A debt-free school district wants $134 million, a district near the 50-cent cap wants a $30 million ballpark, and a Midland utility district is back 18 months after 76% of voters said no.

Big-city bond packages get most of the headlines, but rural and small-city West Texas taxpayers are being asked to take on debt of their own on November 3. Across three West Texas entities that we have highlighted below, the ballot asks for about $475 million in new principal. Once interest is added, the total approaches $900 million to $1 billion, depending on which of one district’s own conflicting figures you believe.

In communities this size, these asks are enormous. One district wants to go from zero debt to more than $210 million in principal and interest. Another wants a ballpark that costs about two and a half times as much as its school-facilities proposition. A third is returning with a new bond after its last one was rejected by a wide margin just last year. 

Childress ISD: From Zero Debt to $212 Million

Childress ISD¹ has no debt today. The district’s election order² lists $0 in outstanding principal, $0 in outstanding interest, and a debt-service tax rate of $0.00. The board now wants $133.9 million across three bond propositions:³

• Proposition A: $88.5 million to renovate and expand Childress High School into a combined junior high/high school campus. Estimated interest is $51.6 million, for a total of $140.1 million.
• Proposition B: $36.3 million for a new elementary school. Estimated interest is $21.2 million, for a total of $57.5 million.
• Proposition C: $9.1 million for a new athletic fieldhouse. Estimated interest is $5.3 million, for a total of $14.4 million.

All together, Childress taxpayers would owe an estimated $211.9 million over a projected 25-year repayment, at an assumed 5% interest rate. The district reported 903 students in 2025–26, down from 978 the year before, according to Texas Education Agency enrollment data.⁴ That works out to roughly $148,000 in new principal per student, or about $235,000 per student once interest is counted, all of which must be paid for with more money coming out of the local taxpayer’s pockets. 

A fourth item, Proposition D, would authorize the district to “purchase attendance credit from the state with local tax revenues.” That is the state’s recapture, or “Robin Hood,” mechanism. In other words, local property-tax dollars will already be leaving Childress no matter what happens to the bonds.

Denver City ISD: A $30 Million Ballpark on Top of a 43-Cent Debt Rate

Denver City ISD, in Yoakum County, has split its request in two. Proposition A asks for $12 million for school facilities, “with priority given to new HVAC systems and the purchase of new buses.” Proposition B asks for $30 million for “a new baseball and softball complex.”⁵

The ballpark is more than 70% of the package. The district’s own information document⁶ estimates $27.9 million in interest on it, assuming 30-year amortization at 5%, for a total of $57.9 million. By comparison, the HVAC-and-buses proposition totals $23.2 million. Thirty years is a long time to pay for a ballfield and school buses. 

The district is not starting from a clean slate, either. Denver City ISD already owes $41.1 million in principal and $17.4 million in interest, and it already levies a debt-service rate of $0.4354 per $100 of valuation. That is close to the 50-cent threshold that state law uses to test new school debt. If both propositions pass, the district’s outstanding principal would roughly double. TEA data⁷ shows enrollment of about 1,400 students, down about 5% from the prior year.

Midland County Utility District: Rejected by 76%, Now Back for $299 Million

In May 2025, the Midland County Utility District (MCUD), a taxpayer-supported special district that serves the unincorporated Greenwood area, asked citizens for $645.8 million. They rejected it 1,039 to 328, about 76% against.⁸ Eighteen months later, the district is back with a $299,015,000 bond for water, wastewater, and drainage facilities.⁹

A smaller number does not mean a smaller plan. MCUD estimates that finishing the full water buildout across the district would cost another $890.6 million¹⁰ in today’s dollars. Its general manager told the board earlier this year that he has “a really hard time believing that 85 square miles… is going to be less than $1-2 billion.”¹¹ In other words, the $299 million is almost certainty just phase one.

The interest figures are hard to pin down, and so is the package:

• MCUD’s official notice of election¹² lists estimated interest of $391.4 million and a combined principal and interest of $1,037,198,669 over 25 years. Those two numbers do not add up. $299 million plus $391.4 million is about $690 million.
• The figures MCUD reported to the Texas Bond Review Board¹³ show $303.5 million in interest and a total of $602.5 million.
• The bond includes a $35 million allowance to convert the private Park Water system to MCUD. The district’s own FAQ¹⁴ says it is still “conducting due diligence on a potential acquisition” and that “no decision has been made.”
• Another $64 million, about 21% of the bond, is listed as “inflation allowance & issuance costs.”

The tax bill is not small either. MCUD currently levies no debt-service tax. At full implementation, it projects a debt rate of $0.3066 per $100, or about $76.65 a month on a $300,000 home. The official notice puts the estimated maximum annual increase on a $100,000 homestead at $545.01. On top of that, customers would pay new water rates. MCUD has estimated the average household’s combined tax-and-water cost at about $131 a month, or another way, over $1500 per year.

The Question for Taxpayers

West Texas families have always known how to stretch a dollar and pay their own way. These three proposals ask taxpayers to do the opposite: borrow for ballfields and fieldhouses, finance a utility buyout that hasn’t been decided, and accept a package whose official interest figures don’t match each other. In all three cases, the official “$0 increase” or “no rate increase” talking points sit next to ballot language that reads, by law, “THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE,” because all bonds are debt that must be paid with more property taxes. 

Texas local governments already owe more than $550 billion in principal and interest.¹⁵ Every bond approved adds to it, and rejecting bonds remains¹⁶ one of the few direct ways taxpayers can push rates down as old debt is retired. Taxpayers in Childress, Denver City, and Greenwood have until November 3 to decide whether these governments have earned more of their money.

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1. https://www.childressisd.net/o/childress/page/election ↩︎
2. https://www.co.hall.tx.us/upload/page/9609/Childress%20ISD%20November%20bond%20election.pdf ↩︎
3. https://www.the-intrepid.com/news/cisd-puts-1339-million-bond-package-ballot ↩︎
4. https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/cgi/sas/broker?_service=marykay&_program=adhoc.addispatch.sas&endyear=26&major=st&minor=e&format=w&selsumm=id&linespg=60&charsln=120&grouping=g&loop=2&key=038901&_debug=0 ↩︎
5. https://www.dcisd.org/fs/resource-manager/view/a8d955b3-1c5c-44f7-9afd-fd7467eb2beb ↩︎
6. https://www.dcisd.org/fs/resource-manager/view/a8d955b3-1c5c-44f7-9afd-fd7467eb2beb ↩︎
7. https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/cgi/sas/broker?_service=marykay&_program=adhoc.addispatch.sas&endyear=26&major=st&minor=e&format=w&selsumm=id&linespg=60&charsln=120&grouping=g&loop=2&key=251901&_debug=0 ↩︎
8. https://data.texas.gov/dataset/Local-Debt-Bond-Election-Results/kbmc-qmvg ↩︎
9. https://mcud.org/docs/MCUD_Notice_of_Bond_Election_EN.pdf ↩︎
10. https://www.permianpress.com/mcud-to-discuss-299m-bond/ ↩︎
11. https://www.permianpress.com/mcud-rebuilt-its-financing-plan/ ↩︎
12. https://mcud.org/docs/MCUD_Notice_of_Bond_Election_EN.pdf ↩︎
13. https://data.texas.gov/dataset/Local-Debt-Bond-Election-Results/kbmc-qmvg ↩︎
14. https://mcud.org/ ↩︎
15. https://texastaxpayers.com/may-2-bond-elections-the-local-debt-tsunami/ ↩︎
16. https://texastaxpayers.com/may-2-bond-elections-the-local-debt-tsunami/ ↩︎