techno-ag said:

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TAMU1990 said:

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Still not in favor of this. More students means more expenses and more taxes. I do not want to pay for students who do not live in the city limits.

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More students means more money for the district. Taxes come from their home districts.

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TAMU1990 said:

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techno-ag said:

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TAMU1990 said:

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Still not in favor of this. More students means more expenses and more taxes. I do not want to pay for students who do not live in the city limits.

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More students means more money for the district. Taxes come from their home districts.

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The law says parents will receive about 85% of what schools get from state and local funding - roughly between $10,300 and $10,900 per year per student. So, we'll have more kids for less money.

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Bob Yancy said:

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This morning's Eagle has an eye opener of a story about it- the out of district acceptance policy has been approved. Here's one of many impactful quotes from district officials:

"…one of our highest loss campuses was Rock Prairie Elementary. We lost 12.3% of enrollment [at Rock Prairie]."

Based on enrollment numbers from the 2024-25 enrollment snapshot, College Station ISD had 2,378 students in early education, kindergarten and first and second grades combined. The district had 4,406 high schoolers in grades nine through 12 last year. There were 1,033 seniors who graduated from the district last year.

"As those [high school] grades graduate, if we can't grow those earlier grades that's just going to be heavier losses as we move forward," Wilson said.

Wilson said the district has capacity for 16,330 students while a 2025 enrollment snapshot showed 13,924 students actually enrolled in the district.

******

Closing out this post…

As one member of council I believe the need for attracting and retaining young families to our city should now be a strategic priority. That means economic diversification for job opportunities, and implementing proactive policies to mitigate the housing affordability crisis.

When our state and nation are faced with challenges, I don't believe "well, it's happening everywhere" is an acceptable response- indeed that's exactly when outstanding communities find the inherent resolve to lead the way.

Respectfully

Bob Yancy '95
College Station City Council, Place 5

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CS78 said:

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techno-ag said:

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Thanks for posting. Hope this puts to rest the "overcrowding" fallacy we've seen in this thread.

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Then I don't want to hear any "overcrowding" talk the next time that one of these critical bonds comes up for a vote. The bonds that are paid for by the people that actually live here.

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techno-ag said:

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CS78 said:

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techno-ag said:

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Thanks for posting. Hope this puts to rest the "overcrowding" fallacy we've seen in this thread.

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Then I don't want to hear any "overcrowding" talk the next time that one of these critical bonds comes up for a vote. The bonds that are paid for by the people that actually live here.

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You probably won't have to worry about redistricting as much either. The plan is to open up to K-6 grades first and fill the elementary schools that have lots of openings.

This is pretty much a win-win for everybody.

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13B said:

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Bob Yancy said:

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lost my dog said:

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As a College Station resident I greatly appreciate you posting on here. You did a really good job with the data center issue.

The problem I have with your analysis here is your base assumption that local governments should spur housing development. (You call it "smart growth", but one person's smart growth is another person's sprawl.) I would argue that local governments should do what the majority of local voters want not just what developers want. If voters want to eliminate development fees, of course eliminate them. But we don't vote on that as clearly as we should. In every city council election we seem to vote on the candidates who are quietly with the developers and the candidates who are for neighborhoods (i.e. against developers.) Fees are not openly discussed.

Why is it a problem if less expensive housing is built in Navasota, Snook, etc.? Why can't someone get their piece of the American Dream in one of those communities? You seem to think everyone needs to live in College Station - that's a little College Station-centered. Navasota needs some love. Snook is cool. Every location of a certain size has more expensive neighborhoods and less expensive neighborhoods. Why is it a problem if in our metro area these neighborhoods are across city boundaries? The real issues arise when the expensive bedroom communities are outside the city center, which is the exact opposite of the situation you are describing.

And the people driving their cars on the road to the College Station stores are paying sales tax here, even if they aren't paying property tax in CS.

With respect to the home values going up-property taxes going up because of lack of housing in College Station issue this is happening all across the state. I entirely grant you that. The state legislature seems to exert a lot of effort on reducing property taxes because of this. I'm not convinced that the inexpensive starter homes which you seem to have in mind would drive down the prices of the majority of housing in College Station (the people who buy in Pebble Creek are not buying starter homes), but I think this would take a lot more analysis than can be done on Texags.

Would you be willing to repurpose the city land behind Costco to a starter home subdivision instead of baseball fields? The City could figure out how to sell it to a developer with all impact fees waived/already paid since it owns the land.

As for the CSISD policy as someone said previously it's important to keep the schools full to spread the costs over the maximum number of students. But you're a city councilman, not a school board member. Don't use school issues as your entire guide for city decisions.

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Thanks for your kind opening words.

When young folks flee a city for lack of opportunity in jobs and housing, urban decay and faltering cities are the natural result. I hope Navasota and Snook prosper and do well, I just don't want to lose our share of a healthy population pyramid by pushing folks out there. That's what's happening.

We could absolutely continue to morph ourselves into a retirement community, which our demographic studies show we are accelerating into. That would ironically be better for me personally. I'm 60 with a good bit of real estate. At this rate, the homes I paid $165,000 for in just 2014 will be worth half a million dollars. And, in just 5 years, my taxes will be frozen.

My wife and I could go out for a nice steak dinner and be served by a young person with a bachelors degree, underemployed, who can't afford to live here for a lack of jobs and housing- but thats not the kind of urban decay and lost opportunity I want for this city.

I want a healthy College Station, with ample opportunity for everyone from new graduates to the retired, like me. My kids and grandkids deserve a shot at raising their families in our great city, don't they?

Study after study tells us plainly that a healthy city requires a healthy population pyramid; that onerous fees and regulations wreck a housing market; that unhealthy urban sprawl is the result of unequal regulatory regimes pushing growth unnaturally outward.

We've created a situation where prideful local craftsmen can only afford to build homes priced half a million and up. Where only national scale home builders with their own lumber mills and deep pocketed student tower investors can afford to build here. Where neighborhoods are being encroached upon and overoccupancy is commonplace. Where families are squeezed out by our rent-by-the-bedroom market and yes- school districts are under duress- and it's absolutely my job as an elected official to take that into account in the policies I espouse.

We have to get away from the anti-builder and anti-developer and anti-growth mindset that's taken root in our city. Cities cannot be frozen in time. We will need a healthy, growing built environment to continue to be the city of opportunity we once were, and that takes quality builders and developers.

I owe a lot to this city. I got out of the Air Force in 89, graduated from Tamu, found gainful employment here, bought my first home here, built my first custom home here, raised my family here, created a successful business here, sold it and retired early here. My family could have experienced those things elsewhere I'm sure. But those things happened for my family here- and I want your kids and grandkids, just like mine, to have the same shot- in College Station, Texas.

Respectfully

Yancy '95

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Why? Why do we have to continue to get bigger and bigger? All organisms quit growing at some point. Being too large is not healthy. When is enough, enough? Why do we have to jam more and more people into our footprint? B/CS is large enough. It doesn't have to die on the vine due to controlling its growth. If I wanted to live in Houston, then I'd move there. The people that come here, come here to escape that in many cases. I believe it is a fallacy to say if we don't continue to grow we will experience urban decay. People will naturally move in and move out. Maybe we should do something about the outrageous property taxes and that might help with affordable housing. I paid my house off (in 8 years), on family land that has been paid off for decades and yet I still have to pay about what a reasonable mortgage would cost every year in taxes. Why isn't there more of an effort to clean up existing areas and businesses?

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TAMU1990 said:

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I do question how are we going to grow when Bryan is to the north across the county; Navasota with district boundaries inside Brazos county to the south. Where is Navasota's city boundary? We have flood plain after Williams Creek to the river and Grimes county line to the East and Snook to the West? Where is the land to grow? There isn't a significant amount of land to expand.

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whoop1995 said:

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Bob Yancy said:

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13B said:

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Bob Yancy said:

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lost my dog said:

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As a College Station resident I greatly appreciate you posting on here. You did a really good job with the data center issue.

The problem I have with your analysis here is your base assumption that local governments should spur housing development. (You call it "smart growth", but one person's smart growth is another person's sprawl.) I would argue that local governments should do what the majority of local voters want not just what developers want. If voters want to eliminate development fees, of course eliminate them. But we don't vote on that as clearly as we should. In every city council election we seem to vote on the candidates who are quietly with the developers and the candidates who are for neighborhoods (i.e. against developers.) Fees are not openly discussed.

Why is it a problem if less expensive housing is built in Navasota, Snook, etc.? Why can't someone get their piece of the American Dream in one of those communities? You seem to think everyone needs to live in College Station - that's a little College Station-centered. Navasota needs some love. Snook is cool. Every location of a certain size has more expensive neighborhoods and less expensive neighborhoods. Why is it a problem if in our metro area these neighborhoods are across city boundaries? The real issues arise when the expensive bedroom communities are outside the city center, which is the exact opposite of the situation you are describing.

And the people driving their cars on the road to the College Station stores are paying sales tax here, even if they aren't paying property tax in CS.

With respect to the home values going up-property taxes going up because of lack of housing in College Station issue this is happening all across the state. I entirely grant you that. The state legislature seems to exert a lot of effort on reducing property taxes because of this. I'm not convinced that the inexpensive starter homes which you seem to have in mind would drive down the prices of the majority of housing in College Station (the people who buy in Pebble Creek are not buying starter homes), but I think this would take a lot more analysis than can be done on Texags.

Would you be willing to repurpose the city land behind Costco to a starter home subdivision instead of baseball fields? The City could figure out how to sell it to a developer with all impact fees waived/already paid since it owns the land.

As for the CSISD policy as someone said previously it's important to keep the schools full to spread the costs over the maximum number of students. But you're a city councilman, not a school board member. Don't use school issues as your entire guide for city decisions.

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Thanks for your kind opening words.

When young folks flee a city for lack of opportunity in jobs and housing, urban decay and faltering cities are the natural result. I hope Navasota and Snook prosper and do well, I just don't want to lose our share of a healthy population pyramid by pushing folks out there. That's what's happening.

We could absolutely continue to morph ourselves into a retirement community, which our demographic studies show we are accelerating into. That would ironically be better for me personally. I'm 60 with a good bit of real estate. At this rate, the homes I paid $165,000 for in just 2014 will be worth half a million dollars. And, in just 5 years, my taxes will be frozen.

My wife and I could go out for a nice steak dinner and be served by a young person with a bachelors degree, underemployed, who can't afford to live here for a lack of jobs and housing- but thats not the kind of urban decay and lost opportunity I want for this city.

I want a healthy College Station, with ample opportunity for everyone from new graduates to the retired, like me. My kids and grandkids deserve a shot at raising their families in our great city, don't they?

Study after study tells us plainly that a healthy city requires a healthy population pyramid; that onerous fees and regulations wreck a housing market; that unhealthy urban sprawl is the result of unequal regulatory regimes pushing growth unnaturally outward.

We've created a situation where prideful local craftsmen can only afford to build homes priced half a million and up. Where only national scale home builders with their own lumber mills and deep pocketed student tower investors can afford to build here. Where neighborhoods are being encroached upon and overoccupancy is commonplace. Where families are squeezed out by our rent-by-the-bedroom market and yes- school districts are under duress- and it's absolutely my job as an elected official to take that into account in the policies I espouse.

We have to get away from the anti-builder and anti-developer and anti-growth mindset that's taken root in our city. Cities cannot be frozen in time. We will need a healthy, growing built environment to continue to be the city of opportunity we once were, and that takes quality builders and developers.

I owe a lot to this city. I got out of the Air Force in 89, graduated from Tamu, found gainful employment here, bought my first home here, built my first custom home here, raised my family here, created a successful business here, sold it and retired early here. My family could have experienced those things elsewhere I'm sure. But those things happened for my family here- and I want your kids and grandkids, just like mine, to have the same shot- in College Station, Texas.

Respectfully

Yancy '95

---

Why? Why do we have to continue to get bigger and bigger? All organisms quit growing at some point. Being too large is not healthy. When is enough, enough? Why do we have to jam more and more people into our footprint? B/CS is large enough. It doesn't have to die on the vine due to controlling its growth. If I wanted to live in Houston, then I'd move there. The people that come here, come here to escape that in many cases. I believe it is a fallacy to say if we don't continue to grow we will experience urban decay. People will naturally move in and move out. Maybe we should do something about the outrageous property taxes and that might help with affordable housing. I paid my house off (in 8 years), on family land that has been paid off for decades and yet I still have to pay about what a reasonable mortgage would cost every year in taxes. Why isn't there more of an effort to clean up existing areas and businesses?

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College Station is an exceptionally clean and low tax city. The reason your taxes are going up is due to housing scarcity which drives valuations up. No matter how low your tax rate is, and it is, if demand is unmet by supply then prices rise. As prices rise so too do taxes paid, even sometimes when rates are lowered. That's what's happening.

Growth cannot be controlled, only deflected. It's not within a community's power to artificially stop growth without massive negative consequences, and we are experiencing the early onset of those consequences now.

Austin tried to throttle down on growth in the 80s and 90s. It failed miserably, wrecked their housing market and worsened traffic. Growth spilled out into immediately surrounding areas, and along with it the investments and revitalization that would've taken place with older areas and structures of their city.

We all long for yesteryear sometimes. The only way to get it is to live in a small stagnant town far away from one as vibrant and dynamic as this one.

Respectfully

Yancy '95

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Bob
in a nutshell I think what the previous poster was saying is it is okay to shut down a school if warranted not to keep it alive by extra means. It is ok for the school district to shrink and therefore have teachers and administrators lose their jobs because if downsizing. It happens everyday in the real world but never in government.

Seems that a simple solution would be to reshuffle the deck, let go of some staff and move on. Why can't this be done?

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CS78 said:

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AgFan247 said:

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I can't imagine trying to buy a home for the first time now, when a small 3/2 is over $300k, when just 10-15 years ago it was half that.

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Sometimes I think it's easy to have a short memory. I bought a new College Station starter home in 2004 for $134k. That same home 21 years later will currently sell for around $270k. This falls right in line with the long-term trend of a home basically doubling in value every 20 years. Or an annual appreciation of only 3.5%.

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JP76 said:

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The last 5 years have definitely not been normal in the housing market .

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