Voters within the Leander Independent School District have approved both Proposition A and B in the Nov. 8 election. The results will be validated at a special meeting by the Board of Trustees on Nov. 18. 

These results determine how the district will handle rising appraisal, or property values in the district that were creating an imbalance in the two parts of the district’s tax collections. These two propositions determine the changes the district will make toward the tax rates and funding in the district.

Proposition A is an attendance credit election. Essentially, the district owes local tax collections back to the state of Texas, which is known as recapture, because of increasing property values. With Proposition A, the district is proposing the purchase of attendance credit from the state to be approved by voters in order to make that payment to the state. 

Proposition B is a voter approval tax rate election. With increasing property values, there’s an imbalance between the interest and sinking fund and the maintenance and operations tax, which the district proposes to fix by decreasing the interest and sinking fund tax rate by about 13.5 pennies and bringing the maintenance and operations tax rate up by approximately 9 pennies. If Proposition A or B fails, the district will have to decrease expenditures, which will have an impact on the district.

With the approval of Proposition A, the district is now able to make its local tax payments back to the state of Texas.

“The district has fallen back into recapture, what this means is that we owe some of our local tax collections back to the state of Texas,” Gearing said. “In order to make that payment back to the state, we have to choose one of 5 different methods and the method that the district has chosen is called the purchase of attendance credit from the state.”

Due to the passing of Proposition B, the district is able to now avoid a 30 million dollar deficit and there will be no need to make expenditure cuts to the district’s 23-24 budget.

“We’re in good shape and we can continue business as usual,” District Superintendent Bruce Gearing said. 

According to the LISD website, the results are unofficial until the Board of Trustees canvasses the final vote totals provided by the counties for a Nov. 18 special meeting.