KISD REPORT ON STADIUM USAGE USED TO SUPPORT DECLARED NEED FOR A NEW STADIUM:
NEWS RELEASE:
Katy I.S.D. Pads Football Attendance While Wanting Bigger Stadium In Next Bond Issue
At the same time Katy I.S.D.’s athletic department and administration were trying to build
behind-the-scenes support for the construction of a new 16,000-seat football stadium with
a multi-story press box, the District was over-reporting actual attendance at home
football games played at Rhodes Stadium in 2008 by at least 29%.
That is according to findings released this week by the Katy-based public education
research and advocacy website www.georgescottreports.com. The report was released after a
comprehensive review of official attendance records maintained by the District. The
report also included analysis of other documentation obtained by the online publication
through the State’s Public Information Act.
“The District’s ‘2008 Rhodes Stadium Attendance Report’ asserts that just under 167,000
fans and students attended the 29 home football games played during this season. In fact,
a more reasonable estimate of actual attendance is 128,551,” George Scott said in
releasing his report. “The District chose to produce a report that overstates attendance
by 29% for 29 home games for a stadium that operated at an average of 45% capacity for the
season.”
“The discrepancy involves numbers that were literally ‘plugged’ for
both home and visiting teams’ band and drill teams,” Scott said. “The District chose to
report 2,000 band and drill team members for every game played at Rhodes when in fact,
that number is a self-serving myth.” The official report of the District allocated 58,000
in attendance in the 29 games for the band and drill teams.
“If the District chooses to spread a few hundred students out over an
expansive section of the stadium to make them more comfortable then it can do that,” Scott
said. ”However, just don’t put those tens of thousands of empty seats in a report titled
attendance and prepare to assert publicly that the District needs a bigger stadium.”
“The District’s record-keeping and the use of plugged numbers makes it impossible to
determine a “literal number of attendance”, but I have documented with great precision how
my numbers are the closest to reality as reasonably possible. The District’s numbers are
puffed, pumped and not credible,” Scott said.
It is no secret that the District’s athletic director Rusty Dowling
has been leading a study committee during 2008 with the assistance of PBK Architects,
designed to recommend that a new football complex be included in the next bond issue. The
paper work of that study committee documents that the District had planned at one point to
hold the bond issue in November 2009.
Moreover, the District has identified the likely location of the stadium to be on 65 acres
of a 160-acre site to be used if voters ultimately approved the construction of a seventh
high school. Paper work distributed by Dowling at one of the committee’s meetings reads
as follows:
“65 acres would be enough for a 16,000 stadium if we shared 1,000 parking spaces with the
high school”
Those numbers were not available from schools outside the District that played at Rhodes
Stadium. So, the re-calculation assigned each of those schools with the average of the
District’s schools, plus about 10% just in case one of the visitors had an extraordinary
contingent of members.
Scott’s report used the following District-provided numbers for band and drill team
membership for Katy schools, and the calculated number for visitors:
Katy: 320
Taylor: 385
Mayde Creek: 285
Cinco Ranch: 410
Morton Ranch: 200
Seven Lakes: 390
Each visitor’s band and drill teams were assigned a number of 363 members.
In addition, the report adds a total number of 526 8th grade band members who are
estimated by the District to have participated in one night for each high school. The
number of 526 was added to the total attendance figure rather than on a game basis.
Based upon this methodology (see tables), Scott reports the following realistic assessment
of the percentage of capacity used at the 9,750-seat Rhodes Stadium for the 29 home games:
20 to 29% capacity: 4 games
30 to 39% capacity: 10 games
40 to 49% capacity: 5 games
50 to 59% capacity: 6 games
60 to 69% capacity: 1 game
70 to 79% capacity: 0 games
80 to 89%: capacity: 2 games
90 to 99%: capacity: 1 game
In response to a question from an unidentified committee member as to why the District
wanted a 16,000-seat stadium, Dowling distributed the following written answer:
“Very rarely do we have 5A football playoff games in Katy ISD. 10,000 seats is not enough
- most stadiums that host playoff games have at least 16,000 seating capacity. That is
where the number formed - are we sold on that number - No…but where do we make the
cutoff?”
Scott called the District’s statement regarding 5A playoffs to be simultaneously ludicrous
and insulting to taxpayers and contradictory to Katy I.S.D.’s own experience in 2007 and
2008.
“Katy has hosted three 5A playoff games since the end of the regular season this year. At
no game, did the 9,750 capacity of Rhodes Stadium present a capacity problem,” Scott said.
”At each and every game involving Strake Jesuit, Memorial and Eisenhower this playoff
season at Rhodes Stadium, there were caverns of space available. From ticket box cash
reports, these schools appeared to have brought fewer than 1,000 fans.”
“In other words, the District has made a big deal privately about capacity when its own
information blows this self-induced nonsense out of the water,” Scott said. “If the
District wants to respond by blaming the University Interscholastic League for the
distribution of thousands of empty seats, then I’ll be glad to engage any official in
front of any assemblage of local taxpayers.”
“If the District wants to use attendance at the three 5A playoff games played at Rhodes in
2008 or the 5A playoff game involving Madison last year, they’ll fail to convince taxpayer
of the need for 16,000 seat stadium,” Scott said. ”They have played 5A playoff games
through the third round at Rhodes Stadium this year without stadium capacity being a
factor.”
There’s another factor to the District’s private assessment of playoff capacity needs.
“By the time a team gets to the fourth round of the playoffs, the likelihood of such a
game being played at the home field of any participant is remote and the District knows
it,” Scott said. “To suggest that Katy I.S.D. taxpayers build a mega-complex on the basis
of its theoretical use every once in a while is a testament to what is wrong with
government at all levels as well as the arrogance of the leadership of Katy I.S.D.”
During the course of the 2008 season, the District rescinded an earlier hike in ticket
prices and cited the economic circumstances surrounding Hurricane Ike as a reason. Two
other reasons cited included unexpected state revenue and increased revenues from junior
varsity football games.
Scott mocked the stated rationale for the decision.
“The District gets an unexpected infusion of dollars from the State and allocates any of
it to football rather than academics!” Scott said. ”That’s an interesting thesis and an
extraordinary value judgment, but according to documents obtained, the District did not
prove any direct link to the receipt of the money and to the subsequent allocation of
resources to the athletic department.”
“The District’s formal response to a request to provide documentation of increased junior
varsity football revenues is almost farcical,” Scott said.
In response to Scott’s request to provide such documentation of increased junior varsity
revenues, the District actually wrote the following:
“The increased revenues at junior varsity football games statement is based upon visual
observations of attendance at junior varsity games.”
“I guess this is a radical new approach to forensic accounting,” Scott said adding that
speculation about other possible reasons is justified given such “public policy
gibberish.”
“As the District was studying the need for a large new stadium, it
was being forced under provisions of state law to actually disclose how many people were
attending football games,” Scott said. “Perhaps the new policy was just a coincidence.
If that was a plan to gain a boost in attendance, there’s no
evidence the strategy worked.”
“At some point in the future, the District will need a second facility to host football
games. The notion that it needs a 16,000-seat mega-complex is absurd to the extreme,”
Scott said. “The very notion distorts knowable facts and its ‘justification’ is based upon
the District’s mantra of why spend less money when it is so easy to spend more money.”
“The bottom line is that this District is led by a school board that is allowing its
administration and athletic department to pursue a premeditated strategy to convince
taxpayers to build more stadium than is needed; to spend more money than is necessary; and
to shun any effort to pursue reasonable alternatives,” Scott said. ”If the District
continues this strategy, it will impose great harm to the taxpayers, teachers, students
and patrons of this District. If the District continues to pursue this strategy, we’ll
all pay a heavy price for this level of bureaucratic and administrative arrogance.”
“Perhaps the most positive thing that can be said about the entire
process so far is that the District ‘made a mistake’ and put Kevin Tatum on the study
committee,” Scott said.
“The taxpayers of Katy owe him thanks for raising important issues
and creating a valuable paper trail.”