The city and school district pleaded for help from state
representatives to lessen the impact of housing development on
school facilities at a joint meeting Wednesday night.
Gilroy – The city and school district pleaded for help from state representatives to lessen the impact of housing development on school facilities at a joint meeting Wednesday night. The state staff said they had not encountered this type of concern before, but expected their superiors to take note.
Almost 20 representatives from the Gilroy Unified School District, City of Gilroy and their governing boards met with residents and representatives of state Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) and Assemblywoman Anna Caballero (D-Salinas). Local officials expressed frustration with Senate Bill 50, which limits the amount districts can extract from developers for new housing, and the financial bind it puts them in. The school district has an expanding enrollment, packed school buildings and a $15 million facilities deficit.
“I think it’s easy to see we have a very substantial funding problem,” school district Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Steve Brinkman said to the legislative representatives after outlining the mechanism of the bill.
Signed into law in 1998, the bill caps the amount school districts can charge developers to build new houses, currently at $2.63 per square foot. Meanwhile, the district’s cost of building facilities to accommodate the increase in school enrollment that new housing creates has grown to $6.61 per square foot, even taking into account California Department of Education funding.
As the so-called developer fees are the main source of facilities revenue, the law ensures facilities funding will lag behind its expenditures, city councilman Roland Velasco said.
“What you see over time is this gap starting to widen,” he said “And this is not taking into account the cost of land,” which in the case of the planned Christopher High School, to open in fall 2009, cost the school district about $30 million.
The school district has requested that developers voluntarily raise the amount they contribute to the school district from $2.63 to $6.61 per square foot. At least six developers have agreed to this contribution, including the three developers granted residential development ordinances – or preliminary permission to build – by the city at a Sept. 10 meeting, Brinkman said. However, as the largest developers in Gilroy have not agreed to raise their fees, the voluntary contribution tactic is not a “long-term solution,” he said
The state’s revision of the law could provide a long-term solution, Brinkman said.
“We believe that (senate bill) 50 needs to be looked at so that the school’s needs can be met in a fair and equitable way,” he said.
Staff from both state legislators were receptive to concerns, taking notes throughout the meeting.
“I believe this is an issue that needs to be discussed and it needs to come to Assemblywoman Caballero’s attention,” field representative Khydeeja Alam said Thursday.
Alam said she had not spoken to the assemblywoman but planned to bring up concerns surrounding the bill at a staff meeting with Caballero today. It was the first time she had heard of the bill, she said.
Chief of Staff Sailaja Rajappan also had not heard concerns expressed about the bill during her three-year tenure with Alquist, but the other districts covered by Alquist are not growing as fast as Gilroy and are thus not as affected by the developer fee cap, she said.
Both legislators were unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon.
Alquist has a number of issues brought to her attention each week, Rajappan said. However, Gilroy’s concerns, made stronger because both city and school district officials expressed them, would be a “high priority.”
The importance of education is not lost on Alquist, a former teacher and school board member, Rajappan said.
“(Alquist) knows first-hand the challenges in funding schools in an expanding district,” she said.
