City Postpones CSD Bond Vote Until 2014, Forms Blue Ribbon Committee to Study Issue
Decatur Metro | | 9:44 amAfter another pre-commission meeting work session to discuss the City Schools of Decatur proposed bond fund to renovate the middle school and high school, As Scott reported in a comment last night…
The Mayor introduced a closing resolution deferring the bond vote for a year and proposing a joint city/CSD committee to explore the less discussed economic “ripples” beyond hard costs — the Freakonomics, so to speak — that may accompany significant system growth. It passed 5-0.
As you can view on the City’s website starting at around the 12 minute mark HERE, Mayor Baskett pre-empted his resolution stating “The school board has very serious issues, and it hasn’t got an easy solution. That said, we have to find a way to work with the school board to move this community forward…”
According to the resolution, blue ribbon committee would be charged with developing a broad-based community education effort estimated student enrollment trends, municipalization and annexation, the impact of commercial and multifamily redevelopment, the facilities master plan, and other topics to be identified by the committee. The committee would also be charged with developing a process to gather survey and other data that would reflect community opinions for financing improvements AND consideration of financing options.
The commission then talked a bit about next steps and how the blue ribbon committee would be formed, but came to no immediate consensus, as they realized that they needed to speak with the
Over on Decaturish, Dan Whisenhunt has some additional comments from Mayor Baskett after the meeting and a copy of the actual resolution, which the Mayor read in full at the meeting.
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Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I thought the school board made a good case, and I’m not sure what else we will learn over the next year. I expect the Mayor and council fears it won’t pass now, but will pass if they educate the community and demonstrate a plan to expand the tax base and minimize the impact to residents…
This is a much bigger initiative. The committee with be charged with (among other things): “developing a broad based community education effort, to include: estimated student enrollment trends, municipalization and annexation, the impact of commercial and multifamily development, the facilities master plan, and other topics to be identified by the committee…”
That’s pretty huge, wide open, work for one committee. Now, CSD has already made use of committees with community experts as well as City staff to study most of these questions, so hopefully this committee doesn’t have to reinvent every wheel and can make use of previous work.
If the Commission wants to really go slow here and think comprehensively, they should freeze the development of the property the City just bought next to DHS — that should definitely be in a comprehensive discussion.
Any idea what sort of “ripples” we’re talking about here?
That’s the vibe I got from the work sessions and other discussions, though the characterization of “ripples” is from me and not the commissioners. I can’t speak to the specifics of the resolution but, from concerns various commissioners have voiced, I’ve inferred it to be, in part, about the impact school growth and facilities improvement will have on housing market demand and what impact increased demand for single family homes might have on our smaller homes and the seniors, empty-nesters, young professionals, or others of limited means who often live in them — i.e. teardowns, more homogenous resident base, more revenue-negative homes, etc.
Don’t know about city-wide, but that sort of stuff is definitely a southside concern.
It’s a city-wide concern. Whatever is hot in building/renovations at one point in time will be the next wave of teardowns/renovations 20-30 years later. Once Oakhurst is depleted of teardown material, a new area will be hit. I predict the next wave will be the 1970s/1980s era homes in the Westchester/Chelsea Heights and Willow/Scott/Church areas.
While I appreciate the intent to frame this as a bigger initiative, the findings of this initiative will not impact the problem that CSD is trying to solve.
I see three things that this initiative could address with respect to the CSD proposal:
1) How do we pay for it? Expanding the tax base has ALREADY been a priority of the city commission, and is driving allot of the efforts around zoning, buying of property to expand the commercial tax base, annexation, etc. While more could be done, the impact of any new initiatives will probably not be realized for about 5 years. (with the exception of commercial tax reassessments)
2) What unforeseen impacts will this decision have? This is a very interesting question, but it is ultimately an academic consideration that should not impact our decision on a CSD bond referendum. What this question COULD inform, is how do we MITIGATE the unforeseen impacts of school expansion.
3) How do we educate our voters on this topic to make an informed decision? While I appreciate that most residents (who do not have school age kids) are not aware of this issue, it does not have to take a year to have this dialogue. It should not take more than a month to educate and engage the majority of the population with email, mail, SMS, Decatur Focus, PR/media interviews, a dedicated website and outdoor signage. CSD has assembled a compelling fact base, it just needs to be packaged and socialized.
I’m not dismissing the weight of this decision, or the fact that we need to aggressively address how we minimize the increased burden on our tax payers. But delaying the vote does not put us in a better position. On the contrary, it drives up the cost as interest rates rise, demand for trailers increases and cost of construction goes up as builders have to work around the trailers.
I guess this is ultimately the “safe” decision, but I don’t think it is the right one.
+1
Well said.
Thank you.
I commend the commission in thinking more globally about this. Bright shiny schools will only make our real estate more valuable. Which is good for us, generally. But it will also lead to continued teardowns of affordable homes and continued transformation from a mixed-income community with a place for many types of people to live, to well, a white-bred upper middle class enclave with mostly new McMansions to live in. Maybe that’s what we want as a community, but that is a big change from where we were. So big, that it’s worth stopping to think about. In fact, the strategic plan tells us that we don’t really want to undue our mixed-income make-up, and we really don’t want an enclave of mostly new McMansions. Since that is what we told our leaders what we want in 2010, then the commission didn’t really have a choice but to think longer and harder about this. So they seem to have made a logical decision.
Thank you, WB!! Needed to be said.
“Blue Ribbon” implies that the panel is 1) independent of political persuasion and 2) comprised of subject-matter experts. Either that, or they just thought the term sounded cool and official.
Must be the latter. In a town of 20,000, nothing is independent of political persuasion.
I don’t get it. So the city wants to annex areas that do not want to be annexed and force those folks to have increases of at least 30% because they’re afraid the citizens of Decatur won’t pay an increase of $400+ dollars per year? What am I missing here? It appears the only way to increase capacity is to increase taxes without annexation.
Now I’M confused. I don’t think this is about annexation, is it? I thought it was about a bond referendum and whether or not to build new (or drastically renovate/add onto existing) schools.
I think the city commission made it about a lot of things last night (yes, I was there.) Whether or not that’s a good thing, is another question for people more informed than I.
Oh. Thanks for the information!
Annexation of mostly commercial properties north of the current city limits is back on the table due to the potential formation of the cities of Briarcliff and Lakeside. Both proposed cities have the potential to draw their limits to include those properties. So it may be a question of which city would the landlords rather be in?
Was my obituary of annexation premature? Zombieland.
Doubtful that there will ever be a City of Briarcliff, Lakeside or Tucker and that COD is using this as an excuse to grab the commercial properties. City of Lakeside’s map overlaps both Briarcliffs and Tuckers. The only reason Tucker is incorporating is to guard against Lakeside taking in the area Tucker (unincorporated) considers to be part of their area.
This means at some point there would need to be an agreement amongst all three parties on what delineates their exact “territories.” Without the portions from Briarcliff and Tucker, Lakeside isn’t viable. Briarcliff doesn’t want any part of Lakeside nor does Tucker.
Mary Margaret “All Sponsor Anything” Oliver sponsored both State Bills holders for both Briarcliff and Lakeside. This should be interesting on how it all plays out and if any will ever become a city.
What concerns me is that the strain on the schools is immediate. The over-crowding is happening NOW. The demand for bigger, more, and updated housing has been ongoing and will be continuing. Why are we postponing helping the schools deal with the here & now issues by asking what the ripples might be for improving the school facilities?
We can & should deal with the issues of tear-downs and McMansions by enforcing zoning and development rules (and passing new rules as needed). Impairing the school system is NOT the way to reduce demand for housing.
This points to a school system (staff & board) that has been working with the best data they had, while the city officials seem to be indecisive, ill-prepared, and wishing problems would go away. The city staff try to please the developers (aside from somewhat fastidious inspections) at the expense of the community. Hence, we have McMansions that were squeezed in before anyone could stop them….apartment projects that still have neighbors upset (though less so than the first time around)…trees that get cut down or damaged by houses ill-suited to the lots.
If anything, I wish there were more resources available to the schools so that they have more than 3 counselors helping over 1000 high school students–many of whom will fall through the cracks because families (well-heeled and otherwise) are having trouble carrying the load themselves.
So I echo the hope that this is a year-long postponement characterized by increasing wisdom and vision…and not merely by spinning wheels and hoping for a miracle to be delivered at their feet.
I don’t understand this move. Will annexation and reducing large-scale developments (like apartment buildings) do anything towards reducing the current projections? I understand those things may reduce the bill on many families, or reduce the increasing enrollment, but isn’t there a need to do something no matter what the blue ribbon commission finds?
I fear that we are only delaying the inevitable here, and that delay will cost us.
This Blue Ribbon Panel…it seems as if it is to do the job of the Planning Commission, the “green” commission, and spearhead a public discussion of annexation and the potential new cities of DeKalb. Those are the jobs of the City Commission. They met last night. They met two weeks ago. And a few weeks ago they cancelled a regular meeting because they claimed they had nothing to discuss.
The discussion of annexation was put on hold at one point several years back to wait for data from the 2010 census. In essence annexation has been up front, on the table, and stagnant for more than four years. Or was the discussion ended when the net costs of annexation fell disproportionately on the CSD?
Decatur City Hall has borrowed close to $50 million after running through the General Obligation Bond money with no questions asked to the public to either acceptor deny the City Commission the money. Where was the outcry that the Commission had run out of General Bond money about half way through their stated needs? No one seemed to ask whether City Hall had done proper due diligence in planning either the scope or specifics of those GO Bond projects. There was scant concern expressed about the affordability of seniors living in Decatur around that additional borrowing. Voices were silent on the financing of the Beacon Hill project; it didn’t get included in the Bond Referendum vote.
There won’t be a referendum on the CSD request this November. The Commissioners want the School Board to appoint members to this “Blue Ribbon Commission” and they want that BRC to make recommendations on zoning. How would the Commission react if the School Board just gave them an overall Zoning proposal? Would they display the same inaction with which they responded to recommendations of the “Infill Task Force” or the Planning Commission?
This does seem a most interesting situation. In the terms of Tom Keating, the General Purpose Local Government has officially asked the Special Purpose Local Government to do the General Purpose Government’s job. Oh vey!
I know this will not play well, but many people that do not follow this blog or any blog were not reached by CSD’s efforts to tell people what they wanted to do. Attendance at the meetings at the schools was low and really only included parents in the system currently and a couple of neighbors in the MAK area for the Renfroe meetings. CSD’s claims of lots of public meetings is a little stretched. While new people with kids are moving in everyday and tearing down bungalows that housed older, lower income folks, most of the city doesn’t have kids in CSD and doesn’t follow their constant public meeting announcements. While those of us paying attention have been well aware of the overcrowding issues for several years (trailers were needed at Glennwood 4/5 5 years ago) and knew this would eventually be a problem at RMS and DHS, many others in the city are not so intimately knowledgeable. While I agree the BRC is now charged with a great deal of work, CSD was moving too fast for many people in the city.
D’accord!
What’s moving too fast for many people in this city are the facts, not CSD. The school system is growing by double digit percentages every year, and CSD leadership studied and responded to this reality.
I understand that this is a political process, and it will require communication and consensus to move forward, but the Commissioners should be able to grasp the urgency of the situation in 15 minutes, not 12 months. It’s their job to be tuned in and forward looking. I know I sound harsh, but I expect better.
Just wanted to echo the many people here who think the Commissioners have unnecessarily impeded the next steps, while simultaneously punting on their responsibilities. A real failure of leadership.
A massive mindset change is going to be required here, and it needs to start with the Commissioners. The school system’s operating budget is going to double in 6-8 years. It is going to take radical and/or major changes to absorb the tax hit. The old days of building state of the art fire stations and rec centers and pools and arts facilities are over. The old days of building gold-plated school athletics facilities are over. The old days of fancy bike racks and walkability signage and wifi upgrades every 4 years are over.
Residential annexation is totally out of the question. Commercial annexation opportunities need to be pursued. Commercial property development needs to accelerate, pronto. Commercial property assessments need to be evaluated. Absent the above, you can assume a 60% increase in all of our property taxes – or more than that, if we exclude elderly and low-income folks from the increased burden.
My prediction is the first thing the Blue Ribbon Panel will figure out is that we need to move fast.