VOL 7 No. 38
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FORT BEND FAIR. BALANCED. INFORMATIVE. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2014
P. O.BOX 623, SUGAR LAND, TX 77487-0623
Official newspaper of Fort Bend County, Missouri City & Sugar Land
Historic church celebrates 145th anniversary
FBISD expedites limited re-zoning
The St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Missouri City celebrated its 145th Anniversary on September 14 with worship, music, friendship and refreshments at the historic building located at 6731 Oilfield Road. Above, Cars parked around the precarious but intact historic sanctuary. Below, Architectural rendering vision of Saint John’s historic restoration. Story on Page 3 — Photo by Gabriel Cuéllar
By SESHADRI KUMAR Fort Bend ISD board of trustees on Monday night approved a $232,000 contract with DeJong-Richter for the “Feeder Pattern/Boundary Planning and Community Engagement process.” DeJong-Richter will engage the community in the districtwide feeder pattern alignment and the boundary process for Elementary School No. 46, Elementary School No. 47, and other areas as identified. The board unanimously voted to approve the contract after a couple of trustees expressed concerns over the scope and the likely costs. The question was whether the consultant will help only in deciding the boundary for the two elementary schools and whether the district should pay more for future boundary studies. A few other schools, maybe two or three other schools with pressing need, will be included in the current boundary study, according to the administration. DeJong-Richter was already hired and paid for its feeder pattern studies as a part of the Facility Master Plan by Jacobs Engineering. The administration initially proposed to have limited boundary recommendations for new elementary schools No. 46 and No. 47 and a long-term boundary plan for implementation in the future. A section of the community members was disappointed with the delay in the feeder pattern and boundary studies and demanded that the studies be done prior to the November bond election.
Ballots to be mailed in Fort Bend County This week the Fort Bend County Elections Office will begin mailing General Election ballots to voters who have made application for a ballot by mail. According to Fort Bend County Election Administrator, John Oldham, most of the ballots will be sent to persons who had previously applied using the Annual Ballot by Mail
application. To be eligible to receive a Ballot by Mail, a voter must expect to be absent from Fort Bend County on Election Day. Ballots can only be mailed outside of the county to those who plan to be absent. Voters who are 65 years of age, or older, and voters who are disabled are also eligible to vote by mail and may have
The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. Fort Bend ISD’s 2015 National Merit Semifinalists by campus are: Austin High School – Yuthika Gundamaraju, Victoria Hang, Hamza Khatri, Neelesh Mutyala, Alexander Yu, Kevin Zhang Clements High School – Robaa Al-Najar, Allison Bellman, Mohankrishna Bhadriraju, Aaron Chang, Anthony Chaveleh, Kevin Chen, Chung Hon Michael Cheng, Arpam
Plant Sale: Native & Seasonal Children’s Activities Bee Keeping Butterfly Garden Arts, Crafts, Food Vendors
over the options, she said. She wanted a districtwide recommendation early next year. Superintendent Charles Dupre, citing the extensive data analysis involved and manpower required in the process said it would be impossible to complete a districtwide zoning in a few months. Also, the administration is expecting new demographic data in December to be plugged into the immediate boundary plans. Trustee Kristin Tassin suggested that the feeder pattern study be completed first because it will have an impact on school boundaries instead of conducting both the feeder pattern and boundary studies simultaneously as proposed by the administration. Trustee Dave Rosenthal said both the studies have to be done simultaneously because feeder pattern will cause boundary changes. Also, he concurred with Bailey’s concern regarding the local committee, but was satisfied when Dupre said the administration will prepare the plan, and vet it with the board before presenting it to the local committee for its input. The administration eliminated the district wide zoning committee as per the board’s desire. “It is better to have a local committee as a large group will not yield a productive dialogue. In a larger community meeting, we won’t get a balanced perspective,” Dupre said. The entire feeder pattern and boundary studies seems to be a moving target even as the board is still debating the timing and the process of doing it.
County adopts $290 million budget
a ballot mailed to their home. They may also apply to receive a ballot by mail in each election during the year. This is the first year that voters who submitted applications for the Primary or for Municipal elections may automatically receive a ballot for the General Election See Ballots, Page 2
By SESHADRI KUMAR Fort Bend County Commissioners Court on Sept. 9 adopted a $290 million budget for 2015, with an estimated total fund balance of $47.5 million. The budget is based on $235 million in tax revenue and $51.6 million in other revenues. The commissioners court adopted a tax rate of 49.476 cents per $100 valuation, compared
FBISD 2015 National Merit Semifinalists named Fort Bend ISD is proud to announce that 74 high school seniors are semifinalists in the 2015 National Merit Scholarship Program. They are among nearly 16,000 semifinalists named in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth approximately $33 million that will be offered next spring. The 74 semifinalists were selected from more than 1.4 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools who entered the 2015 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
The administration responded to the urgency and proposed to complete the feeder pattern and boundary study for elementary schools No. 46 and No. 47 by May 2015. At last week’s board workshop, Trustee Jenny Bailey urged the administration to expedite the boundary studies and the administration presented a new timeline. Under the revised timeline, the feeder pattern and boundary studies for Elementary No. 46 and No. 47, and a few other schools will be completed and presented to the board for approval in January 2015. Two other studies namely, Academic programs/Pathway planning and feeder patterns will also be simultaneously studied during this time period. The community dialogue on feeder pattern will occur as early as October, the academic programs will be discussed with the community in November and boundary studies will be discussed with the community in November and December. Bailey questioned the cost involved in the studies and desired a districtwide re-zoning, instead of the piecemeal approach. She also objected to the idea of having a local committee of 7 to 10 community members to work with the administration in deciding the school boundaries. Bailey described the previous “Building utilization committee” which was comprised of community members as a disaster. The administration should prepare and present options to the community and community should be engaged in a dialogue
Dutta, Edward Hu, Michelle Huang, Steven Jiang, Kevin Jin, Tejas Kumar, Ethan Lau, Denise Lin, Alan Lo, Pranay Nakirekanti, David Nie, Kelsey Pownell, Jayen Ram, Angeline Rao, Anish Rao, Riya Santra, Arjun Talpallikar, Austin Tang, Zachary Tu, Aaditya Venkateswaran, Namrata Verghese, Shomik Verma, Anna Wang, Bowen Wang, Joshua Yang, Jeffrey Zhang, Jing Han Zhang, Kevin Zhang, Philip Zhou Dulles High School – Pallavi Bannai, Megan Bates, Misha Chada, Anirudha Chatterjee, Sushain Cherivirala, Don Dao, Aalap Diwanji, Brendan D’Souza, Siddarth Guha, Grace Han, Ford Hash, Maxine Huang, Michelle Huang, Saiesh Kalva, Alexander Le, Carl Marth, Rishiprotim Nag,
Joseph Nguyen, Lindsey Nguyen, Michelle Nguyen, Saket Sadani, Quynhanh Tran, Shashank Vura, Brent Zhang Elkins High School – Lillian Wang Hightower High School – Tina Shehni Kempner High School – Anupriya Gupta, David Qui Ridge Point High School – Jeremy Caldwell Travis High School – Dong Huang, Sonia Mulayath, Caroline Pham Approximately 15,000 of the semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist level, and in February will be notified of this designation. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies.
to 49.976 cents last year. Despite the half-cent cut in the tax rate, the county budget will raise more revenue from property taxes than last year’s budget by an amount of $10,888,426, which is a 5.05 percent increase from last year’s budget. The property tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year is $9,292,793. The county’s total appraised value for property tax is $48.7 billion. Fort Bend County’s total debt obligation is $634.43 million of which $330 million is Fort Bend County debt, $149.23 million is Fort Bend County Toll Road, and $155 million is or Fort Bend Grand Parkway Toll Road. While the budget was ad-
opted unanimously, some items in the budget were voted on separately. A salary increase to certain positions in the office of Pct.2 and Pct. 3 commissioners was one of the items. Commissioner James Patterson was opposed to the proposed higher pay scale and voted against it. The largest chunk of the budget goes to the sheriff’s department, $33.5 million for enforcement and $28.5 million for the jail. The next highest outlay is for county libraries which get $14 million, followed by the juvenile probation department with $12 million and EMSAmbulance services $10 million. The road and bridge department’s budget is $22 million.
FORT BEND FAIR. BALANCED. INFORMATIVE.
12551, Emily Court, Sugar Land, TX 77478 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 623, Sugar Land, TX 77487 www.fbindependent.com Seshadri Kumar 281-980-6745 Publisher & Editor Fort Bend Independent, (USPS 025-572) is published every Wednesday (for a subscription rate of $20 per year) by Fort Bend Independent, LLC.,12551,Emily Court, Sugar Land, Texas 77478. Periodicals Postage Paid at Stafford, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Fort Bend Independent, P.O. Box 623, Sugar Land, Tx 77487.
Saturday, Sept 27 8:30 am to 1:30 pm Historic Sugar Land, KC Hall & Grounds 702 Burney @ St. Theresa Blvd Sponsor/Vendor info www.SugarLandGardenClub.org
Presenting Sponsor of “The Great Grow” Children’s School Garden Competition