Reply to BOE reconsidering the Virtual Academy, Leader in Me, and Innovative School Year Calendar

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Reply to "BOE reconsidering the Virtual Academy, Leader in Me, and Innovative School Year Calendar"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The only way MCPS should fund VA is it’s used for kids who can’t behave in regular school and to address overcrowding when there’s new development. [/quote]

Neither of those is plausible. [/quote]

All it would take is political will to give students who aren’t disruptive a safe learning environment and to make developers pay for the schools their projects need. So you’re right. It’s implausible. [/quote]

The idea that developers would or should pay for schools is ridiculous. They don't pay for it-- the young families buying those homes ultimately pay for it. Twice-- first with the home, then with their taxes. Boomers buying their first homes didn't get hit with an extra charge for building schools-- everyone paid for those schools through their taxes.[/quote]

I disagree. The developers have to pay their fair share. [/quote]

OK, but their fair share is nothing. There's a housing shortage. Families need a place to live. You're just trying to avoid paying your fair share for schools. You benefited from public policies when you were younger that paid for schools from taxes. But now that you're an older homeowner, you want to push the costs onto young families.[/quote]

The subsidies we’re giving developers through tax breaks and straight cash haven’t produced more housing. Our housing production is at its lowest level ever. The developers keep the subsidies as profits. They don’t pass them on to buyers and renters. I don’t want to subsidize the 1 percent. The limited resources that we have for subsidizing housing should go exclusively to income-restricted housing.

MoCo has had impact fees since the 1990s. Before that, new development provided infrastructure on a proffer system, which was unpredictable and more costly than the impact fees, so young families have been paying for schools for a long time. A lot of things have changed about housing development in MoCo since the 1990s. Most important, new homes available for purchase make up a smaller share of new housing, so of course it’s harder to buy a house here. If you want to help young families, start by figuring out how to make condos and other starter homes make more financial sense for developers than rentals. If your interest is more in helping developers make big profits, cut impact fees and grant property tax abatements. [/quote]

Don't subsidize development. But don't discourage it, either. The county makes it too hard to build dense housing, which is why we end up with McMansions going up. Trying to keep density the same heavily favors developing high-end homes.

Drop the impact fees, tax abatements, and zoning requiring SFHs, and let local taxes pay for schools.[/quote]

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