All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
To the editor:
Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and neither the county or school district knows how to put him together again.
Folks, you would think that finding the funding needed for Lee County’s school children’s schools would be a top priority for both the county and the school district.
That is not the case with either the county or the school district. Both the county and the school district knew there would be a need for three additional schools. The county hired an outside firm to provide a study for the needed impact fees to pay for new schools. The school district supplied the information to the firm to use. Sounds simple enough to give your input on what is needed in the way of student seats required and the dollars needed to fund the schools and let the firm use this information to generate impact fees required to meet the needs of the school district. Well, the school failed to input the numbers to the firm because as they put it they didn’t know where the money would come from so none of the information in the report reflects the needs for the additional schools The county, whose job it is to decide what the impact fees will be failed to stop the report untill the school district gave its input on the three schools.
Bottom line is that the report is pretty much worthless because the report doesn’t show any needs for the three schools even though the firm stated that the impact fees should rise above the old rate by 14 percent.
The school district is planning on using the $40 million in impact fees its has collected and instead of using a portion of the impact fees for new schools they are going to pay $35 million on old debt with $5 million going to Dunbar School which means none of the impact fees will go to providing for more students seats.
While the county will point to a report which shows a balanced five year plan that the school district staff gave to the firm and probably will agree that there is not a need for impact fees for the school and no doubt will state again that they have no idea where the funding will come from for any new schools.
While we look at the position of the schools and the county over what they allowed to happen you will again ask yourself why the state has capped the millage rate at 1.5 mills on property taxes that the schools can force you to pay for all new school construction and from this it is pretty easy to figure out that the state wants the county and the school district to put Humpty and Dumpty back together again. This can be done by working together on a new report, impact fees that pay for growth , and borrowing the funds to pay for new schools.
Leo Amos
Matlacha