Chavez: A Taxing Burden
by Geoffrey Castro & Charles Stillman, September 2005
The dust surrounding the controversy of HISD’s Cesar Chavez High School has yet to settle. Even as HISD touted the safety of the school, parent’s fears have failed to be put at ease. Built in 2000, the school is less than a quarter mile from three grandfathered refineries and is home to more than a thousand students, most of which are Latino. Meanwhile, a funding program known as a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), set up to finance the school, has failed to yield a single dollar. Presently TIRZ No. 6 is the only one in Houston loosing money.
Years before the school was built, widespread criticism and protest was made by environmental groups and concerned citizens. School officials claim that the $50 million school was built only after thorough environmental investigations conducted in 1992 demonstrated there was nothing wrong with the property. Since that time, numerous reports and studies have surfaced illustrating how emissions are drastically underreported. “In Harm’s Way,” a special report by the Houston Chronicle, used monitors to confirm what nearby residents have long been suspecting. Monitors in Manchester, a nearby community, detected concentrations of chemicals such as 1,3 butadiene and benzene that exceeded federal and state guidelines limits. A few months later the chronicle reported that data collected from testing air and wind direction at Milby Park indicated that high levels of 1,3 butadiene were coming from the direction of the school’s neighboring facilities. Furthermore, the Houston Chronicle highlights the fact that locally each week tens of thousands of pounds of pollution are released into the environment in the form of accidental releases. Considering the proximity of the Chavez campus to industrial sources, potential risk becomes amplified.
Chavez High School is a neighbor to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., ExxonMobil and Texas Petrochemical. A brief search on scorecard, a website that provides statistics on industry emissions, ranked these facilities in the worst percentile for environmental releases. Among the chemicals produced by these facilities are 1,3 butadiene and benzene, known carcinogens. Texas Petrochemical’s facility ranks third in the entire U.S. for total environmental releases of butadiene. According to scorecard, five of the chemicals emitted from these facilities lack the proper exposure estimates. Exposure estimates attempt to answer how exposure occurs and levels of exposure are safe. The EPA notes that exposure to hazardous chemicals is potentially related to the rise in number of learning disabilities among today’s students. The culmination of these risks poses a real danger and confirms what local residents have long feared.
Juan Parras, community organizer and outreach coordinator for Texas Southern University’s Environmental Justice Clinic has perhaps been the most vocal on this issue citing environmental injustice. The guiding principle of environmental justice states that all people should be able to live in a clean and healthy environment. “It’s either right or it’s wrong, in this case it’s just wrong,” says Parras. He adds that the Latino population’s voice too often goes unheard and that Latino children are taking a risk that others do not. He comments that the school should never have been allowed to be built in the first place.
Parras recalls that when the school’s location was first being considered, he was working with the EPA to investigate the issue based on environmental justice concerns. He later discovered that Congressman Gene Green wrote a very strong letter encouraging the EPA to halt any further investigation. Parras says he is still waiting for an explanation. He is now in the process of working with the National Resource Defense Council to get a copy of the letter through the Freedom of Information Act.
A report by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice offers specific recommendations to protect children from chemical contamination in air and soil surrounding schools. This will insure a healthy environment for education that facilitates learning rather than thwarting it due to chemical exposure. In choosing a location for a new school the report recommends the following:
- No source of contamination, such as a landfill of containment facility, should be built or established within 1,000 feet of a school. Nor should industrial or other facilities releasing chemicals be built or located within 2 miles of a school.
- To ensure precautionary approaches are taken when locating new schools, a complete site history, site visit, survey of surrounding potential sources of contamination and testing and evaluation of potential health risks to children should be part of any site proposal. When there is cause for concern, another site should be chosen.
In addition, the State has it’s own provisions for protecting children from industrial sources. According to the Texas Clean Air Act, a chemical plant cannot be built within 3,000 feet from a school without proper consideration of possible adverse short-term or long-term side effects of air contaminants or nuisance odors for students. There are however, no limitations on how close a school can be built to already existing industry.
For years, Houston’s public schools have been bursting at their seams to accommodate the rapidly growing student base. In 1996, the city put a vote to the public on the issuance of bonds for the construction of 15 new schools and the renovation of 84 old ones. The public voted against the $390 million bond proposal, forcing HISD to seek alternative means for constructing and repairing their schools. In the southeast, HISD had already purchased land for the site of the new Cesar Chavez High School. A Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, TIRZ 6, was set up to finance its construction. TIRZs are incorporated to generate financing for public development or redevelopment projects. The district’s tax base is frozen at the point at which the zone is activated. Any incremental rise in taxes thereafter goes directly towards financing the costs of improving the zone. HISD also set up a lease to purchase program by which they pay rent to a public non-profit corporation. At the time, Leo Strum, HISD superintendent for finance, reported that HISD would not building the school without these unique financial arrangements.
The only taxpayers in TIRZ 6 are ExxonMobil, Texas Petrochemicals and Goodyear Tire and Rubber. These facilities have managed to drastically reduce their taxes over the years. In 1997, when TIRZ 6 was created, the tax base stood at $391 million according to Harris County Appraisal District. The zone was originally projected to generate about $79 million for its redevelopment. Since then, the taxes in this district, rather than rising, have dramatically dropped. By 2001 the tax base had fallen to $265.5 million. Today, the three corporations that comprise the zone’s tax base pay a combined $129 million in taxes. That is less than half of what they paid eight years ago. A 2002 Chronicle article looking into the failure of the TIRZ 6, reported that, “the decrease in tax base revenues are due to degenerating revenues in the chemical industry, which remains in an economic slump.” The article also mentioned companies’ tax protests as another factor. To the best of our knowledge, companies’ property taxes are not tied to the companies’ financial performance. Company profits, or lack thereof, should have no bearing on the property taxes of the companies’ facilities. Incidentally, it should be noted that two of the three companies, ExxonMobil and Texas Petrochemicals, have posted impressive profits since the inception of the TIRZ 6. Texas Petrochemicals has made hundreds of millions of dollars since 1998. ExxonMobil has been a powerhouse, generating record profits of well over 100 billion dollars in the years since Cesar Chavez High School was constructed. Despite the corporations’ soaring profits, their property taxes never increased beyond their 1997 assessed values. Furthermore, the newly enacted energy bill is filled with corporate handouts. Critics assail the bill calling it a giveaway of taxpayer money through tax breaks and royalty relief to wealthy energy companies already reaping record high profit as the cost of crude oil continues to rise. In the meantime, HISD has been left to foot the nearly $100 million that it will cost to pay for the school. While ExxonMobil, Texas Petrochemicals and Goodyear Tire and Rubber do not have a legal responsibility to finance the school they should see it as their civic duty to do so.
The National Resource Defense Council is working with Juan Parras investigating the legitimacy and legality of TIRZ6.
Cesar Chavez High School is named for a man revered as a hero. Chavez worked to protect farmers and give them fair wages, humane working conditions and other basic rights. The movement sparked by Chavez gave people a link to their environment while teaching that everyone has the right to a safe and healthy environment. Numerous environmental laws protecting air, water, and citizens have been linked to the work of Chavez and others in the environmental movement. Chavez’s work protecting workers from pesticides and environmental abuses has shown us that the need for a safe environment is deeply rooted in Hispanic tradition. A school named to honor such a hero should not be an example of exploitation and environmental abuse.
Q & A with Juan Parras, community outreach coordinator for the Environmental Law & Justice Center
Take action and show your support by contacting:
- Harris County appraisal district and ask them to reassess the tax value for TIRZ 6- (713) 957-7800.
- Manuel Rodriguez, Houston Independent School District Board of Education Second Vice President, ask for HISD to consider other alternatives to the Chavez campus- (713) 892-6121
- Carol Alvarado, City of Houston City Council Member and ask that the city hold polluters accountable and put child health and safety first- (713) 247-2011
Contact the Environmental Law and Justice Center
