By Marty Kufus
Wilson County News

PLEASANTON — Three public schools in southern Bexar County might serve as polling places in the local ground-water district’s upcoming annexational election, officials said Friday.

The board of directors of the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District approved a proposal to place separate ballot boxes and election staffs at the East Central, Southside, and Somerset independent school districts’ May 4 voting sites.

The Waterwood Park subdivision’s clubhouse would be the location for early voting only, board members agreed.

The board later was briefed on a plan to collect agricultural data from irrigators in the four-county district.

Such a database could be one step toward correcting "inaccurate" information used by the state water board, according to discussion Friday.

Evergreen President Ken Stephens of Atascosa County, Vice President Paul Bordovsky of Karnes, and directors Clifton Stacy of Frio, William Ruple of Atascosa, Fabian Jendrusch of Karnes, and Steve Snider and Darrell Brownlow of Wilson County attended.

The area under consideration is formed on the south by the Atascosa and Wilson county lines, S.H. 16 on the west, Loop 1604 on the north, and U.S. 181 on the east.

Saying they feared the San Antonio Water System’s production plans for their area, dozens of property owners signed petitions last summer asking for annexation by the Evergreen. Its district property tax currently is 1.74 cents per $100 valuation.

An Evergreen election planned for Feb. 2 was cancelled because it had not received pre-clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). One of the complaints in a federal lawsuit that brought an injunction against the election was that there would have been only one polling place: at Waterwood Park.

Even though they are located outside the area proposed for annexation, the three school districts’ campuses should be convenient for voters May 4, the date for school-board elections across the state.

"We’re hoping that [number] will look good to DOJ," Evergreen secretary Melissa Royal told the board Friday.

General Manager Mike Mahoney agreed: "This is addressing one of the issues in the lawsuit."

The collocation of Evergreen voting with May 4 voting at the Southside ISD appeared to be a certainty, according to discussion.

However, there was uncertainty Friday whether there would be elections at East Central and Somerset. Mahoney said he and his staff would know in the coming week; then, the Evergreen’s attorney could finish the election’s pre-clearance packet and send it to Washington for approval.

(A San Antonio newspaper report Saturday said a federal judge temporarily had halted East Central’s May 4 school-board election; a lawsuit alleged East Central’s 2000 redistricting plan dilutes minority representation. The school board was to have discussed the lawsuit in an executive session with its attorney March 21, a meeting agenda said. A $25 million bond issue, also scheduled for a May 4 vote, did not appear to be affected.)

Bordovsky asked whether the Evergreen’s attorney had approved the plan for several voting sites. Mahoney said attorney Doug Caroom (of Austin) had.

"I think he let us down on this last one. He fumbled the ball," Bordovsky said. "Boy, watch your step; you make one boo-boo on this …"

Stacy had a suggestion: that Evergreen board members keep an eye on the voting — just in case.

"I think it probably would behoove themselves — if they [directors] can act in that position — to get qualified as poll watchers," he said.

Sitting in the audience, Gaylon Click, a member of the Wilson County Water Action Project, cautioned Stacy against the appearance of influencing voters.

Stacy replied that would not be the board’s purpose in being at the polls.

Mahoney said he did not know the legal requirements for poll-watching. "We’ll find out," he said.

Evergreen hydro-geologist Cliff Lowe is mailing questionnaires to 178 permit-holders whose production wells provide water for crops’ irrigation. (A "production" well is one that pumps more than 25,000 gallons a day.)

He predicted "a pretty good turnout" of response.

Mahoney’s cover letter says state-mandated regional water planning so far has lacked realistic figures on agricultural irrigation’s use of aquifer water. (He is an executive member of the South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group.)

"During the first round of planning [which ended January 2001] it immediately became clear that the Texas Water Development Board’s annual ground-water pumpage numbers for irrigation were inaccurate, and appeared to be considerably underestimated," he wrote.

"However, without documentation to substantiate otherwise, [regional planners] had to use the TWDB irrigation numbers," Mahoney wrote. "This resulted in a regional water plan, and now state water plan, in which ground water that should have been allocated to irrigation, being allocated to other uses."

The Evergreen’s questionnaire asks farmers for detailed information, Lowe said, in order to "get some idea how much water is used for each crop in each county."

Each response will be assigned a file number as it is entered into a computer at the Evergreen’s offices.

"It’s as confidential as I can make it," Mahoney told the board.