By Morita Bruce
Ready to see your taxes raised or your county services slashed again? What’s fair about that?
Background: In October, there was a great deal of controversy about canceling the school impact fee. This is the fee paid by people who purchase new homes, and it pays for a portion (roughly one-fifth) of the cost of building new schools to serve the new students arriving from the newly-built homes. That bill failed. Now Bill 09-37 proposes to cut the fee rather than eliminate it, which still hurts current Harford residents by raising our taxes and/or cutting existing services.
Here’s my view:
Bill 09-37 will slash the school impact fee by 27%. I oppose this unfair bill. It subsidizes new-home buyers by unfairly increasing taxes on current residents or by cutting services (such as recreational facilities, libraries, etc.)
This bill unfairly hurts current residents in the vain hope that it will encourage homebuilding. It claims to be a “stimulus”, as if the current impact fee is what deters consumers from buying new homes. It doesn’t. If the buyer has the income and wants the new house, he will buy it. A couple thousand dollars doesn’t change a buyer’s mind.
I ask the Council the following question: If you cut the impact fee, losing millions of dollars a year for Harford, how do you expect to make up for that loss? Are you planning to raise taxes? If not, which services are you planning to cut? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The budget MUST still be balanced after you give away this money.
I don’t believe it’s fair to penalize all Harford residents to subsidize those who can afford new houses. The impact fee is both fair and necessary. Keep it where it is. Vote against Bill 09-37.
IMPORTANT: Public testimony on this bill is Tuesday, December 1st, at 6:00pm in the County Council chambers. Last chance, because 6 of the 7 Council members are sponsoring this bill and it will become law without public protest.
Very good questions to ask the county council. WOnder if they will answer them or cave to the loud vocal group?
The council will vote with the developers/builders, who are likely the only ones who will benefit from it.
The council is not siding with the developers/builders, they are siding with the lower income person that is already an resident of Harford County that wishes the realize their dream of building an house in the county. And the subcontractors who would like to hear their phones ring and have work come in so they can feed their families. There was not a single developer/builder that spoke in defense of the impact fee repeal at the meeting last month. If they were being affected by the impact fee there would have been some type of representation there. They are either still building locally or they have picked up to build elsewhere. I spoke at the meeting in favor of repealing the impact fee for many reasons but I am one of the people affected by the impact fee. I will have zero effect on where I am building because my children already attend the school there and I have been a tax paying resident for 15 years and paid my property taxes for 9 years. My other arguement with the impact fee is that I will be paying the fee so an developer can build 300+ houses and make money off me. I and my family will see none of the benefits of fees that we might pay but another will become rich because of it. If or Ms. Bruce think that your taxes are not going to go up after Red Pump is done and all the schools are renovated even with the impact fee you are sadly mistaken. The impact fee pays for the construction, that’s it!! The residents of Harford County are expected to pay for staffing etc for the schools and the schools in the county are understaffed already after the teacher cuts for the school year 2008/2009. What needs to be done, and hopefully will, is the BOE needs to take responsibility for its spending that is not essential to our children’s education. In one budget from BOE that I read in just one area they overspent @ 11 million dollars in transportation because of a lack of a system of checks and balances. That one area of overspending almost completely wiped out the income that the impact fee made since it was implemented. The BOE is spending without looking into the future for how the bills will be paid. It will be like the other cases of overspending when it was entirely left to the taxpayers. Its the classic “spend now, pay later”.The impact fee was a great idea in concept but it did not live up to its expectations of producing income. Therefore there needs to be other ways of raising money for schools implemented.Besides those points there is also the problem that Red Pump will be at capacity at the time of its opening but there are 300+ homes slated to be built in that area. That is not smart planning to say the least. Ms. Bruce seems to not understand 09-37. It has nothing to do with raising taxes, cutting county services or facilities. Perhaps if she read the bill and comprehended the material involved she would realize that. The impact fee has not raised 1/5 of the construction cost for new schools that new construction has affected. I am wondering where these big pockets of new residents and new schools are? We just now building and renovation schools to make up for the boom of the 80’s-90’s. I believe if people were able to fully understand the matters in front of them as opposed to “crying wolf” about a situation they don’t comprehend we might actually be able to make progress as opposed to fighting one another. The federal government saw an dramatic increase of home sales with the first time home buyer incentive and opened it up to many others as a way to stimulate the economy. That was “just a couple thousand dollars” as Ms. Bruce put it. But it made a difference.
Bill 09-37 does not impact current home owners, the money is from new home construction only. The property taxes that Ms. Bruce cites are not affected by the impact fee. It is a construction fee. It is targeted for new school construction only. It does not affect roads, libraries, parks or other community facilities. The schools that are overcrowded are not directly affected, only new construction.
The taxes collected for existing property, as property taxes, are used to support current expenses w/n the county, ie. 57% to the current school budget, and the rest to the needs addressed by the county exec. ie Sheriff dept., health dept., libraries, roads, h20/sewer and com. services in his budget. The impact fee is in a separate account, similar to escrow accounts. The money is only to be used for new school construction. Perhaps opponents to this bill need to question the Bd of Ed budget to ascertain the need for 57% of the county budget and it’s allocation of funds for necessary expenses like astro turf or entertainment budgets.
For as long as I’ve lived in Harford County (25+ yrs), the Bd of Ed seems to answer to no one. No one holds them accountable for anything, questions their expenditures or demands results for dollars spent. You can bet the taxpayers will make up any cut in school revenue lost by the cut in the impact fee. The schools will not take a hit like that and the council won’t force them to cut their budget.
The bill has now passed, but remember: Although school impact fees can only be SPENT for school construction, it’s not enough and was never planned to be “enough”. The difference is already being paid through our taxes. So now that even less money will come from impact fees, even more “other” tax money must make up the difference.
Where that money will come from, no one yet knows. We know only that Harford’s bills must be paid, and the only sources of money are taxes and fees.
The other option is to cut services but then the people revolt.
Or yet the other, other option the overburdened taxpayers revolt.
Joe
Is that what I said the people as in We The People?
We revolt when our favorite service gets cut.
Maybe the source of the spending should be held accountable as I have said many times on this forum. The impact fee was never going to pay for all the construction expenses and certainly was not going to be used for staffing, maintenance fees, etc. Without the money available for these construction projects they should have been put on hold. If you and your family dont have the money to pay for something what do you do? Wait and do it when you DO have the money. The small incidental amount that the impact fee did raise was lost by irresponsible spending from the BOE. Its time that people that are responsible for spending our money stop spending like there is no end to our checkbooks.
ok , how did the new turf fields and entertainment come in? The fields are better and will be better for the students. maybe not the best investment right now however one that was budgeted and contracted for. Entertainment? There are only a few school dances a year? Let’s really put the hard questions to the Board of Ed; why can’t you build,staff and maintain a school without having to keep asking for more $$; Cut some admin, There are schools with several Vice-Principles who have high $$ saleries. Use those savings. And how about running schools like business do , need more production, use existing infrastructure nad run 2 shifts.
There are still more turf fields in the works. By the time that turf field construction is completed it will be time to replace the first ones installed. They typically only carry an life span of maximum 15-20 years and that is definently on the high side. The turf fields do not benefit all students any students not playing sports are not receiving any benefits at all from them. Education benefits all students but there is consistantly more spending towards athletic programs then educational. The questions that no one has asked during the whole process of deciding what new schools to build and staff is who is going to pay for them. I guess people thought that items like the impact fee were going to magically make up for school construction that should have been planned and budgeted for a decade or two ago. An organization that is already getting 57% of our income has no business asking for more, they need to learn like the rest of us to live within their means and instead of accusing us of neglecting our youth by not paying more taxes to them, learn to responsibly use what money they do have.
Athletics does not exceed the instructional budget of this county. Additionally turf fields are being used and partly paid for from the Rec budget too! I would bet that most of the budget, beyond salaries is spent on special education students and complying with the law!
I have never seen the North Harford Rec Council use the astroturf field at the High School. They use the fields on the other side of the road for all their practices and games. The old fashion kind= grass. I personally have not seen the rec council use any of the astroturf fields in the county. I believe that it used to be education first and now its athletics first. When I attended North Harford and played after-school sports we would have practices a day or two a week and one game a week. Now there are games going on at North Harford every night of the week on different fields and some go on until almost 11 at night ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!!! When are the players supposed to be working on their school work?? Many of the so called guidelines that HCPS supposedly follows are a joke. For example, I know at least 3 people that passed through HCPS during the “No Child Left Behind” program and they could not read when they received their diploma. That’s pretty sad. The federal government passed the ruling over 30 years ago to allow children with special needs to be allowed into the school system along with everyone else. Before that most children with severe disabilities were not allowed an education and usually ended up in mental facilities. I have a good friend that has a daughter with Down’s Syndrome. That child deserves the same education and rights as my two daughters. I don’t understand your reasoning, CDEV, for continually going after special education. I suppose you don’t have a child with special needs or know of someone that does but these children should not be left out of what everyone else considers an right.
I am not going after children with special needs but you do realize that most of the money is spent on them. Sending kids to Kennedy Krieger and the likes is EXPENSIVE. NCLB is not a program but an unfunded federal mandate!
As far as sporting events….Me think you exagerate. Name a specific instance, on a school night when a sporting event for high school kids went until 11 PM! Times have changed so to compare what sounds like athletics in HS with 30+ years ago is very obtuse. I have seen rec council teams use some of the new turf fields. I believe they are funding some of them as well. Rec councils use schools and school system facilities all the time I have seen it at Magnolia MS, North Harford MS, Joppatowne HS, Edgewood MS, as well as other schools. Please check your facts. Academics comes first and should.
The revenue that the parks and rec dept. is partially obtained from the county taxes, property taxes. According to the county gov. website, p&r was to use the facilities from the BOE to ease the financial stresses on both depts. and to utilize facilities for the advantage of all county citizens. That would imply the coordination of usage by both depts. Lorrie, your ideas to stagger the use of facilities makes good sense, perhaps you should bring it up at a BOE board meeting.
CDEV, Academics first is exactly what I was talking about. I believe an education should come before athletics in all circumstances. I live very close to North Harford High School and I can personally hear the events going on until that late. 9pm + is normal now and then add to that the drive time back on buses for the youth that have traveled to the game. I am only comparing now to 10 years ago when I was a high school senior not 20-30. That’s a pretty dramatic change in my opinion. And as I have stated I have not seen North Harford Rec play on the high schools fields at all in the last 5 years since I have lived at my house next to the High School. Maybe its different for other areas but not here. The rec council spent alot of money buying the new rec fields on Norrisville Rd in Jarrettsville and preparing the fields and paving the parking lot then they pretty much locked the gates. My children play rec soccer in which I coach. Our games are all held at the older Jarrettsville rec fields where many of the children in the northern end play their games. Those fields are adjacent to Jarrettsville Elem. The fields I am talking about are the fields where the BOE has poured massive dollar amounts in redoing every couple years.BTW Astroturf was pushed by a certain member of our County Council.If you look at the expense vs the life span on the astroturf fields it just doesn’t make good financial sense. Add to that all the expensive new bleacher systems and lighting that stays on all night and you have quite a bit of monetary output.
I am very aware of how much money is spent on special needs but they didn’t ask to be born with disabilities. My youngest goes to Kennedy Kreiger and we (teachers, doctors and myself) had to jump through alot of hurdles to get her there, it wasn’t automatic. Children with disabilities deserve the help. I would never hesitate to allow them the best treatment and doctors they can get. We pour probably just as much money into the prison system and they committed crimes but they receive many extras many have to do without.
Peacenik, I would be a wonderful idea to stagger the facilities but I doubt that would be a viable option for the BOE and P&R. I know at least at NHHS they have sporting events starting very early going to pretty late so to schedule around that for the rec councils would probably be pretty hard.
Lorrie. Not all kid’s are and can handle balancing sports and school but some can. They learn to use their time smartly when you play a game then you do HW before the game after school gets out and when you practice you do it after practice. What HS sport did you play that practiced once or twoce a week. Other then golf I don’t think there is one.
Yes it is hard to get non-public placement money from the county but the mere fact is it is extremely expensive to send those kids to those schools. I never said they asked to be born that way or that they aren’t worth the money. Simply that I would bet dollars to donoughts the amount spent on special ed children is far in excess of most parts of the budget. as someone once said 90% of the money is spent on 10% of the kids. Again do they deserve/need it? ABSOLUTELY. Remember it costs and that is less money to go around. Most people do not realize this. Most people do not realize HCPS spends upwards of 40,000 per child per year for non-public placement kids.
I actually think non-public placement costs around $100k per child when you factor in the transportation also. Non-public placement is a huge thorn in the side of parents of bright kids who watch the AP and SAT scores fall. Where Programs for bright kids are the first to be cut when there are budget issues. Where class sizes for the top performeres are often twice the size as classes for the lowest performers. If we can spend $100K for each kids in the lowest 5% of the population, why aren’t we spending half that on the top 5%? HCPS does nothing to provide an ADEQUATE public education for our brightest kids.
I personally was swim team, tennis and colorguard(yeah yeah I know marching band 🙂 ). I understand that many kids can handle both the school work and that many practices but they shouldn’t have to stretch themselves out that much. I am able to see both sides of the arguement as far as special needs and gifted & talented needs. My oldest who is in 2nd grade is a going to be a g&t student next year. Right now she is in a class of 25 kids while the rest of the school doesn’t have a class size over @ 15 because her class lost the teacher during the BOE budget cut 2 years ago.The school only has @190 kids total There are kids that are learning at so many different levels in her class but the teacher has to teach them all. Luckily there are volunteers that come in to help with the advanced reading and math groups and they send some, like my daughter, up to higher grade levels for learning. I can’t speak for the rest of the schools but at NES they have many kids included that have disabilities. They get to remain in the classroom with special aids and get to interact with the rest of the children. I just believe that all children should get a good education and that the BOE needs to worry alittle more about the education of the students than having a pissing contest to see who has the most expensive schools. There are no need for two story atriums and elaborate designs. It is time for them to get down to the basics and educate our children.
I saw the rec league football programs using the turf field during the entire fall this year. Rec leagues are using the field at NHHS. I personally saw them play the Bel Air Terp team there.
The Harford County Council approved the cut in the impact fee by a vote of 5 to 2 at tonight’s meeting. Councilmen Guthrie and Woods voted no. Guthrie, because he said it was an unfair tax and Woods said he didn’t want to cut a revenue source for what he called an “unfunded mandate”.
Council Vice President Slutzky said the reduction in the impact fee could be justified given current market conditions but that revenue from the fee was also needed for school construction. Council President Billy Boniface said that the cut would mean a reduction in projected revenue for the county this year, but that it would also help stimulate the economy.
Slutzky was re-elected as vice-president of the Council. He and Councilwoman Mary Ann Lisanti were named to the Bi-Partisan Commission on School Construction, with Boniface and Guthrie as their respective alternates.
Is anyone asking the question why the county is forward funding these schools? Let’s think this through—prior to the Harkins administration, schools were built after the state committed to funding. Then with Harkins, it was decided that the County would pay and then seek reimbursement from the state. Let’s see…the school is already built, so what possible incentive would the state have to reimburse the county? So, $80 million dollars later, we have the state of the art Patterson Mill and the state reimbursed 10% instead of the normal 40-50%. And, now, we have Bel Air High in the same boat. Maybe if we got that under control, we could have a conversation about the necessity of the impact fee.
Yes it has been asked. the answer is simple PPM was built because the solution to over crowding in Bel Air was to re-ditrict to route 40 and some did not want that.
Yes, and now the school board wants to rebuild Homestead/Wakefield, John Archer, and Paca/OldPost. Where do they think THAT money will come from? HCPS needs to learn how to maintain the buildings they have rather then assuming they can rebuild. Didn’t they just renovate the Wakefield building? Was all that money wasted?
John Archer no longer meets the needs of the students that go there and needs to be rebuilt. Mostly because of proximity to the hospital. This would save money for some kids in non-public placements. Paca/Old Post has no Ac and many other issues. It could be renovated for less but then where will you put the kids that go there? Secondly the renovation may still not be adequate.
John Archer no longer meets the needs of those students and there is a new law that says a special ed. school must be attached to a mainstream school. So Bel Air Middle Was chosen because it is close to the hospital and there is room on the campus. They are no longer allowed to build freestanding special ed schools.
Or stated more bluntly the lily whites of Bel Air didn’t want their kids associating with all those ………. The decision was racist, simple solution go into debt to protect them. Same reason Aberdeen was built too small.
Yes, when they made the “magnet” school idea and did the technology school at Aberdeen the snobbies not around RT 40 made sure they got heard and it didn’t get built bigger. Same as when they tried to make HDG the Arts magnet school and pump $$ into updating the auditorium. The BoE has to make better use of existing structures. Make the appropriate schools magnets and re-build / update for the technology that is in use and allow for expansion. All classrooms should have interactive screens / AV and internet to allow for live feeds and instruction. And have a normal 6 class day so there are not large gaps from when a techer see’s a class.
Agreed….except who decides 6 period days are normal. There is no such thing as normal when it comes to HS scheduling.
JD, although HdG has a beautiful auditorium, the school can’t be used as an arts magnet simply because the capacity is too small. The 700 seat capacity means that the school would be grossly overcrowded if you added 200 more kids in a magnet program.
The decision to build PMMHS was a mistake. They owned the land so they built a school on it. They soon realized they had made the decision to build all new high schools at 1600 seats. Edgewood is smaller than that now and is way under capacity. So they moved too many Fallston kids to Bel Air so they would have to move too many Bel Air kids to Patterson Mill. Now Patterson Mill is overcrowded so they have an excuse to redistrict them to Edgewood once the school opens. Unless you believe they are going to leave a brand new school at 70% capacity. They will never get any money back from the state that way. It’s not a good thing to have a high school under capacity. The kids don’t get the chance to take the classes they really want to take in a lot of cases. When you lose students, you lose teachers, which means you lose class choices.
A few responses. Aberdeen was downsized because HCPS decided they wanted high schools to be smaller after the Columbine shooting. That school used to accommodate over 1800 students and they downsized it when they remodeled. Then they decided that they weren’t sticking to that philosophy and decided to build Bel Air High School with 1650 students. They also approved a magnet program at Bel Air High School saying that the school had room to house these extra students. If you look at the enrollment after this year, Bel Air will be close to that number or over capacity without any magnet.
On the other hand, there are several high schools that are largely undercapacity. Fallston High is predicted to be about 75% next year. Edgewood is also going to be at around 60%. Why didn’t the school system leave kids at Fallston and maybe leave the kids who are now at Patterson Mill at Bel Air? There was a need for extra middle school capacity but with all of the additions at the high school, there are going to be empty seats and the school system has known this for the past several years.
Thirdly, why are we spending all of this money for John Archer when most of the students are now mainstreamed. There is all of this money and individual assistants for students at all levels up through high school. Additionally, money for transportation to all of these different schools (these kids can’t take the bus with other students) and then John Archer. The school system hasn’t identified what the abandoned John Archer building would be used for either.
BTW, Patterson Mill may be “state of the art” but it isn’t very functional. The architects of that school should be sued and lots of the work was done improperly. Also no turf field was put there either even though every other new school got one. Don’t know the rationale because no one seems have one. Big question though is who is paying and who doesn’t got answers. That’s right… taxpayers of this county.
Edgewood is undercapacity but some students are being redistricted to Edgewood from Joppatowne. Also they will be expanding their IB program.
Fallston was over 110% capacity at the time of the redistricting.
John Archer handles kids with special needs who are not “mainstreamed.” It is not close enough to a hospital to acomadate some kids it otherwise could so we pay lots of money to send them to a non-public placement.
BTW Patterson Mill was built poorly because that is what you get when you go with low bid contracts.
Where are the plans for students from Joppatowne to go to Edgewood? How are students without transportation supposed to get to a program at Edgewood? Lots of traffic problems too. Fallston High School was not at 110% capacity when they redistricted either. Fallston Middle was a problem but the high school was not. Every time the school system made a presentation they changed the numbers – ask the people from Forest Lakes who were redistricted out of Fallston. If you want to go back and check, the decision was made in late 2005/early 2006.
The housing east of 24 currently going to Joppatowne will be going to Edgewood. How do kids get to school? BUS! Theybus kids to Aberdeen, Harford Tech, Edgewoods IB program allows them to ride a bus a magnet program does not require you to provide your own transportation! Fallston Middle feeds Fallston High!