Minutes - 20070130 - Laserfiche WebLink

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guessing that if they come out of the Rules Committee at any time during the session, it will be at the end of the session before anything happens. Chair Carey asked haw these two bills would affect Orange County and Geof Gledhill said that they both simplify the funding formula. One of the things that the bills do is eliminate the 35165 split. The 65 is far all school districts and the 35 is for districts where the tax rate is greater than 100°l° of the average tax rate in the State. Chair Carey said that he has been told that there has been some movement among counties as it relates to the tax rate. Commissioner Jacobs said that he read something from the John Locke Foundation that this bill rewards big spenders and that the bill needs to be rewritten so that those who have been frugal are rewarded. This would reward Wake County, which has kept down its tax rate and had all of the schools back up, while Orange County would get punished because it is a "liberal spender." Chair Carey said that the staff has recommended two options on page six (bottom) on how to allocate and plan for use of lottery proceeds. Commissioner Jacobs said that one other factor for Orange County is that Orange County is updating its impact fees. He said that theoretically the impact fees would not have to be raised and the lottery proceeds could be used for the same thing. He thinks that this should factor into the calculations. He said that the County Commissioners have always said that they would consider this issue within the context of the entire written debt policy. He would like to look at the whole policy before he decides which way to go. He said that the County Commissioners had said that they wanted to adopt a debt policy, but this was the holdup, and now he would like to see how this fits. Commissioner Gordon agreed with Commissioner Jacobs about the updating of the impact fees. She would like to see the current collections of impact fees. She said that the impact fees legally have to be tied to the district. Originally, impact fees went directly to the districts and now it goes straight to the debt service. She asked Planning Director Craig Benedict about the current impact fee rates. Craig Benedict said about $4,400 for asingle-family dwelling in CHCCS and $3,000 in OCS. This is 60°~ of the maximum supportable impact fee calculation. This was due to construction costs being a little higher in CHCCS and the student generation rate also being higher. Far multi-family dwellings, it is $1,900 in CHCCS and $1,400 in OCS. Commissioner Gordon said that when the policy was changed to have the impact fees going straight into the debt service, this helped the County government finances because the County was paying all of the debt service before. However, it meant that the school districts got less. She would like more analysis about this and also to look at it in the context of the entire debt policy. Also, she does not have a clear picture about the needs of the older schools. She is sure that CHCCS will need to build more new schools than OCS. Commissioner Gordon said that in the short-term, the thing to do is to give the money per-pupil to the two school districts and let them use it for anything allowed. Commissioner Nelson said that he supports Commissioner Jacobs' suggestion to look at this in the context of the whole debt policy, and bringing it back also gives time to get input from the school systems. However, he said that budgeting in arrears does not make sense to him with a revenue stream like this that will fluctuate so dramatically. He supports being cautious. He made reference to the two options and said that one of the options is restrictive because it suggests using money to pay off debt service, and the other is a little looser in the sense that it gives the school systems the option of using it