A new proposal sets out to ease the financial burden on a fast-growing Upstate school district.
Anderson County School District One is proposing an impact fee. The fee would apply to new single-family and multi-family homes built in the district.
The school district says it just can’t create more space quickly enough to keep up with the homes being built.
“It’s really the new homes and new developments that are really causing the pressure on the school districts,” Superintendent Robert Binnicker said.
Binnicker says the impact fee would mean reduced taxes down the road for everyone as they work to accommodate the growing district.
“We’re going to have to add additions to our current schools and we’re going to have to build additional schools,” Binnicker said. “What the impact fee does is it essentially allows growth to pay for growth.”
After a study, the district is proposing an impact fee of $11,249 on single-family homes and $7,855 on multi-family homes.
The district says this would cost new homeowners $55 a month if rolled into their mortgage payments.
“The impact fee can only be used to increase the capacity of a school, so you can only use it in order to create more space for students,” Binnicker said. “So that would be additions to school or adding additional schools.”
He says the money from the impact fee cannot be used to hire teachers or repair schools.
Over the next 10 years, he says they’re expecting an additional 2,000 students.
“You either add them to your building, build new buildings or have portables, and we just don’t think portables is the way to go,” he said. “For us, it is a temporary solution.”
Binnicker says they also just finished a major expansion project at schools across the district, but are already outgrowing it again.
“I’ve got Concrete, who’s already overcapacity,” he said. “I’ve got Powdersville Elementary, who even though we built eight rooms in 2020, I only have two left. At Spearman, we built 8 rooms in 2020. I’ve got two rooms left. I added 10 rooms in Powdersville Middle School. I’ve got one room left. I’ve got one room at Palmetto High School.”
The Anderson County Planning Commission is expected to vote on the proposed impact fee in May. If approved it will go to Anderson County Council.
Binnicker says a decision from the county council by the next school year is very likely.
He says Anderson County School District One receives one of the lowest amounts of per-pupil funding in the state. He says the district receives $12,304 per student from local state and federal funding combined.
If the district received the state average of $15,453 per student, he says they would have an average of $33,000,000 more per year to spend on students, infrastructure, etc.
Via: WYFF4
