Windthorst ISD will start school at 10am on Thursday, May 3, to allow time for staff to evaluate storm damage.

In Texas, where I have lived all my life, it often seems we are either cleaning up and rebuilding after a disaster or making preventative preparations for the next unidentified catastrophe. I have lived in the same house for over 30 years and have replaced the roof 3 times because of storms. It takes years to recover from tornados, fires, explosions and storms such as Ike, Katrina, Rita and then Harvey which FEMA says is probably the worst disaster in Texas history. School administrators have unique issues related to risk management and recovery of not only their facilities, but their tax bases as well.

An example of the complicated procedures:

If, on January 1, I have a house on the tax roll valued at $300,000 and it is destroyed, I may still owe taxes on the $300,000 in October even though all I have left is the lot. (What a bitter pill for a taxpayer to swallow.)

A governing body in a declared disaster area may authorize reappraisal of all property damaged in the disaster. However, A taxing unit that authorizes a reappraisal “must pay the appraisal district all the costs of making the reappraisal. Determining the procedures for doing this for the taxpayers can get complicated. Mr. Randall Rice, Galveston County auditor, made a request to the Attorney General for clarification and AG Paxton responded in Opinion No. KP-0192.

There always seems to be a sizable part of Texas that has been declared a disaster area at any given time. Disaster areas are declared by the governor and reported as proclamations, usually listed by county. Here are a couple of recent examples: One (Harvey), Two (a drought proclamation). - js - webmaster@texasisd.com