More "Love" from the UIL to Texas Officials

[blindref757]

The new 1204 that is being proposed to the UIL doesn't look very appealing to all of the officials in small rural chapters in Texas.  Mileage is being removed altogether and we are being forced to adopt the metro mileage rates. 

 

[DallasLJ]

Can you post the draft language for new 1204?

[blindref757]

I guess the compromise is that everyone gets paid travel even if they don't drive.  But there isn't a lot of ride sharing on Thursday nights.  Maybe it all works out in the end, but in chapters where you drive long distances, this proposal pays drivers about 25 cents a mile.

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[TexDoc]

I guess the compromise is that everyone gets paid travel even if they don't drive.  But there isn't a lot of ride sharing on Thursday nights.  Maybe it all works out in the end, but in chapters where you drive long distances, this proposal pays drivers about 25 cents a mile.

Absolutely unacceptable.   Supposedly some officials were on this committee.   Hey country schools, good luck getting officials on Thursdays.

[ETXZebra]

Your right Doc, totally unacceptable. I live about 70 miles from the geographical center of my chapter.

[JasonTX]

Imagine driving 2 hours to the center point of the chapter and getting $18.  The guys that live in the center point get the same thing.  In my "ring" where I live, I will stay home and work a local game and get $30 just for driving across the street to the stadium.  In our country, most of our guys do not live in the center point.  Perhaps they will let us designate the center point so that it will be equal for all.

[Joe Stack]

I don't know if it came up or not, but the whole argument about "let us know so we can budget for it" is just BS. Schools don't know what districts they are in until February every other year. Schools find out they will have to travel 3 hours for district games to Abilene or Tyler, for example when they didn't in years past.

The reason I bring this up is it has to be asked: why not ACTUAL mileage for EVERY official? I don't even mind if they dictate it must be from a HOME address. Then, add some incentive to ride together like making the rider fee equal to roughly what the 5 car mileage fee would be (on average).

[Welpe]

Dear UIL-

Pull your head out.

XOXO

-A former Texas official

[blindref757]

Anyone have any experience or expertise in petitions?  I would like for us to have as many Texas officials sign a petition to be delivered to that October UIL Legislative Council meeting.  This petition would state that we aren't going to referee sub varsity contests unless this is made right.  Offer them to remove the whole language about obligations related to scrimmages (we aren't coming for those for free anymore either) and sub-varsity contests...or pay us the legitimate expense of mileage. 

My car payment isn't free and they don't give away gas, tires, and oil at Wal-Mart.  I'm not doing this for $0.20/mile.

[blindref757]

Absolutely unacceptable.   Supposedly some officials were on this committee.   Hey country schools, good luck getting officials on Thursdays.

Bill Theodore was the rep for football.  Does anyone know him and how he feels about this?

[Etref]

Well between attacks on officials, no pay, no mileage recruiting and retention of officials will be difficult.

[blindref757]

After reading further, there are some other big changes to things like baseball, basketball, and volleyball tournaments. 

I have made a SurveyMonkey and it is open to all TASO members.  Please feel free to distribute to your membership and friends who officiate in Texas. 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RDJQ6FM

I will share the results with you all here in a couple of weeks.

If anyone knows how to get a petition going, I would help to head things up in east texas.  Message me for more info.

[DallasLJ]

I don't know if it came up or not, but the whole argument about "let us know so we can budget for it" is just HORSE HOCKEY. Schools don't know what districts they are in until February every other year. Schools find out they will have to travel 3 hours for district games to Abilene or Tyler, for example when they didn't in years past.

The reason I bring this up is it has to be asked: why not ACTUAL mileage for EVERY official? I don't even mind if they dictate it must be from a HOME address. Then, add some incentive to ride together like making the rider fee equal to roughly what the 5 car mileage fee would be (on average).

  I am not sure that redistricting has anything to do with officiating costs for budgeting purposes.  Regardless of redistricting, each team is going to basically have 5 homes games for Varsity and SubVarsity that they are going to have to pay for officials.  It does not matter how far the visiting team travels.  Yes, it effects their travel budgets for the teams themselves, but it does not effect their officiating budgets.  How far we travel is not dependent on redistricting.

[blindref757]

  I am not sure that redistricting has anything to do with officiating costs for budgeting purposes.  Regardless of redistricting, each team is going to basically have 5 homes games for Varsity and SubVarsity that they are going to have to pay for officials.  It does not matter how far the visiting team travels.  Yes, it effects their travel budgets for the teams themselves, but it does not effect their officiating budgets.  How far we travel is not dependent on redistricting.

I think the implication is that budgets are always fluid and never fixed in the school finance business.  A $1000 variation for officiating expenses wouldn't be a drastic hit on any school's budget.  This argument made by the UIL is simply a red herring.

[TexDoc]

The excuse that schools have to set their budgets is pure BS.  It isn't rocket science to set a budget for officials.

[Cowman52]

Some schools out here are seeing 600 travel plus the game fee because chapters a cant cover games. Does the UIL actualy think this poorly thought out proposal is going to help?
 I'm not real sure some chapters would like to down size,  less problems,  less responsibility,  travel shorter. 
The school a ways off has to do whatever.

[TXPanhandle]

This is simple. Starting next week, on my own dime, I will be sending all superintendents that are more than 30 miles from our center point a letter explaining this change will more than double the amount the pay in mileage per game if they do not contact the UIL and have this reviewed. Here's a prime example. More than half the schools we cover are more than 70 miles out. We would normally send a 5 man crew with the driver receiving an $80 mileage check. Now with 5 passengers the will pay $210 ($42 x 5). To make up the lost amount to the driver the other 4 will pay $10 each and pocket the other $32. This is all based on us being told all officials get paid mileage regardless if the drive. Won't surprise me if those rules get changed.

As Jason stated, our officials who live in the town that is 120 miles away will now be paid $128 each for one JV game instead of this years $40 for walking across the street. What's more?  This is twice a week (Tuesday & Thursday).  What a pay increase for those guys. Brilliant!

For the schools that are about 30 miles out?  Again simple. I will recommend to our chapter officers to reject their scrimmages and we simply tell them we can't cover their SV games.

[mrios73]

I will never support a pay schedule that does not take in mind the distance our fellow officials who do not live in a metro area drive in order to cover schools in the metro area and get paid the metro rate instead of mileage.

It would be best to have this pay schedule based on each individual official's home portal and get paid that way.  It would at least be fair across the board but not necessarily what should be paid out.  Schools have to understand that officials paired up on crews may not all live in the metro and non-metro officials should be paid as such vs. those officials who live in the metro.

This is a de facto way of determining who should be on crews.  Non metro officials may never get paired up with metro officials due to this rule. Non metro officials will view this as not being worth it and leave the chapter and how will that look for our numbers. I will not be for this rule.

It is bad enough that I have to go through this now with 1 official who lives outside of the metro and gets paid the metro rate while driving more than 200 miles or so round trip and getting paid $18.  I feel bad for him and am grateful for his continued support of our crew.

This needs to be reviewed and fixed now.

At least the riders fee seems to make more sense now.