TISD votes to lease college pool

Agreement includes the school district making up to $2 million worth of renovations

Texarkana Independent School District will lease Texarkana College’s aquatic center for 30 years and renovate it at a cost of up to $2 million, the TISD Board of Trustees decided Tuesday.

During its regular monthly meeting, the board voted unanimously to lease the indoor pool and attached facilities, part of TC’s Pinkerton Center, for $10 a year. The TC Board of Trustees must sign off on the agreement at its next meeting, and the TISD board will vote to approve financing for the renovation work in October.

“An exciting new chapter. TISD has a pool,” Board President Fred Norton Jr. said immediately after the vote.

Superintendent Paul Norton emphasized that the move will allow the district’s TigerSharks swim program to continue thriving.

“The lease is very TISDfriendly to make sure that we can continue our swim program. It’s vitally important to our athletic program and district to continue to do that. It’s something that’s very unique to our school district, and so we want to make sure that we keep that as a high priority,” he said.

Seventy high school students and 130 in grades six through eight participate in the TigerSharks program, which practices and holds meets at the TC aquatic center, according to Tina VealGooch, executive director of public relations.

The program has racked up 25 district championships, 18 consecutive boys’ regional titles, 12 consecutive girls’ regional titles and two state championships, as well as six runner-up and four top-five finishes in state meets.

Improvements to the facility, which include renovating the roof, dressing rooms and the pool’s lining, will begin after the state swim meet in February 2019 and could be completed by August. The district will have until the end of 2019 to back out of the

deal should any unforeseen problems arise during renovation work.

Currently students and the public use the aquatic center. After the lease takes effect, any non-TISD uses will end until stable scheduling can be established, Norton said.

Doug Whitt, with SAMCO Capital Markets, briefed the board on funding the work.

“We have to be a little creative here under state law in order to come up with a mechanism or mechanisms in order to finance the project,” Whitt said. He went on to propose two kinds of financing called time warrants and maintenance tax notes.

“Time warrants have the ability to be used on new projects, unlike maintenance tax notes, which are on renovations, repairs and equipment. So we have to be creative in what we utilize this money for.

“So for example, the maintenance tax note money can be used for equipment items that you would otherwise pay cash for in your budget, freeing up that cash to go into construction. And then time warrants can go direct into construction on a project that you don’t currently own,” he said.

TC President James Henry Russell on Monday said the arrangement would be mutually beneficial.

”It’s a big cost avoidance to us and a huge asset to them for a program that has hundreds of students. It’s kind of the best of both worlds,” he said.

In other business, the board approved monthly financial and expenditure reports and voted to spend more than $54,600 on new sousaphones for the band program. Principal Taryn Givan also presented a report on recent activities at Westlawn Elementary School.