Orange County NC Website
4 <br />Chair Carey said he feels there will be time to factor that <br />information into the final report. He would like to get some public <br />comment on what has been done to date on the technical report including <br />some of the comments made tonight. <br />Commissioner Crowther suggested sending out a letter of <br />appreciation to everyone who contributed to the study. This includes <br />Mr. Collins and the interns, the Carrboro Planning Department, Chapel <br />Hill's Inspections Department, Jane Sparks of Data Processing and the <br />staff of the two school boards. <br />In answer to a question from Chair Carey, Collins said that he can <br />address the concerns stated above within one month. It was decided to <br />hold a public hearing on this matter on October 2, 1995. <br />Mary Bushnell, Chapel Hill/Carrboro School Board member, and also <br />speaking on behalf of Child Care Networks, said that from her <br />perspective, the fact that preschool children are not included in the <br />report in any way may account for the percentage of new housing units <br />which do not have school age children. She is not sure if this is <br />something they can get a handle on or not or if this issue can be <br />factored in since the impact is down the road. <br />Marvin Collins said that the concern was legitimate. Other people <br />have expressed similar concerns about the pre-school children and why <br />they are not factored into the technical report. Questions have also <br />been raised about why private school students were not considered. <br />Suggestions have also been made to include projections of school <br />enrollment. All of these things can be considered, but when <br />calculating the fees, projections of school enrollment cannot be <br />directly considered. Impact fee calculations must focus on public <br />school students, and it is the responsibility of the School Boards to <br />consider growth and school enrollment when determining how many schools <br />are needed to take care of the projected enrollment, developing a <br />capital improvement program, and requesting funds from the County to <br />build enough schools. That is the point where preschoolers and school <br />enrollment come into play. That is the identified need that is taken <br />into account in the technical report. Currently, one school of each <br />type is needed in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district and one elementary <br />school is needed in the Orange County district. <br />Commissioner Willhoit requested a graph showing data for the <br />number of bedrooms versus the average number of kids, because the Board <br />is trying to establish a relationship between the fee and the number of <br />bedrooms -- not on the number of kids. This would make it easier to <br />visualize, and, if it is fairly flat, it may result in relative <br />inequities for a large number of families. Also, he would like a graph <br />showing the distribution of children in new homes from the existing <br />population. He would like to know if new units have different number of <br />kids than the existing ones and how this will shift the overall <br />distribution. <br />