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Make room for schools in Pasco's housing boom

It could be considered a poster child for poor planning.

More than a year ago, Pasco County blessed four similarly sized housing developments west of U.S. 41 in Land O'Lakes, but it required none to set aside space for a public education. The result will be 2,500 new homes, children bused to schools outside their communities and the public absorbing the costs for extending roads, water and sewer service to the future school site.

Nobody asked for land for a new school until the fourth and final project, known then as Tuscany and located 2.5 miles south of State Road 52, sought permission to build. The county retreated from its school site request after extracting 100 acres for a conservation easement and wildlife corridor.

Such haphazard educational planning can't be repeated if Pasco grows as anticipated. The county has approved construction of 62,000 new homes, and the number could swell to 100,000 over the next two decades if all proposed developments come to fruition.

The county and school district are now sorting through proposed changes to Pasco's future land use plan to avoid a repeat. The 12-page draft document addressing education issues spells out when developers must convey land to the school district and how many acres will be required to help school construction keep pace with residential development. The requirements are a preview of what will come in February 2008 when more restrictive state law mandates school concurrency.

Development interests likely will argue, with some legitimacy, that the required land donations are exorbitant. The document mandates 22 acres for an elementary school, 40 for a middle school and 70 for a high school. Just a year ago, however, the district sought just 25 acres for a middle school, then 15 for an elementary school from Tuscany's owners.

Developers won't go broke. They receive impact fee credits for donated land. And, the plan includes some flexibility - smaller sites for multistory schools - plus incentives to encourage school site donations in exchange for developers recouping lost density elsewhere on their property.

Developers also will be required to convey their land donations to the school district within 90 days of approved rezoning. It is an imperative requirement. In some instances, the district hasn't received title to land until years after developers agreed to donate the property.

To avoid future Tuscany-like debates, in which development interests argued the school district and county were remiss in not seeking a school site sooner, the land use element also includes an eight-page questionnaire developers will be required to complete before their projects are considered for approval. Among other things, the questionnaire asks whether the developer and school district have agreed on a site and whether it has appropriate access. The relatively simplistic requirement should expedite selection of school site locations.

The working relationship between Pasco's county government and its school district should be lauded. (See Hillsborough, where county commissioners balked immediately at raising school impact fees, for the opposite.) Over the past five years, the two Pasco entities have erased sometimes adversarial positions on impact fees, partnered on the successful Penny for Pasco sales tax campaign and worked cooperatively on the recently revealed plans to co-locate schools and recreational facilities in central Pasco.

Ensuring there are enough classrooms for Pasco's future schoolchildren is a basic staple of governing. The county is smart to include the provisions in its future land use plan.

[Last modified October 26, 2005, 00:45:19]