WCAD NOT BEST CHOICE FOR DISTRICT, MCGARR SAYS:

WCAD Not Best Choice for District, McGarr Says 

Katy Times

November 24, 1993

by Judy Triplett

The Katy Independent School District should join the Harris County Appraisal District, said Trustee Member Mary McGarr at Monday night's board meeting.

McGarr said she believed that it cost more for KISD to belong to the Waller County Appraisal District than it would the Harris County Appraisal District.

KISD contracts with WCAD to make appraisals and collect taxes for the district.  The Appraisal District has offices in [the] KISD Central Administration Building, which it leases from the district.

"I object to our use of the Waller County Appraisal District for several reasons," said McGarr.  "First of all, if we say that we're doing this for control of this organization, then it is my belief that if we wanted to have control we should make sure all the board members at least reside in the Katy Independent School District."

"I also believe that we now are paying more for this service through this organization than we would through the Harris County Appraisal District," she said.

McGarr said that the school district pays more for the service than 19 of the other school districts that use Harris County Appraisal District. [I had called all of the other School District's tax collectors to find out what they were paying, per parcel, for appraisal services, so that was a FACT.  It was truly skewed for KISD.]

She also said that having the appraisal district offices in the administration building was taking up needed space and was costing the school district more money in the long run.

"We've got file cabinets and secretaries in the hallways," McGarr said in a later interview.  "I don't understand why we want (the appraisal district) there."

McGarr said when she asks the school district why it is set up the way it is, she is told it's because the district has more control in the Waller County Appraisal District than it would in Harris County's.

But she thinks that being in the WCAD is just costing the district more money.

"I think it's too expensive," McGarr said. "But if we're going to pay more moneyy, then all the board members should live in Katy ISD."

The board approved the Waller County Appraisal District contract, with only McGarr voting against it.

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I know this article sounds a bit weird.  The reporter didn't get what I was trying to do and/or she was poking fun at me.  Before I was elected, I had realized that the use of the Waller County Appraisal District by KISD was a scam.  I made it an issue in my campaign. The only reason KISD used them instead of the Harris County Appraisal District was so that the big landowners in the west end of Harris County could continue to not pay, in my opinion, their fair share of taxes to KISD (or anywhere else that collected county taxes).  Their land was beginning to sit empty and unused for rice farming or anything else.  I received phone calls while on the Board from people telling me that the same three cows were being moved around so that the appraiser would have to stipulate that the land was being used for "agricultural purposes" and thus could not be taxed. The land owners were just waiting for the population to move their way before they started selling off their land.  They wanted to sell it for as much as they could, which is understandable, but they apparently didn't want to pay any taxes on it in the meantime.  I didn't think that was right. In essence, that meant that all of us who lived on a concrete slab were picking up the tab for the school district!  Ironically, the people who lived in the East End subdivisions never realized that THEY, with their large expensive homes, were the ones picking up most of the tab for the school district, but they never exerted their due influence on things that happened in the school district. 

I called the Board's hand about the "control" business one year by nominating Steve Hauck, a respected "old Katy" citizen who lived within the boundaries of the school district, for the WCAD board position that KISD got to pick because they got more votes than all the other entities.  It caused quite a stir, but even then, the Board stuck to its guns and kept the Waller County Board member who was also a large land owner, but not a resident of KISD. I thought they were all really not too smart to do that when it made my point! Mr. Hauck was obviously not someone who THEY could control even though he lived in "old Katy."

When I had called all the tax appraisal districts around and all the school district tax collectors, I ran across a fellow who told me all about what KISD was doing.  Unfortunately, about the time I got on the Board, that fellow was named the KISD tax collector! When that happened I decided to drop my protests and just hope that he would be an honest administrator.

If one does not understand what the Appraisal District does, it's hard to see what I was doing and harder still to explain it all--thus the problem.  But suffice it to say that if the Appraisal District dances to the tune of the school district, they can set appraisals wherever the District wants them and can be hard nosed or not about appeals. It's very handy to have everything under one roof and to be in control, in my opinion.

In addition, while KISD paid most of the expenses for this Appraisal District, I didn't think it was right that all the employees of the WCAD received the same holidays, vacation days, salaries, retirement benefits and so forth as if they were KISD employees!  I believed it to be  pretty incestuous to say the least. The taxpayers in Katy ISD, in essence, were also paying for most of the expenses of appraising the rest of the Waller County Appraisal District.

All this chicanery just transpired with no one doing a thing about it.  Before I was elected, I wrote to legislators, the Governor, and anyone else I could think of.  No one would do a thing about it. 

When I was running for the Board, (I had to run four times to get on it--two elections and two run-offs before I finally won) Board Member Jim Williams was a Board member for WCAD as well as for KISD!  I had plenty to say about that, and the Legislature finally passed a law that said a citizen could not be a Board member on two Boards when the interests of one were not always compatible with the interests of the other.

I guess that didn't occur to the KISD Board before I pointed that out and raised cane about it.

The Katy citizens always made sure there were enough "old Katy" people on the KISD board (or people who would go along with the scheme) to keep this situation in tact.

I was quite happy when KISD dropped this relationship.  I'm sure it got tricky when more and more homes were built within the boundaries of the appraisal district, and other school districts and county entities realized that KISD had an edge that they didn't have. By then the values of all our homes were pretty well jacked up so that it was self-perpetuating, it would appear. Eventually the KISD Board voted to allow tax appraisals to be done by HCAD.

This is just one of many examples of the duplicitous activities in which KISD engages to the detriment of its taxpayers and students. As usual it's all about doing what is fair.