ABC-7 LISTENS: A CHARGE FOR USING PUBLIC FACILITIES

By ABC-7 Reporter/Anchor Stephanie Valle

A chunk of your tax dollars pay to operate schools and its facilities. So if you want to use the facilities – like a meeting room or high school gymnasium – why do you have to pay?

An ABC-7 viewer wrote us, asking “Why is that at some schools the cost is very high to use a community facility and in other cases it is used free of charge?”

This viewer specifically named the Ysleta Independent School District in his e-mail.

“Our costs are truly comparable with other costs, even with rentals of halls, or with apartment complexes, the cost is minimal,” Berenice Zubia, the spokeswoman with YISD, told ABC-7.

Zubia supplied us with a list of rates to rent facilities within the district’s headquarters. The charges are based on a four hour or an all day usage, with the highest charge at $360 for all-day access to the district’s computer labs. “There’s still a cost the district has to cover,” Zubia says, pointing out district employees using the facilities for district-related events don’t have to pay for facility access. “That is electricity, air conditioning, the equipment that they use. They can use the screens, the projectors.”

The Ysleta district does not directly handle the rental of facilities located at a campus.

EPISD could not supply a list of facilities or rental fees, telling ABC-7 the cost depends on fees such as custodial overtime, maintenance and repair, utilities, and security, if necessary.

Both districts do not rent facilities for private events, such as weddings or quinceaneras.

SISD did not provide us with the requested information by deadline.