001Good evening everyone. I now call this uh special meeting to order. The Rio Grande Guruya ISD school board. The time is 602. This meeting was properly posted on April 7, 2025 at 5:47 p.m. We'll begin with roll call. Veronica Barrera, president. Present. Mr. Renee Pñena, present. Mr. Eduardo Ramirez, present. Mr. Noi Castillo present. Miss Paty Garcia present. Mr. Jesse Solis present. Mr. Vasilio Via Jr. present. And Miss Guadalupe Gara present. Thank you. We will now move to section three invocation. Will Mr. Pñena lead us in prayer? Let's go ahead and bow our heads. Lord Jesus, we just thank you for having us here this afternoon. Father, we ask for guidance, direction, Father, as we move this district forward. Father, may you bless our children as they go through their START testing. May you bless the
002teachers. Give them that relief of stress, Father, that they may just focus on what the kids need to uh do in order for them to do well on that exam. Father, we ask your guidance once again, your direction, and every decision that we make tonight. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Mr. Jesse, will you lead us uh with the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Moving on to section five, public comments. Miss Ibara, do we have anybody signed up? No. Thank you. Section six, action item A, consideration an action approving the use of unspent general obligation bond proceeds authorized for a specific purpose on Proposition
003C of an election held on May 1st, 2021 for another purpose as allowed by education code chapter 45 section 45105. Madam President, I just want to read into the minutes the actual notice to the public uh to make sure that we comply with the statute. So, there was a notice attached to this agenda item that reads, "Notice is hereby given that the board of trustees of the Rio Grande Gurua Independent School District passed an order calling a bond election on January 28, 2021. The election was held on May 1, 2021, in which Proposition C was approved by the voters. Proposition C was approved in the amount of $7,400,000, which was for the construction, acquisition, and equipment of the performing arts facilities and purchase of the necessary sites. The board of trustees of the Rio Grand
004Independent School District have abandoned the specific prop purpose of Proposition C and will now repurpose the use of the unspent general obligation bond proceeds of Proposition C for the construction acquisition and equipment of school buildings in the district particularly Gurua Middle School. A public meeting will be held on April 10th which is today at the multi-purpose center located at 1 Southport Ringold Rio Grande City, Texas. at which meeting the public will have the opportunity to address the board of trustees on the questions using unspent bond proceeds for the purpose other than specified for which the bonds were authorized. There was no public comments for this agenda item at the start of the meeting. Thank you. Do you have any additional information you would like to present? Uh I think on that particular uh proposition just
005what administration was requesting and I think that was what was read in the back is that we do have a certain amount of monies about $6.5 million and proposition C for performing arts center and administration is requesting that we move that money into proposition A so that we may fully continue or fully fund Gura Middle School because we're about seven is that 7.5 Miss Robles excuse me close to 8 million that uh we still owe to Gura Middle School. So administration does ask for this approval. So we may uh be able to pay uh Gria Middle School. So just to clarify, we do not have enough money to finish our Gurua Middle School. Um something happened with the planning, something happened with the prices that we are now having to take that money from one
006proposition and um carry it over to the other one. Yes, ma'am. That's correct. And then under Proposition C for the performing arts center, like I said, we have $6.5 million. Um, we are not anywhere close to building that uh fine arts center. So, it would behoove us to move that money to Proposition A and finalize Guria Middle School's payment. Great. All right. I have questions. In layman's terms, what are we doing? Are we abandoning the performing arts center? In layman's terms, pursuant to notice, you're abandoning anything that was under Proposition C at the ballot. I'm not spec I'm not sure what was in Proposition C, but whatever you all had labeled as Proposition C, that's what you would be abandoning. So, what Mles, what's in Proposition C, could I ask? Yes, ma'am. And this was
007something that the previous board majority had already discussed. I recall in previous meetings. Good evening. Under Proposition C, we had the performing arts center. Sir, that's the only thing we had. Yes. So, let me ask you a couple of questions. By abandoning the the the uh the performing arts center and putting the money into Luya, that's going to free up a $5 million into our fund balance. Would that be an accuracy? That's going to free up the whatever amount we move to Proposition A, which is the $6.5 million. Okay. So if we're if our projected fund balance was $20 million after the deficit with this it's going to be $25 million ma'am. Yes. Above that. Okay. Uh are you aware that Hardingen ISD has $20 million in the bank also? I was not aware of
008that. I'm just saying I'm telling you. So now we have $25 million and we're moving it correct and abandoning the performing arts. Well I can say that we have $25 million until the end of the year. However, we Well, depending on those are the protections. Yes. Because they they basically said we had 20 million. We're adding 5 million to it. So, now we're at $25 million. So, the only question I I would have I have no problem having moved the money to the perform getting the money away from the performing arts center and putting it in fund balance to try and and basically save some of the jobs. But basically, now we have five more million dollars than we had before, more or less. Yes. Yes. $6.5 million more, Miss Yenna. And just um because
009we're talking about the performing arts center, we have approximately close to $1.5 million that was spent. I have what you sent me expended obligations uh for plans. So, we spent $1.5 million in preparation of the performing arts center and we did nothing. So, it was $1.5 million spent preparing, which I actually am requesting that you give me invoices of what it is we paid. $1.5 million. From my understanding and what I've seen, we got overcharged in the preparatory or exp uh expenditures that we that we were doing. Um, and that's something that the board oversees and it's something it was our responsibility to take care of that money. $1.5 million for a project that was um we we had 7,400,000 now we have 5,900,000. So I just want to clarify on that Dr. Vera it's
0107.5 million uh well 1.5 in obligations if we would continue with the project but we paid it out. No, we never paid out the 1.5 paid through the floor plan phase which was how much do you know? Close to close to $1 million. Close to$1 million. So, let me ask you a question. So, we paid one million out. Yeah. One thing one thing that we must remember in all this, I mean, regardless of of of what it is that we have to remind ourselves that the community approved us for $7.4 million, how much did it end up costing us at the end? What was going to be the final cost on that fine arts auditorium? Do you recall? It was over $15 million what the architect had estimated the cost to be about more or
011less about 19 19.5 19.5 million. And we were at 7 we had approved 7.5 million. Correct. So we were nowhere near the number that was needed to build that fine arts at the time. Not even with the 7.5 million. Right. So if we would have continued with that project, we would have needed another 12 or so million and we would have to get that from where? Right. M Robles, let me ask a question. Pre-COVID, I call it pre-COVID, when we got this bond, construction costs were about $225 a square foot. They went up to 450. They doubled overnight basically. Before CO, they were 225. Correct. More or less. I'm not sure. Well, they were 225. After CO they became 450. So when we went for the bonds it was pre-COVID and those were the costs.
012Everything doubled in price as far as construction. Again that's what under the bridge. The only thing I'm trying to say we're going to have an extra five or $7 million I don't know in the fund balance. So now we're not going to have 20 million. We're going to have 25 or $27 million. The only thing I I I don't have a problem moving monies if I knew that you know we could save some jobs. But at the end of the day, we're going to have more money today than we've than we projected we had. And it's still basically uh rifted people. I I do want to just clarify that this bond was after CO. The the election was May 2021. CO was 2020. So this was after CO. My opinion it was it was miscalculations
013of whoever calculated how much on how much money we needed to uh for this project for these projects because everything pretty much laguya we also are missing millions of dollars. So that's my opinion and even if it were before CO there's a lot of projects that got done with bond monies following CO that that were proposed before and were still completed. We see it throughout the valley. And so that's my opinion. And uh if it no more discussion, we're going to go ahead and I have a question, ma'am. Just for legal. Um are we following the process to move these monies correctly that it won't be an issue with because I know that they were voted on for a specific reason and uh is uh this require like does this satisfy the requirement of us
014doing this if if this gets done, you know? Sure. So that's a good question, Mr. Castillo. Um, so this specific matter was being handled by your bond council, Mr. Rick Pettis. Okay. Mr. Rick Pettis did the instruction for this and we are following right now Mr. Pettis's recommendation on how to do this. And so pursuant to Mr. Pettis, this is the way to do it and it's a legal process. Okay. And so he drafted the agenda, he drafted the notice and he instructed administration to do it this way. Correct. I do say we have not reviewed it. Um, it was reviewed by us by what Mr. Pett is sent, but because it's your bond, it's your bond attorney who handles this matter, sir. Correct. Okay. Thank you. At this time, can I have a motion
015to approve item A as presented? So move. Mr. Ded, can I have a second? Second, Miss Paty, any further discussion? All those in favor, please raise your right hand. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. Okay. Section seven, we will not be going to executive session. Uh section eight, no personal matters. And uh we move on to section 9, item A, announcements for upcoming events. That'll be in the regular board meeting. Madam, so this meeting is being adjourned at 6:14. There are no further items in the agenda. I declare this meeting ajourned. Have a a good break. 15 minutes.