The Stephenville city council wants to borrow $22 million to repair roads and build a new city hall, and it may have to raise the property tax by as much as 9 cents to repay the loan. If public opinion is to be respected and possible public resentment and anger avoided, the public should have the opportunity to approve the city council’s plans before the council is allowed to take action.
The city council currently wants to borrow the money by issuing certificates of obligation (COs), which it can do without prior public approval as expressed in an election. Supporters of COs will no doubt argue that the public is not necessarily shut out of the process: The public gets to elect the city council members in the first place, and if the public dislikes how the city council borrowed the money, what it did with it, and the resulting tax increase, it can always vote council members out of office when their terms end, or perhaps even recall them earlier.
But even if the voters don’t like the city council’s plans and were to remove every city council member who voted for COs, the public would still be stuck with the debt created by the issuance of the COs as well as with the obligation to pay higher taxes at whatever level may be necessary to repay it. Moreover, large segments of the public may become more angry and resentful if decisions requiring a tax increase are made without their prior knowledge and approval.
A better approach may be to have the city council propose to borrow the money by selling bonds, which would require voter approval before the city could actually go through with the sale. The public, knowing how much the council wants to borrow, what the council wants to spend the loan on, and how high the tax rate will have to be to pay off the loan, could then vote to accept or reject the council’s proposal.
Of course, both the city council and the voters would have to do some heavy lifting. The council would have to clearly and conscientiously explain its debt proposal and effectively campaign to win public acceptance in a bond election–after all, the council should have the burden of proving to the public why its plans for the collection and expenditure of public funds would be in the public’s overall best interest. And the voters, in turn, would have to study the city council’s proposal and the supporting reasons the council offers if they are to be able to cast intelligent votes one way or another.
It’s possible that the city council could convince the voters to approve the bonds and the ensuing results—better roads and a new city hall, but a higher tax rate as well. But the public could also reject the proposal, believing that tolerating the current state of our roads and our city hall would be a small price to pay for avoiding a hefty tax increase.
But more important than what decision the public might make is the fact that the decision, whatever it might be, would be the public’s decision, and not that of the council. The decision would be more acceptable to the public precisely because the public made it. If the council were to borrow the money through COs and subsequently raise taxes to pay back the loan, the benefits of the decision could be outweighed by possible public anger, resentment, and distrust engendered by higher taxes the public might not want.
So should the city council want to borrow money, it should first of all win public approval for doing so in a bond election after it has informed the public as fully as possible of all the known benefits and costs. The public should then vote on the proposal, with the understanding that both the council and the public must accept the outcome of the election, whatever the resulting consequences. And if the outcome is defeat for the council’s proposals, one hopes that the maintenance of public trust in government would be worth a few potholes.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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