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Editorials
A good time to study school impact fees : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisA good time to study school impact fees
| 2/14/2013
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For nearly two decades, the Oswego School District's enrollment hovered at around 4,000 students. That enabled the district to operate comfortably with six schools: a single high school, two junior high schools, and three elementary schools.
But when new home construction accelerated in the mid-1990s, enrollment swelled and school district officials had no other option but to build more schools throughout the 68 square mile school district.
As we reported last Thursday, Superintendent Dr. Matthew Wendt told a school district advisory committee Feb. 4 that the district's enrollment now stands at 17,716.
Wendt noted the district gained 7,900 students alone over the past decade.
While the surge in enrollment peaked at 1,547 new students for the 2005-06 school year, the district has continued to add new students by the hundreds on annual basis.
That trend is expected to continue as more families with school age children move into the district-either into existing homes, new homes or foreclosed homes.
Currently, the district's 23 school buildings can accommodate the growing enrollment. But in the not-so-distant future, the district will again be faced with the need to build and staff still more schools.
Anticipating the continuing enrollment growth, representatives from the Village of Oswego detailed for the committee the impact fees the village has been collecting from new homebuilders on behalf of the school district and other governmental agencies.
Committee members also asked Wendt to invite representatives from the other - municipalities in the school district to make similar presentations.
Given the slowdown in new home construction in the district, we believe now is an opportune time to meet with municipal and county officials to review their impact fee programs.
We note, however, that during last week's meeting some committee members expressed concern about the prospect of more apartment complexes being built in the district.
The committee members concerns are misplaced. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, apartments generate fewer children per unit than owner-occupied single-family homes. This fact has been confirmed time and again over the years by numerous independent studies. It's also why the impact fees Oswego and other municipalities collect on new apartment units for the school district and other government agencies are significantly less than the fees charged for single-family homes.
Why? Because families with school age children are more likely to live in single family homes than apartments, while seniors and young singles and couples are more likely to rent apartments.
Over the past three decades we've heard a succession of public officials warn of the dire financial threat posed for the school district by apartment complexes. In all that time we've seen the Oswego Village Board approve just one new apartment complex that was not age-restricted: Farmington Lakes. Meanwhile, the school district's enrollment has more than tripled as thousands of new single-family homes have been built in Oswego and elsewhere throughout the school district.
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