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BISD Memorial Stadium
All but one member of the Beaumont Independent School District (BISD) Board of Trustees voted to move forward with accepting an RFP that would infuse $1.1 million directly into district coffers in exchange for stadium naming rights at the elected officials’ May 18 meeting.
Woodrow Reece, the lone trustee that was sitting on the Board of Trustees when the Texas Education Agency removed the elected officials amid investigations and prosecutions into embezzlement and administratorsanctioned standardized test cheating in 2014, was also the lone member to vote against moving forward with a new name for the controversial stadium that once bore the moniker of former BISD Superintendent Carrol A. “Butch” Thomas.
BISD Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Hernandez advised that this RFP, “request for proposals,” is actually the third time that the district has solicited businesses to partner with the district to pay for branding rights at the multimillion-dollar stadium. According to Hernandez, the first RFP was pulled by the board; the second elicited zero response; and this third attempt at least got some response.
“We had one response,” Hernandez said, that of Doggett Toyota, which is the proposed name to sit atop the Interstate 10 monolith. The minimum amount requested pursuant to the RFP was $800,000. “They offered more than the original amount requested.”
Hernandez described the details: Doggett would pay $100,000 a year for the term of the 10-year contract. In exchange, the business would be allowed to brand the stadium top name, a sign at the entrance of the stadium, and the opposite side adjacent to the press box. The BISD staff reported courting local businesses to answer the RFP, to no success.
“We sent a number of businesses in the area the RFP,” including sending emails, making phone calls and publishing notice in the newspaper,” Hernandez said. Houston-based Leslie Doggett Industries, which acquired four Kinsel Auto dealerships in Beaumont effective May 1, was the only business willing to take on the task.
“In lieu of everything that’s been a controversy around this stadium, I do see this in a positive light,” Trustee Stacey Lewis Jr. said, urging his contemporaries and the community to put the children first, put politics aside, and do what’s best to put Beaumont ISD in the best light.
Trustee Reece was not on board with his fellow board member’s call to action. Reece said the stadium should bear the name of a district official or staffer, like the former superintendent. “They need their name as they go through life for their friends and family to see,” he said, “not some out-oftowner that comes in here and wants us to wear his name – or her name – on.”
Former superintendent Thomas, who also resides in the Houston area, has been seen in Beaumont on few occasions since he left BISD shortly before the FBI raided the district offices. Thomas made the trek to town to testify – at least twice – in defense of Calvin Walker, a former electrician contracted through the district who was convicted of stealing over $1 million from BISD during Thomas’ tenure.
“Hopefully one day we can agree to disagree,” Reece said of his opinion, and of his opposition to the request to approve the RFP between BISD and Doggett. “All the sudden, everybody thinks $100,000 a year per 10 years is good money.
“It just doesn’t sit well with me.” All six remaining board trustees voted to approve the RFP and move forward with renaming the stadium.
“I think it’s time to move on,” Trustee Denise Wallace-Spooner said.