Ponder ISD Bond

05/03/2026

Denton County is showing Ponder ISD Bond Prop A passed by 11 votes. Only 947 votes were cast out of 13,558 registered voters. That means 3.5% of the registered voters voted in a huge tax bond on the 96.5% of the voters who did not vote for it.

If there are any provisional NO voters out there, I think you have a few days to take your credentials to the County to have your vote counted. Short of that, it looks like two of the three bond proposals passed, with the stadium failing.

My thanks to all those who were willing to listen. This shows how important it is to get out and vote. I hope the 12,611 registered voters are willing to get their wallets out and pay a lot more in property taxes.

The only remedy at this point is to elect fiscal conservatives to the Ponder ISD Board to make sure the money is spent wisely and make sure it is not wasted.

05/03/2026

Early Voting Results are in. The results are very tight. We did not start posting and gaining traction until early voting was well under way so I feel we still have a good chance of defeating at least Propositions A & B, A being the big one.

05/02/2026

Hard to disagree with this, especially when property taxes, (government rent), exceeds the mortgage payment.

Do you agree? 🧐

05/02/2026

Today is the day to tell PONDER ISD we are Taxed Enough Already. Today is the Day to tell the Big Remote Corporations and LLCs who spent $25,000 in Ponder and a total of $50,000 in surrounding school districts to push $700 MILLION in new tax bonds to go home!

They are not telling the truth about the tax cost of the $305 MILLION Bond. It will cost the average Ponder ISD homeowner $102,000 in additional taxes through the life of those bonds, including the kids who will graduate and pay taxes, that they say it is for. Granted, depending on when your children start paying taxes, the amount may be less. Ponder ISD & City already have the highest tax rates in Denton County. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Vote today at Ponder Town Hall on Bailey St. Voting is 7 AM to 7 PM. Tell Ponder ISD to bring back a smaller more measured bond for their near-term needs, not a high blank check for projected needs 5-10 years into the future. VOTE NO.

Steve Ga***rd, Concerned Ponder ISD Taxpayer.

05/01/2026

I am struggling a little today, trying to figure out how to explain to people who do not understand that when you raise the amount of school debt you owe from $65 Million to $370 Million that taxes over time will be 5x higher than without that debt. I decided to try a car payment analogy.

I could buy a Chevy Truck for $62,000 and have a monthly payment of $1000 over six years. Or I could buy an Audi A6 for $74,000 with a payment of $1200/mo. If I really wanted to splurge, I could buy a McClaren 750S for $318,000 but my payment would be $5100/mo. and my insurance would probably be $1,000 a month more, but I would have a fancy car I could brag about. I see a lot more Chevy Trucks than McClarens driving around.

The point of this story is Ponder ISD has already borrowed the equivalent of 1000 Chevy Trucks that taxpayers are paying for. They now want to buy the equivalent of 1000 McClaren 750S fancy cars and want you to make the payments on both through your property taxes. It will take a long time to pay all that off. Before that, they will want you to buy them something else.

If money grew on trees, or someone else was making the car payments, maybe I'd drive a nicer car. I buy new cars, but I've never paid more than $45,000. I actually like to pay mine off. It sure is nice when that car payment stops and I have that money freed up to spend on something else. I've explained to our son you can be a lot happier living on 80% of what you make than 100%. He has reached that point and is a lot happier as a result, no longer struggling to pay his bills.

Take another scenario where you have one car payment that your family is sharing but now you need two cars. Do you buy the $318,000 McClaren or a more practical Audi A6 for $74,000? The combined payment with the McClaren is $6,150. It is only $2,200 if you go with the Audi A6 or maybe you go with something cheaper yet because you have a limited budget and you want to be able to feed your kids.

The point of this is that Ponder ISD wants the McClaren, they want almost 1000 of them and they want us taxpayers to pay for them. They don't want to propose a modest bond to take care of immediate needs like a second Chevy Truck or an Audi that would have much smaller debt payments.

For anyone who believes your taxes will not go up, I feel sorry for you. Only 41% of Ponder High Schoolers are at grade level in Math so that may explain some of the thinking. As the current debt is paid down, the debt tax rate should go down. The average Ponder taxpayer paid an extra $450 in taxes last year because the Ponder ISD Board raised the debt tax rate to the state maximum of 50 cents, 17.3 cents higher than it should be to make the existing bond payment. Wouldn't you like to have that extra $450 to spend on your family. The last chart is from the State of Texas that shows what happens to the Ponder debt and your taxes, if the bond fails.

I came to this discussion late, so I do not know all the details of the projected needs. Someone posted that the first school to run out of space is projected to be the elementary school in 2030. If that is the case, there is plenty of time to bring back a smaller bond for a second elementary school and have it ready for 2030. That is four years from now.

I have gotten a lot of criticism for engaging in this debate because I only own rental property in Ponder, I don't live there. The fact is I have paid $78,000 in property taxes in the last dozen years. Another fact is that the property taxes on that house have almost tripled in 12 years. They are almost 50% higher per year than the mortgage payment. That was unheard of when I was younger. Property taxes should never be more than the mortgage payment, in my opinion. If they are, we are paying more rent to the State of Texas than we are in making our mortgage payment.

Thanks for your consideration. Please vote NO tomorrow at Ponder Town Hall.

My tenant tells me he will vote no. I made a deal with him eight years ago that I would only raise the rent if taxes and insurance went up, I have honored that deal. He is a retired veteran and I want to honor his service. I do not want to raise the rent as high as I can based on market conditions and force him to move out.

Steve Ga***rd, Ponder Concerned Taxpayer

04/30/2026

Why are we letting big construction companies come in and fund our local school bond elections? Core Construction Services is the largest donor to three local school bond elections, Ponder, Pilot Point, & Sanger ISD. In total they amount to about 2/3 of a BILLION Dollars in new bonds, with interest, closer to $1.5 BILLION.

Why are we letting these outside companies come in to try and influence our school districts and taxes? I can only assume they are doing so with the hope of building up a book of hundreds of millions of dollars of future business. Their campaign literature says the same thing, they are made up of local parents, teachers and volunteers but the real money comes from these outside companies whose contributions dwarf the contributions of local parents, teachers, and volunteers. In Ponder there is only one local person who donated, in the amount of $100. The bulk of the $25,000+ is coming from outside construction companies trying to build up their book of business.

Enough is enough. Tell these big companies we cannot be bought with gift cards and free ice cream. Those are sucker bets compared to the average taxes per homeowner which is $102,000 for the average Ponder homeowner, if the huge bond passes.

VOTE NO on May 2, 2026!

Steve Ga***rd, Concerned Ponder Taxpayer.

04/30/2026

Ponder ISD wants voters to authorize a huge bond debt based on large projected growth, that may or may not come. With poor performing schools and the highest school, town/city and combined property tax rates in Denton County, I suspect there may be more attractive cities.

The charts below show the scope of what you are being asked to vote on this Saturday May 2, 2026. If the $305 Million bond proposals pass, the total authorized debt will be about 3/8 of a BILLION Dollars, or $375 MILLION.

With Interest of over $300 MILLION, the total taxes to pay off the proposed bonds and existing debt will be almost $700 MILLION or approaching 3/4 of a BILLION Dollars.

Ponder ISD has already maxed out the Bond Debt tax rate at 50 cents. They are 17.3 cents higher than they need to be for the existing bonds. That cost the average taxpayer $450 this last year. However; it allows them to tell the half-truth that passing the bonds won't raise the tax rate - that is partially true, I submit they raised it ahead of time at taxpayer's expense so they could claim that half-truth.

As shown on previous calculations and detailed spreadsheets, the cost of the proposed $305 Million Bonds to the average Ponder homeowner is $102,000 over 35 years.

Steve Ga***rd, Concerned Ponder Taxpayer

04/30/2026

I am looking at some charts to give a quick glance at some of the finances Ponder ISD is looking at if the $305 Million Bond passes. I pulled an existing chart from the Texas Bond Review Board where they show the Debt per Average Daily Attendance, (ADA). The Blue line is Ponder ISD and I believe the yellow line is a state average, they call it Trending. Ponder ISD in 2025 was at about $42,000/ADA. The Trendline is about $32,700.

Ponder jumped well above the state average when the last bonds were issued in 2021. Ponder is 28% above the state average of Debt per ADA. With absences, Ponder ADA numbers were about 7% below their total students in 2025.

I ran two sets of assumptions at 3% & 7% student growth over 9 years. I assumed that Ponder ISD will sell the bonds evenly over 5 years. I think the bond authorization expires after 5 years under Texas Law, which means they lose the authorization if they don't sell them over five years. I assumed they pay down the existing principal balance $2M a year while they are selling bonds and $3M/yr. when they finish selling bonds in 2031. I then modeled 3% & 7% student growth.

At 3% annual student growth, which is more than what Ponder ISD has seen so far, the Debt/ADA goes up from $42,000 in 2025 to $199,000 in 2030 and drops down to $165,000 in 2035 when the student population is about 2270. Those numbers assume no additional bonds sold before 2035.

At 7% annual student growth, which is more than double what Ponder ISD has seen so far, the Debt/ADA goes up from $42,000 in 2025 to $171,000 in 2030 and drops down to $117,000 in 2035 when the student population is about 3199. Those numbers assume no additional bonds sold before 2035. I used an ADA to student ratio of about 93% which is based on 2025 TEA numbers.

The state Trendline shows some dips and curves. In 2015 the Debt per ADA was $16,200 and in 2025 it was $32,700 so perhaps it is reasonable to think it will double again in ten years to $65,000.

If Ponder ISD sees 3% growth and the above assumptions are correct, and there are no additional bonds sold, Ponder ISD will be at 250% of the state average of Debt to ADA in 2035 compared to 128% of the state average in 2025. If Ponder ISD sees 7% growth and no additional bonds are sold, Ponder ISD would be at 180% of the state average in 2035.

That seems pretty high above the norm in either case. Argyle has seen some substantial growth, maybe 60% in the last six years, but they are an A-rated school district, not a C-rated district like Ponder, and they are closer to I-35 and Fort Worth.

Steve Ga***rd, Concerned Ponder Taxpayer