Cy-Fair ISD's $1.636 billion bond costs $3,232,862,438 to repay. The district's own notice puts the increase on a $100,000 home at $0.

Cypress-Fairbanks ISD is asking Harris County voters for $1,636,520,000 in bonds on November 3. The district’s own voter information documents put the cost of paying them back at $3,232,862,438, and put the estimated annual tax increase on a $100,000 home at approximately $0.

Why it matters

Cy-Fair is the largest school district in Harris County and its bond is the largest single number on the November 3 ballot. The interest is not an outside projection. State law puts it in the legal notice the district filed and the county posted, on the same page as the principal.

Early voting starts October 19. What Proposition B buys is easy to look up. What it costs to repay is not, and it is the larger number.

By the numbers

From the Harris County Clerk’s posted Notice of Debt Obligation Elections, 938 pages, read October 11.

Proposition B, buildings, buses and safety equipment. $1,299,520,000 principal, $1,537,843,167 estimated interest, $2,837,363,167 to repay. The interest is 118.3 percent of the principal, by this desk’s arithmetic on the district’s two figures.
Proposition C, instructional technology, $256,075,000 plus $35,583,720 interest. Proposition D, stadiums, $60,800,000 plus $17,216,750. Proposition E, swimming facilities, $20,125,000 plus $5,698,801.
All four together: $1,636,520,000 of principal and $1,596,342,438 of interest, $3,232,862,438 in all. The addition is this desk’s; each of the eight figures is the district’s.
Already owed as of August 10: $4,624,993,438, being $3,264,440,000 of principal and $1,360,553,438 of interest. If all four pass, the total obligation is about $7.86 billion.
All four documents give the same answer for the estimated maximum annual tax increase on a homestead appraised at $100,000: approximately $0.
Channelview ISD, on the same ballot. $165,140,000 principal and $151,111,313 interest, $316,251,313 to repay.

What the coverage buried

The repayment figures are not unreported. Texas Scorecard published the $1.596 billion of interest and the roughly $3.233 billion total on September 22, and its numbers match the documents. Community Impact’s August 11 story described all four bond propositions by what they would buy and printed no dollar amount for any of them, so a reader of that version alone could not learn the bond is $1.6 billion. The $0 line appears in neither, and it sits in the same four documents as the interest.

Channelview’s documents carry a plainer problem. The voter information document headed Proposition B discloses the impact of bonds “to be authorized under Proposition A.” The one headed C says B, D says C, E says D. Channelview’s Proposition A is its tax rate election, not a bond, so the letters are off by one in all four and none discloses an impact for Proposition E. Confirmed on the rendered page, not only in extracted text.

The other side

The $0 is not spin, it is the statute. Texas Government Code Section 1251.052 makes every district compute the example on a homestead appraised at $100,000, and the state homestead exemption for school taxes is now $140,000, which Cy-Fair’s own footnote cites. The example reads zero for every Texas school bond this year, large or small. The district cannot change it.

Cy-Fair also publishes a real number. Its election site shows a 9 cent net rate change and $126 a year on its example home, and the bonds are not what drives it. The district’s order has debt service falling from 40 cents to 37 cents while maintenance and operations rises 12 cents, which is Proposition A, the tax rate election, not Propositions B through E. On the district’s own forecast the bonds need no debt service increase at all. The interest figures are estimates built on a 5 percent rate and a set issuance schedule, and the documents say so.

What to watch

October 19 through October 30, early voting. October 23, mail ballot deadline. November 3, election day.
Whether the projected 3 cent debt service reduction is actually adopted. The 9 cent net depends on it.
Whether Channelview ISD or the county corrects the proposition letters before early voting opens.

Bottom line

The principal has been widely reported, the repayment barely at all, and the disclosure the state requires reads $0 because the state wrote the example that way. The price of Proposition B is in the district’s own notice. It is $2.8 billion.