Stupid question about the Arlington CB and overcrowded schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said this before but I'll say it again, it is strange to me that the Democrats who control the county board do not seem concerned about ensuring the schools do not get overcrowded. I am fine with more density and housing but they should be requiring the developers to help fund school construction. The tax base should be increasing so I am not sure why there would not be money for this. At a minimum it seems pretty clear there needs to be a new high school - ideally one that is comprehensive.

It's so frustrating that the people on this thread who seems to have all the answers haven't bothered understanding any basics about how county and school board work.

The term you are looking for is called "proffers" and counties in Virginia are not allowed to even request them from developers. https://www.virginiaproffersolutions.com/the-law

Someone else asked, "why are we doing it this stupid way in Arlington where the county can't build schools?" Gee, the Virginia Constitution. The Virginia Constitution and a whole bunch of court cases require all supervision of schools, including facilities, land acquisition, etc. to be the sole responsibility of a school board.

Have a bit of humility before you trash everyone who is elected and assume they are dumb or evil or whatever you are accusing them of. FFS they are following the law.

This poster discussing proffers is wrong. The law lays out the situation where you are permitted to make request to the developers related to the schools. It doesn’t say you can’t make them. Over the years I’ve seen APS documents that contemplate a new ES could include developer contributions. If I come across those reports, I’ll post them here.

Omg I'm not wrong, I just did not fully explain the entirety of the law on proffers (that's why I included the link, click on it). Of course APS can accept "voluntary" monetary extractions IF those donations comply with the law's requirements, which are listed in the link, which includes proportionality. So if one developer built a building with 20 2-bedroom apartment units, then maybe they could be allowed (and they have to choose to do this, and the law says that a developer is being unreasonable under the law unless they are getting a material benefit from their donation, again click on the link for the full details) to voluntarily donate money or a parcel of land to offset the cost of one new child per unit, so what is that, 1/100th of an actual school facility?

Yes, maybe Amazon can develop 10,000 units and argue that it is getting a benefit for its workers who will work there to have a school nearby and maybe they can successfully meet all the requirements to make a proffer, but that's a highly unusual one-off situation and not a plan for the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

Couldn’t the county just say “if this many units in this area are built we won’t have enough school space so no we aren’t going to grand you your variances to rules for height and parking?”

Also I’m still curious If you have a reason for why the schools are so overcrowded?

You are asking me why the schools are overcrowded? Because population grew 15% between 2010 and 2020, whereas it grew only 7.4% across the country, and we are only 26 square miles large, which gives us very little land to build schools on. There's no conspiracy. Go easy on the coffee.

Nobody thinks there is a conspiracy. People want to know why totally reasonable, fundamental questions can’t be answered by our elected officials. Even if the answer is “We can’t adequately address this issue due to XYZ.” Or “Hey, school capacity is important but we are more focused on creating housing. We will do what we can, but plan accordingly for your family.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said this before but I'll say it again, it is strange to me that the Democrats who control the county board do not seem concerned about ensuring the schools do not get overcrowded. I am fine with more density and housing but they should be requiring the developers to help fund school construction. The tax base should be increasing so I am not sure why there would not be money for this. At a minimum it seems pretty clear there needs to be a new high school - ideally one that is comprehensive.

It's so frustrating that the people on this thread who seems to have all the answers haven't bothered understanding any basics about how county and school board work.

The term you are looking for is called "proffers" and counties in Virginia are not allowed to even request them from developers. https://www.virginiaproffersolutions.com/the-law

Someone else asked, "why are we doing it this stupid way in Arlington where the county can't build schools?" Gee, the Virginia Constitution. The Virginia Constitution and a whole bunch of court cases require all supervision of schools, including facilities, land acquisition, etc. to be the sole responsibility of a school board.

Have a bit of humility before you trash everyone who is elected and assume they are dumb or evil or whatever you are accusing them of. FFS they are following the law.

There is no good reason that the CB can't advocate to Richmond to change that law or to get permission to go to a proffer system. THat's the stupid part. CB members are not even interested in a different system - they just f'in don't care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said this before but I'll say it again, it is strange to me that the Democrats who control the county board do not seem concerned about ensuring the schools do not get overcrowded. I am fine with more density and housing but they should be requiring the developers to help fund school construction. The tax base should be increasing so I am not sure why there would not be money for this. At a minimum it seems pretty clear there needs to be a new high school - ideally one that is comprehensive.

It's so frustrating that the people on this thread who seems to have all the answers haven't bothered understanding any basics about how county and school board work.

The term you are looking for is called "proffers" and counties in Virginia are not allowed to even request them from developers. https://www.virginiaproffersolutions.com/the-law

Someone else asked, "why are we doing it this stupid way in Arlington where the county can't build schools?" Gee, the Virginia Constitution. The Virginia Constitution and a whole bunch of court cases require all supervision of schools, including facilities, land acquisition, etc. to be the sole responsibility of a school board.

Have a bit of humility before you trash everyone who is elected and assume they are dumb or evil or whatever you are accusing them of. FFS they are following the law.

This poster discussing proffers is wrong. The law lays out the situation where you are permitted to make request to the developers related to the schools. It doesn’t say you can’t make them. Over the years I’ve seen APS documents that contemplate a new ES could include developer contributions. If I come across those reports, I’ll post them here.

CB won't ask developers for things because their # priority has always been affordable housing. They used to require a certain amount of affordable units from developers, until developers went whining to Richmond. Ever since, CB won't pressure developers for anything they don't want to do and continue to focus only on affordable units either by mandating 30% of units be affordable below 60% AMI along Columbia Pike (and nowhere else in the County) or by transfer of development rights whereby projects can "transfer" the affordable units to developments elsewhere (ie, a project in Ballston could get additional bonus density by promising more committed affordable units at another property in south Arlington along the Pike.)
CB members openly admit they won't push developers and say they "can't."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said this before but I'll say it again, it is strange to me that the Democrats who control the county board do not seem concerned about ensuring the schools do not get overcrowded. I am fine with more density and housing but they should be requiring the developers to help fund school construction. The tax base should be increasing so I am not sure why there would not be money for this. At a minimum it seems pretty clear there needs to be a new high school - ideally one that is comprehensive.

It's so frustrating that the people on this thread who seems to have all the answers haven't bothered understanding any basics about how county and school board work.

The term you are looking for is called "proffers" and counties in Virginia are not allowed to even request them from developers. https://www.virginiaproffersolutions.com/the-law

Someone else asked, "why are we doing it this stupid way in Arlington where the county can't build schools?" Gee, the Virginia Constitution. The Virginia Constitution and a whole bunch of court cases require all supervision of schools, including facilities, land acquisition, etc. to be the sole responsibility of a school board.

Have a bit of humility before you trash everyone who is elected and assume they are dumb or evil or whatever you are accusing them of. FFS they are following the law.

This poster discussing proffers is wrong. The law lays out the situation where you are permitted to make request to the developers related to the schools. It doesn’t say you can’t make them. Over the years I’ve seen APS documents that contemplate a new ES could include developer contributions. If I come across those reports, I’ll post them here.

Omg I'm not wrong, I just did not fully explain the entirety of the law on proffers (that's why I included the link, click on it). Of course APS can accept "voluntary" monetary extractions IF those donations comply with the law's requirements, which are listed in the link, which includes proportionality. So if one developer built a building with 20 2-bedroom apartment units, then maybe they could be allowed (and they have to choose to do this, and the law says that a developer is being unreasonable under the law unless they are getting a material benefit from their donation, again click on the link for the full details) to voluntarily donate money or a parcel of land to offset the cost of one new child per unit, so what is that, 1/100th of an actual school facility?

Yes, maybe Amazon can develop 10,000 units and argue that it is getting a benefit for its workers who will work there to have a school nearby and maybe they can successfully meet all the requirements to make a proffer, but that's a highly unusual one-off situation and not a plan for the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

Couldn’t the county just say “if this many units in this area are built we won’t have enough school space so no we aren’t going to grand you your variances to rules for height and parking?”

Also I’m still curious If you have a reason for why the schools are so overcrowded?

DP. Of course the CB can do that. But they won't and aren't going to. They want to get the added density and they want the token "community benefits" that they do get from the developers. They are afraid of scaring developers out of Arlington (what are the chances of that actually happening?) or making them angry (as they did with all the affordable unit "requirements" in the past) and risking another lawsuit....and thereby losing the developers and what they bring.

Why are schools overcrowded? Population growth, unprecedented population growth, and persistent failure by APS to believe the population growth wasn't just a blip and failure to build to keep up with enrollment growth.