Hillsborough County is one of the hottest housing markets in the nation. But the fees new homeowners pay for adding students to the classroom generate enough to build only one school every five years. This policy means existing residents pay more than their share of taxes for education, and much-needed schools do not get built. Hillsborough's elected School Board deserves credit for facing this problem, by calling for a measure that could raise impact fees and more fairly finance a growing school system.
The board asked its staff to come back with a recommendation of how high impact fees should be raised and how the formula for assessing them could be changed to account more accurately for growth's impact on the schools. The call came after the latest report showing that Hillsborough's school impact fees - the second-lowest in the state - cover but a fraction of the costs of development.
Impact fees are tacked onto the price of new construction and are designed to recover part of the government's costs associated with providing new residents with public services. A new consultant's report for Hillsborough shows the county would have to raise its $196 average school impact fee to $5,285 to capture the true cost of development. The study builds on a similar report last year by Hillsborough's city-county planning commission that found school impact fees recovered less than a third of the costs of meeting new development. Even that low figure is overstated, because the fees apply only to land costs, not to the price of building school facilities, which is far more expensive than buying the property.
Only Hillsborough's County Commission can raise the fees, and, in an election year, no one expects commissioners to increase them dramatically. This is a commission, after all, that has enabled huge tracts of the county to operate as "impact-free" zones, an indefensible tax break to home builders and developers that has cost the county more than $13-million in lost transportation and water fees. While school impact fees are not waived, the commission's willingness to extend tax breaks to people who don't need them shows the battle the School Board and its supporters face in convincing the commission to raise rates.
The county should at least increase the fees to a level allowing the district to recapture more than a third of its development costs. Last year's planning commission study had a reasonable target: Bump up the school impact fee to the level charged by surrounding counties, which would raise an additional $128-million over 10 years - enough to build a school every year, not one every five.
School Board member Jennifer Faliero, whose district includes the fast-growing area of east Hillsborough, has done the county a service by championing an issue so central to the area's quality of life. Faliero understands that crowded schools hurt prospects for growth and that tax fairness builds support for public schools. The School Board has taken a strong lead on a long overdue policy change. It should keep up the pressure.
