April 2024 Newsletter
President’s Message
The first pass at approving a means to resolve the problems the City of Plano has addressed with Short Term Rentals (STR’s) was held at the Planning & Zoning Commission meeting Monday, April 1st. Recall that approximately one year ago the city banned STR’s for one year and then began a process to gather feedback from the community. City Staff provided three options to address the issues the community has faced as a result of the rise of STR’s in Plano, and the Commission voted 5-3 to recommend Option 2 to City Council. City Council will take up the recommendation of P&Z at their second meeting in April. Bottom line is that all STR’s will need to be registered going forward once the plan is approved, and the three options cover occupancy restrictions in single family, multi-family and other areas for single room rentals, multiple room rentals, live-in and offsite management situations. To get a clearer understanding, you should visit the information on the proposals at PlanoSTR.com. It would also help if you listen to the April 1st P&Z meeting recording for a full discussion of the issues and level of restrictions proposed and the requirements for each. Below is the description of the zoning case. There are STR’s throughout the city, and the data provided in these presentations provides enlightening information about locations, and the number of violations of the quiet enjoyment concept by type of ownership and management, etc.
Public Hearing: Zoning Case 2024-008 – Request to amend Article 8 (Definitions), (CS) Article 14 (Allowed Uses and Use Classifications), Article 15 (Use-specific Regulations), and related sections of the Zoning Ordinance to extend or repeal the interim ban of short-term rentals and permanently regulate short-term rentals and related land uses, including associated development regulations.
Are there STR’s in your neighborhood? Read the information the city has made available and Make Your Voice Heard at the City Council meeting. A reminder, Commission and Council meetings are now being held at Davis Library while the Council chambers area being renovated. We will email a reminder for the City Council meeting where this will be discussed in advance of the meeting date.
Our next GENERAL MEETING is May 14th, and our speaker is P&Z Commissioner Gary Cary. He will inform us about what the commission does and will answer questions from the audience regarding their processes and standards.
Pat Greer, President
The Collin College Board meeting in March offered a report from several area in the operation of the college.
Collin College Foundation
The Foundation provides academic and support scholarships to Collin College students. They were able to offer approximately 900 scholarships in 2024. Scholarship students earn, on average, at 3.4 grade point average on a 4 point scale. Wonderful!
They were also proud to share that the alumnus are become increasingly involved with Collin College. The Alumni now boast of holding over 250,000 former Collin College students on their contact list.
State Farm Insurance was recognized for their generous student day care grant program. State Farm and the College help evaluate applications of the students and successful candidates are helped meet day care obligations of allowing them to continue and complete their education.
Housing and Food Services
With the ever-growing inflation battle it was imperative that the College raise, by 4%, its Housing and meal plan cost. This is the first increase in several years.
Sports
Watch the Women’s Basketball team rise on the March Madness bracket in the Junior College tournament. At this time, you can catch the action on ESPN.
Have a student interested in sports? Coming to Collin College sports is golf, e-sports, and women’s volleyball.
Heritage Tax Exemption
Collin College approved the City of Plano’s program to promote maintenance of historical properties by maintaining the tax base across taxing jurisdictions. This allows the City of Plano to exempt from taxation part, or all, of the assessed value of a structure if the structure is designated as a historically or archeologically significant site in need of tax relief to encourage it preservation. 86 properties were identified. ‘The tax exemption apply only to the value of improvements to the property, not the land value.’ It was reported that, as the 2024 tax rate has not been set, the value of the exemptions will be set by the Collin Central Appraisal District in September 2024.
Academic Calendar
The Collin College Academic Calendar is set for the years 2025-2026 in partnership with local ISDs.
More details for exam schedules, Maymester, and summer can be found on the Collin College website.
Looking forward
Like all our buildings and homes, maintenance must be scheduled. Look for remodeling and renovations to take place at our older campuses.
Collin College is recognized as THE best Community college in Texas! We have a treasure in our county. With increasing student population, the college strives to work with the citizens to bring the best work force and academic classes to you. I look forward to representing your voice on the Board.
Why School Choice is Critical
Opinion by Michael Terner
The public education system is probably the most "leftist" dominated institution in the state of Texas. The implications of this are profound and generational.
All of the accelerating problems we see in American society are fundamentally linked to the population becoming increasingly indoctrinated in pro big government progressive / woke ideology. This is a problem nationally and not just in Texas, and we see this clearly when Harvard and Yale become literally nonsensical platforms for supporting an Islamic terrorist organization against the Democratic State of Israel.
In the current education system, we pay taxes which the federal and state government allocate to education, but we have absolutely or virtually zero say in what goes on in the schools. So you can go and complain to your school board and they and the Superintendent will largely ignore you. If you really understand how the PISD operates, you would realize that it is NOT independent, it is simply an outpost for state policies, which are largely dictated by progressive education bureaucrats in DC. And worse, they are pretty much a monopoly, meaning you pay the taxes, but you get no representation, and if you don't like the public school system, you have to pay additionally to get out, which most families cannot afford. Homeschooling is an option, but what it does is basically give the public school system away to the left.
The only way to effect real change in the system is to attack their funding.
The primary goal of school choice policy is to give parents more control over the education of their children. If the funding followed the families and not the institutions, there would be an end to their monopoly and ability to basically ignore taxpayer concerns on multiple levels.
The recent legislative session included a school choice bill that failed. It failed for many reasons, and I am not an expert, but I know that Florida and Iowa are both excellent real-world examples of how to fund students and not systems.
If you do not like many of the things that have evolved in our culture, not just in education but in general, you cannot fight these things effectively over time if you do not fight for better education. School choice is the best way to promote competition and hence, better public education which means less indoctrination and less widespread systemic ignorance. The time to fight is now. The time to focus is now.
We must get something done in the legislature for school choice, and to those who disagree, it won't be perfect, but it will be a start. It will give us a viable platform to fight back.
Here is the recap of the City Council meeting by Councilman Shelby Williams.
Plano City Council Recap March 25, 2024
Plano City Council meetings will temporarily be held at Davis Library (7501 Independence Pkwy.) as of April 8, 2024, during renovation of the council chambers.
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