The city’s top school official wants to send developers a
message: Help prevent classroom overcrowding or risk a ban on
construction.
Gilroy – The city’s top school official wants to send developers a message: Help prevent classroom overcrowding or risk a ban on construction.
It’s unclear, however, if City Hall will back up the tough talk.
Classroom overcrowding is becoming a hot issue in Gilroy as developers start to build housing projects that span hundreds of acres and include hundreds of homes, all while state law limits the fees they must pay to offset the increasing burden on schools.
“I’m at a place right now where, whatever it takes to get their attention, I’m willing to pursue it,” said Edwin Diaz, superintendent of Gilroy Unified School District, about the idea of a building moratorium. “I’m not sure we want to incur the wrath of a whole industry, but at some point, if we want to have the types of amenities we need, including schools, this issue has to be addressed.”
Mayor Al Pinheiro has his concerns about issuing an ultimatum to developers.
“I wouldn’t have a problem if legally we could say tomorrow, ‘Mr. Developer, we are not going to have any more development in the city until you have a plan to mitigate impacts,'” he said. “But when I’m told by my legal counsel we cannot do that, who am I to do something that’s going to put us in jeopardy?”
The housing moratorium is the most extreme of 10 ways the school district has proposed to bridge the widening gulf between the need for new facilities and its ability to pay for them. It’s also among the most likely to land Gilroy in a court battle with statewide implications, Pinheiro predicted.
The list of 10 proposals includes more diplomatic enticements, such as awarding extra points in Gilroy’s housing-permit competition to developers who help build school facilities.
“I don’t know what approach the city is comfortable in taking, but I do know that it’s absolutely critical for us to agree on some type of approach so we can mitigate the impacts of development,” Diaz said. “Otherwise, it is not going to be very pretty as far as school facilities when we continue to grow.”
School officials say they need to charge developers $9.45 per square foot of housing to accommodate expected growth, but current law prohibits them from charging more than $2.63 per square foot. The same law, city council members have said, prohibits them from using their authority to deny housing projects as a tool to impose new fees, or to induce outright gifts of land and facilities for the district.
The school district is asking the city to reconsider the cautious view it has so far taken of SB 50, a law passed in the late ’90s with the backing of the development industry. Until recent days, the city had argued that it could not even raise the issue of school facilities in negotiations of voluntary contracts between City Hall and developers.
A development agreement city council approved Monday night, for instance, includes $2 million in cash for the city, a three-acre public park, and the extension of a nature trail along Uvas Creek – all at the expense of roughly 12 landowners along Hecker Pass Highway. Missing from the voluntary agreement are any benefits for the school district, which expects more than 300 new students as a result of the project.
But that doesn’t mean city council is sitting idle. Mayor Al Pinheiro and top city administrators met with Diaz last week to exchange legal opinions. The city’s legal counsel, upon further review, believes officials have the right to negotiate for school facilities as part of a development agreement. They are now reviewing the laundry list of other options the district has proposed.
The list includes examples such as the City of Livermore, where developers agreed to pay higher fees per square foot of housing after the city threatened a housing moratorium. In Pleasanton, city leaders convinced developers to voluntarily pay $7 per square foot of housing.
Joel Goldsmith, one of the Hecker Pass property owners, acknowledged the need for new schools. But he questioned whether more fees are the way to go. The city already charges developers some of the highest fees in the state – more than $45,000 per housing unit – to finance the cost of new roads, sewers and emergency services.
“It’s an impact on our community,” Goldsmith said of growth. “It’s a fact of life – if you’re bringing more people in, you have to have new schools. As a community, we have to find a way to make that work.”
The city’s legal counsel expects to deliver an assessment of the school district’s list of 10 recommendations during informal policy talks in late January.
