Letters regarding position of impact fee - VII-A - 3-21-95

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For Presentation to the County Commissioners Alan Belch -Putting Children First March 21, 1995 Putting Children First(PCF)first addressed the overcrowding issue during the discussion of school construction last fall with both the school board and the County Commission. PCF put forward a Comprehensive Redesign Option that would have alleviated the overcrowding problem at Chapel Hill High next school year. The Option was to delay building the new high school and redistribute the voter-approved bond money to expand the existing high school for the 95-96 school year and to build a simplified design elementary school. The expanded space at Chapel Hill High would have then been available for transformation to a middle school in the future. The land purchased for the new high school could have been held to build another high school in the future or for a desperately needed elementary school on the east side of Chapel Hill. The plan would have had the added benefit of using existing approved bond funds. Unfortunately, this plan was not considered. Many who are now advocating higher impact fees urged the school system to go ahead with its plans. We ended up with bids that far exceeded the available bond money for the new high school. The school board cut significant portions of the design leaving a facility that many will find inadequate when complete. The bids for the elementary school funded for at least the next ten years by pay-as-you-go funds previously allocated for repair projects also came in over budget. The school system solution does little to deal with the immediate overcrowding situation, especially at the high school. The same old solutions that the board and now SOS advocate create for you a political situation where it will be much more difficult to pass needed bond issues. Recent history makes it difficult to convince voters to trust the existing power structure with bond money for construction. Increases in the impact fee will not provide enough money to build additional schools. PCF thinks that it is time to deal with the real issues and make the following recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners: 1. Hold the impact fee at $750. Increasing impact fees may have the undesired effect of stifling economic development in Orange County, thus eroding future tax base, and create a problem with affordable housing. 2. Use all political and legal influence to have the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School system fully implement the recommendations of the Pannesi report and save $143 million out of the overhead and administrative budget. This money would be available for building and education programs. 3. Immediately appoint the committee on setting affordable school building standards in Orange County as suggested by your members in earlier County Commission meetings.