate and true based on my experience with school boards, too.
posted by Joey Michaels at 06:52 PM on May 10, 2016
According to the school district, majority of the bond projects are for district schools. Presumably that's why it passed with 66 percent of the vote.
posted by jjzucal at 08:49 PM on May 10, 2016
The story didn't mention what other district or municipal needs might be not addressed or properly funded in order to make this project happen.
I've seen this sort of thing happen in my own school district. The minute one parcel of debt is retired, administrators think that they've got the green light to replace it with another round of brand new debt. No one ever talks about having a few fiscal years without the debt instead.
Doing capital projects like this is a big feather in the resume of superintendents and other district officials who will move on to other career opportunities at some point, leaving the debt and accompanying aspects of fiscal irresponsibility behind.
In my district, the superintendent pushed through an expensive sports improvement project that was approved. Then a year later, he came back with a project for badly needed upgrades to the classrooms, science labs, etc.
He thought he was pretty clever. Get the sports funding approved first, which is seen as discretionary. Then come back for the essential spending. He thought voters would never deny the district the classroom upgrades. He was wrong. Voters said: "we are at our limit - we can't do this right now". So now we have swank turf fields and substandard classrooms. And the asshole has moved on to a new job.
To me, this stadium is obscene, but at least three high schools will be using the facility. That means that no matter how many kids get pulled out of the sport due to repetitive brain injury concerns in the years to come, there will probably be the equivalent of at least one team playing there when the debt is halfway retired. At least it won't be like the Olympic facilities in Sarajevo.