Minutes - 02-26-2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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the Orange County School District. The fees are easily updated. He said that to the extent that the County does not implement the maximum supportable fee, the level of service would either decline or property taxes would have to be increased to support the level of service desired. He said that the net capital cost per high school student for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School system would be $25,000 and the net capital cast per high school student for Orange County would be $23,000 plus the debt service, which would be over $25,000. The pupil generation rate in the Orange County school district for single-family detached is .309 and for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district .386. Commissioner Gordon pointed out that the cutoff date for the analysis was October 2000, which does not take into account schools that have opened since that time. The fee structure would probably be increased with the additional schools. Planning Board Chair Gooding-Ray asked how the consultant determined how many children there were in each household. Paul Tischler said that the information was taken from the 1990 census. The expectation is that within the next year the data from the 2000 census will be available. He explained that the average number of students generated was used. In answer to a question from Hunter Schofield, Paul Tischler said that the impact fee would only be charged on new net construction and not rehabilitation or additions to homes. He said that there were a few impact fees around the country that use square footage to calculate the amount of the impact fee. He has found in many cases that it is very difficult to show that public school students increase as the square footage increases. Sometimes there are more children in starter homes than there are in some of the larger homes. Ms. Holtcamp made reference to page 28 of the document. She read from the report and asked about the alternative where the County could require the developer to pay all or part of the impact fee. Paul Tischler said that the intent of the language was to exempt someone from paying the impact fee that was going to build something that was deed restricted to a certain land use (i.e., elderly housing or housing for the mentally ill). In answer to another question, Paul Tischler made reference to page 8 of the study and said that to the extent the maximum supportable fee were discounted, then the builder would pay whatever the adopted fee would be, and the taxpayers would pay the remainder. He said that in the vast majority of cases, the impact fee is passed an to the purchaser of the property. In answer to a question from a member of the Planning Board, Paul Tischler said that in approximately 10% of the places where he has done impact fee studies, there have been exceptions to the payment of the fee in the form of waivers. A characteristic is that the housing stock in a jurisdiction is inadequate in providing current affordable housing, which is the major factor in the exception. In answer to a question from Commissioner Carey, Craig Benedict said that there could be other policies in place to accommodate affordable housing. In Orange County there is a reimbursement plan in place far impact fees for certain types of housing. Commissioner Gordon asked for clarification about states that have impact fees and the difference between the level of responsibility that each state places on the local government entity. John Link said that in North Carolina the primary responsibility for funding the capital building projects is with each county. He said that the basic responsibility for operations of schools resides with the state, but that is at a very basic level. Paul Tischler made reference to the differences in the levels of service between each County and between each state and said that as students per teacher are decreased, the costs are greatly increased. Hunter Schofield asked Paul Tischler if he had ever seen impact fees tiered based upon the size of the subdivision and Paul Tischler said no, because each house has the potential for the same demand. Citizen Comments Marinda Martin, a mother of two children at Efland Cheeks Elementary school, spoke about the change in landscape because of the growth in the area. She thinks that Efland's growth parallels Chapel Hill. She noted that Chapel Hill has a world class public education system and she feels this is because they already have a $3,000 impact fee in place. She also spoke about the