County’s report on impact fees for schools
Letter to editor:
The County’s report on the need for impact fees is certainly going to be a lighting rod of contention between the school adviser construction team, if major differences are shown between what the school district is needed and what the county’s report shows is required.
I am looking forward to the report to see how the two thoughts of the school districts needs compare or don’t.
Either way if the report and the school districts needs shown are different doesn’t really change the need to have growth pay for the 3 new schools that the district has stated is required.
Some reasons come to mind as to why there is a need to use impact fees as a tool to raise the funding for schools. One of those is that raising the costs of new homes is a good thing. Creating a higher home price keeps the higher priced homes from competing with older homes, thus creating an increase in the price of older homes. This is a good thing because with the increase in value of all real estate the property tax increases as well.
While some would argue that increasing the value of homes is not a good thing because of poor people not being able to rent or buy a home, I believe that is not the case. Looking at the school district and the proportion of children in poverty shows that the ability of poor people to find housing is greater here than many areas of this nation. If being able to find cheap housing in Lee County was a problem than the numbers of students in poverty would not be 70 percent of the student population. The 2500 new students in Lee County schools aren’t all kindergarten kids which means that more students and families are moving to Lee County and finding affordable housing.
While we welcome every one to Lee County, the mix of families coming to Lee County apparently has been low income folks to the point that the school district has decided that all students need to get free lunches.
I can’t see how anyone can support a sales tax as an alternative to impact fees as the school district suggested. A sales tax would do nothing but add more costs onto the folks that can least afford paying more out of pocket for everything when they can’t afford to pay for school lunches for their own children.
Sincerely,
Leo Amos
Matlacha