Say no to development? Or just charge a big fee?
Some of the people commenting on my blog entry and the Chalkboard post about Simeon Stadium have drifted into other subjects. One is perceived overdevelopment in north High Point, which has led to overcrowded schools. They suggest the city should stop growth or impose impact fees, which would provide money for school construction.
This sort of sounds like, "The city should have stopped me from moving here." Or, more likely, "They should have stopped everyone after me, or at least charged them an impact fee."
Even so, it's a legitimate issue for discussion.
Davidson County Commissioner Max Walser has proposed a kind of impact fee there, which we editorialized about in February.
Impact fees have been adopted in some other North Carolina counties and have been talked about in others. The subject is getting a lot of attention throughout the state lately.
The N.C. Association of Realtors strongly opposes impact fees, not surprisingly.
Union County commissioners are considering a moratorium on new residential developments because of the strain on their school system.
I doubt the city of High Point would approve impact fees for schools, because the city isn't responsible for funding schools. But county commissioners could. They are responsible for school facilities.
There already are restrictions on growth. Whether they're strict enough is a matter for debate. Obviously, High Point is running out of land, anyway -- which is one reason why so many homes are being built across the county line in Davidson.
Comments (3)
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Folks in this part of the woods put moratorium on certain types of development. Might not be a bad idea for G'boro to consider. Polk Co. and Tryon especially realized that they are running out of room and decided not to destroy what was left of the beauty of the area. It might be too late for G'boro in that regards but a slow down might just help them.
Posted on June 17, 2005 2:09 PM
Doug,
The most distressing thing about the High Point City Council being so gung-ho about runaway development--despite overcrowded schools and a sewer system that routinely dumps hundreds of gallons of crap in our waterways--is that the city seems so determined to repeat the mistakes others have made. If you want a traffic situation like Raleigh or Charlotte, go ahead and let developers build huge housing developments and shopping centers wherever they want and wherever they want. I'm not anti-growth, but when I drove down 68 yesterday, it struck me that the only tool the city seems to use to handle traffic is to add more lights. Already, you have traffic lights within half-a-block of one another on a highway with a 45 MPH speed limit, so what's going to happen when traffic levels increase substantially. More lights?
Every week, it seems, we read about another subdivision or another shopping center. Has the city created a single new north-south road to handle additional traffic? Has it taken any steps at all to improve traffic flow anywhere? When the need comes to widen 68, will there be right-of-way available?
Posted on June 20, 2005 1:51 PM
The following is the first few paragraphs from a story posted on the Charlotte Observer's Web site today:
CMS takes stance against 3 rezonings
Urges city to request concessions
MICHELLE CROUCH
Staff Writer
For the first time in recent memory, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials took a public stand Monday against three proposed developments that could add more than 2,000 students to already overcrowded schools.
In rezoning cases before the Charlotte City Council, CMS administrator Mike Raible asked the city to request concessions -- such as a school site or a fee per home -- from developers to offset their impact on the school system.
The move came a day after an Observer analysis of rezoning cases showed that CMS, unlike other agencies, had never taken a strong public stance against a new development. CMS had rarely asked for concessions and missed the city's deadline for comment about a third of the time. City Council members also said they had trouble interpreting the school system's comments.
"I felt we needed to get on the record in terms of what we were requesting," said Raible, CMS executive director for facilities planning and real estate. "We wanted to put additional pressure on (the developers) to consider an offset."
Raible's action puts the City Council on the hot seat.
School officials have long sent feedback on rezoning petitions to the city. But even when they submitted comments on time that showed school overcrowding, the council often ignored the issue, saying it was hard to interpret the information and determine the system's position.
Now, there's no doubt.
But the council has no policy on how to consider schools in its development decisions. The prospect raises some thorny issues: When is a school overcrowded? Is it fair to ask developers to pay a fee for schools? What about the new subdivisions built every year that don't require rezonings or other council review, which account for three-fourths of all new development?
The council will likely address some of those issues later this year when it rewrites its development guidelines on infrastructure.
Posted on June 21, 2005 9:02 AM