Reply to Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?

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Reply to "Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a separate legal issue, I'm curious about the development taxes in Crown. While school impact taxes can be used across the county, the same isn't true for UPP taxes. Those are much, much smaller, but they need to be used in that area to increase capacity. Does Crown have enough more teaching stations than Wootton to spend that money? Or will it need to be refunded to the developers?

It would be a lot cheaper to refund that amount than renovate and operate another school, so that would probably still be the right move. I just don't know how that would work.[/quote]

By my read no refund is required regardless.  The money was used to build Crown, which will under Option H given the addition of some population from GHS "that adds capacity designed to alleviate overutilization in the school service area from which the funds were collected."  Alternatively, the Crown building itself constitutes "capital projects adding capacity at any school adjacent to the school for which the funds were collected."[/quote]

[b]It only adds capacity under option H to the extent it has more capacity than the current Wootton facility[/b]. The law is pretty clear it needs to be used to increase capacity, not merely for capital improvements.[/quote]

I'm not sure that is true?  It just needs to add more capacity than [b]was in the school service area where the taxes were collected[/b].  Excess capacity in other areas isn't relevant to that determination.[/quote]

Adding to my previous reply to this, note that these taxes were never intended to be used in the specific service area where they were collected. At the time they were collected, I think Crown was zoned for GHS. [b]Crown HS became acceptable as an adjacent zone[/b], as would Wootton.

If Crown is a new service area, then it obviously creates more capacity in that new, adjacent service area. But if Crown instead just services the Wootton service area, then what is the increase capacity?

Again, the UPP taxes aren't very much. If Crown HS technically has slightly more teaching stations than Wootton, then it probably doesn't matter. Those UPP taxes can be allocated to that portion of the construction.[/quote]

Interesting.  My take is that Crown is within the service area, not adjacent.  It is, quite literally in the service area from where the taxes were collected.  The original plan was to add another school within the service area (boundary) to alleviate overutilization by sending kids from GHS to the new facility.  Under Option H it still does that, just not to the extent originally planned.  [/quote]

The service area is set when the taxes are collected. Crown isn't the collected service area-- GHS is. You obviously often can't spend the money in the service area itself, so the law allows the money to be spent to expand capacity in adjacent service areas. Creating an adjacent Crown service area would have done that, Option H doesn't do that. It instead has the money spent in the Wootton service area.

Right? Serious question. I think the law is pretty clear on this, but maybe I'm reading it wrong.[/quote]

I’m thinking of this differently.  The “service area” is the literal geographic boundary for where students wishing the new development are zoned at the time of development.  I believe that was the GHS cluster boundary (at the time).  Crown is within the geographic confines of that boundary (service area) and is adding capacity for students zoned in that original service area.

The alternative doesn’t make sense to me. If for example a new elementary school was being built to account for development, splitting the prior boundary 50/50, it would be creating a new school within the service area, not a new school in a newly formed adjacent service area.

Hope that makes sense.[/quote]

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