Meeting at Burnett Elementary School for last Friday
’s city/school district liaison committee meeting,
representatives from City Council and staffers and School Board
trustees and district administrators discussed developers that
promise – to earn extra Measure P points – to do something for the
neighborhood school near their proposed development.
Meeting at Burnett Elementary School for last Friday’s city/school district liaison committee meeting, representatives from City Council and staffers and School Board trustees and district administrators discussed developers that promise – to earn extra Measure P points – to do something for the neighborhood school near their proposed development.
Burnett Principal Bob Davis brought up the issue when he mentioned a new development on Tilton Avenue.
“The developer agreed to several things, including sidewalks, a crosswalk and a flashing light at the intersection of Tilton and Dougherty (Avenue),” he said. “I was wondering what we could do to expedite the process.”
City Manager Ed Tewes said there were no new details on the project, but a grant had been applied for.
In discussing the Measure P points, he could talk generalities, but not specifics.
Measure P points are awarded to developers in 13 categories, and one of the major categories is the impact of the project on schools, Tewes said.
“The competition for points is very keen,” he said. “Early in the process, the developer will go to the school district and ask, ‘What do you think I should do to mitigate any impacts on the nearby schools,’ and the district might tell him, ‘We need a sidewalk or a flashing light.’
“And the developer agrees to that and submits an application. The school section is scored by the district itself, and say this developer gets an allocation based on his points. Now it can take as many as two years to develop the project, and if the problem the developer agreed to mitigate was sufficiently high priority, the district may already have solved it.”
At that point, the district may agree to the developer paying a certain amount per unit to replace the original mitigation.
“There is a perceived inequity in that,” Tewes said. “In the end, all one would have to do is pay for points.”
District Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Branco said this is an issue the city and the school district need to address together.
