Salt Lake City News

ALL WE ARE SAYING, IS GIVE SCHOOL A CHANCE

School Impact Fees Could Create New Cash for Schools, But Pro-Development Groups Say, “No Way.”

By Tracy Medley, 9-25-06

Utah public schools are in trouble, boasting the lowest per-pupil spending in the country and class sizes fit to burst. With that in mind and a $76 million missed opportunity looming large educators and some state officials are looking to a new solution: impact fees.

The hope is that impact fees, placed on new homes sold in the valley would provide an extra pool of money for Utah schools. Sounds great, but the plan has drawn furious criticism from some Utah developers and real estate agents who claim the fees place an unfair burden on new homebuyers.

Christopher Kyler, chief executive officer of the Utah Realtors Association told Cathy McKitrick of The Salt Lake Tribune,

“It’s highly unfair to target one segment of society – new-home buyers – and say, ‘Why don’t you guys bear an extra burden?’”

That extra burden would amount anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars added to the cost of a newly built home.

McKitrick also spoke to Chris Gamvroulas, the head of Ivory Development, who perhaps overstated the issue when he called impact fees, “taxation without representation” adding, “This is a tax paid by those who have no input into whether or not they want to pay it.”

Steve Smith, a Sandy Councilman indicated that impact fees to newly built homes are frequently applied to cover the cost of community growth and infrastructure.

Smith told the Tribune, “It’s the same principle of building out a water or sewer system, you don’t push all the costs of new development onto existing users.”

School District officials are hopeful and feel that the impact fees are not simply needed but justified. “The concept of new growth paying for itself is a valid one,” Burke Jolley, deputy superintendent for the Jordan School District told The Tribune.

It’s impossible to deny that Utah’s rapid development has been a major factor in the overcrowding of our schools, but is that argument strong enough to convince an already resistant legislature that school impact fees are an appropriate course of action.

Whatever happens with this proposal, one thing is clear: our schools need more money and it has to come from somewhere. Governor Huntsman’s near-schizophrenic goal of prioritizing both Utah’s education system and big business is ambitious, but can it be done? Will Utah’s low-taxes and excellent winter “pow-pow” be enough to attract the wealthy if they can’t, in good conscience send their kids to our schools? And in the end, is it the potential or the actual children of Utah who matter?

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