With the focus on a fundamental and real community problem,
progress has been made and builders have recognized the value of
working together to build schools
We haven’t fixed the problem yet, but as a community Gilroy has made great strides in addressing the school facility funding crisis.
When the issue first popped up on the local radar, the major players – the Gilroy Unified School District, the city of Gilroy, and the developer community – had very little common ground.
The GUSD, which must educate the children of families that Gilroy officials entice to move here with their pro-growth strategies, seemed to be at the mercy of city officials and housing developers.
When the funding gap was pointed out, developers and city officials loudly criticized the school district’s less-than-stellar facilities planning and the district’s educational track record. Not only that, city officials led by City Administrator Jay Baksa said they couldn’t help – their hands were tied by SB 50, they claimed – and developers said that they already paid impact fees, and their projects needed to make fiscal sense.
To be sure, SB 50, which caps school district impact fees at $2.63 per square foot, when $6.61 per square foot is needed, is a problem.
But that doesn’t mean that other solutions can’t be found, and our community is working to find them.
Slowly, city council members began to put political pressure on housing developers – including the threat of a housing moratorium by the mayor – and many developers agreed to voluntarily increase their school impact fees to $6.61 per square foot.
Imagine that, developers voluntarily and dramatically increased their school impact fees and their projects still penciled out.
It’s amazing what can happen when the agencies that serve our community work together rather than at cross purposes.
Recently, city and school district officials met with representatives from Assemblywoman Ann Caballero (D-Salinas) and state Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) to share the problems that SB 50 is causing in Gilroy.
It turned out that these concerns were news to at least one legislator.
Let’s take a lesson from the school facilities funding crisis: We accomplish much more when we set aside ego and blame and work together to find solutions that have Gilroyans’ best interests at heart. Protecting a fiefdom is not what leadership is about.
