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Tue 15 Mar, 2005 03:05 pm
Apparently the city of Joliet, Ill approved a development that will lead to 380 +/- more students to the district w/out adding in a way to fund the extra student's education... I'm not quite understanding why they think they should be able to do that...
Is controlling city growth a reasonable demand a school district should make upon a city? Wouldn't the developers then have the right to sue the city?
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/top/j12lawsuit.htmQuote:JOLIET ?- The Joliet Township High School District is suing the city of Joliet and Pasquinelli Development, saying a planned housing development would force the cash-strapped district further into debt.
The school board is asking a judge to bar the city from issuing any building permits for the development until the lawsuit is resolved. Also named as defendants are four parties that own nearly 400 acres of the 988-acre project along Illinois 53 near Chicagoland Speedway.
Homes in the development would cause the school district's operating deficit to increase by nearly $1.2 million a year, the lawsuit states. The city council erred when it rezoned property for Pasquinelli's subdivision in late January because the land is better suited for commercial and industrial purposes, the suit states.
"Joliet acted in an arbitrary, unreasonable and capricious manner when it approved the subject annexation agreement," the lawsuit claims. The school district says the city showed a "complete disregard of the character of the surrounding land uses and zoning."
Joliet City Manager John Mezera called the suit "an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money." The city has given the high school $4.8 million in casino revenue since 1994, created developer impact fees to help pay for school construction and improved the community's tax base for the benefit of schools, he said.
"There's obviously some misunderstanding. We don't know if it's caused by personalities on the (school) board or lack of effort on the staff's part to come and get the facts."
School district officials testified during public hearings on the Pasquinelli project, warning that schools could not absorb the costs of educating pupils that will live in the new homes.
"We felt we weren't being listened to," school board President Arlene Albert said.
The school district "tried desperately to be diplomatic" in convincing the city of the urgency of its financial situation, said Tim Rathbun, an attorney for the district.
"Because we were polite, we were misunderstood as not being firm," Rathbun said.
The school board believes that building homes east of Illinois 53 near the NASCAR track would discourage future developers from proposing stores, warehouses and other revenue-generating businesses, Rathbun said. Once homes are there, residents will oppose future commercial developments, he said, citing the proposed Wal-Mart in Lockport as an example.
"For a long time, the city represented to us that the area east of (Illinois) 53 would not be residential," Rathbun said. "Once you put residential zoning in scattered areas like this, you spoil the remaining parcels for industrial and commercial development."
Mezera said no promises were made to keep areas east of Illinois 53 free from residential development. Furthermore, he said, 84 percent of city-annexed developments south of Interstate 80 have been commercial and industrial since 1990, including the Empress casino, the Dollar Tree distribution center and the Laraway Crossings business park.
"Any school district in the world would love to be in that kind of situation," Mezera said.
Currently, the four parcels named in the suit generate a mere $2,191 in property taxes for the school district, Mezera said. If build out is completed as planned, the commercial-industrial properties would pay $264,127 a year in taxes and the residences would generate more than $1 million in annual revenue for the high school district alone.
The lawsuit claims that the project would bring in an additional 390 high school students. At a cost of more than $10,000 per student, the new homes will not generate enough property taxes to educate children from the development, school officials said.
Mezera, however, opposes that claim, saying that 390-student figure includes those who would live in Pasquinelli homes west of Illinois 53. The acreage east of the highway ?- which is the only land identified in the lawsuit ?- would bring in a mere 110 high school students at most, Mezera said.
"Those 110 students won't hit in one year. Spread out over eight years, it will be 15 to 20 new students per year" from the portion east of Illinois 53, Mezera said.
Tensions between the high school district and city publicly surfaced in 1999, when school officials objected to an enterprise zone tax abatement for developers of Chicagoland Speedway. At the time, the city gave more than $500,000 a year in casino revenue to the school district. JTHS saw its share of gaming revenue drop over the next several years, to $142,457 for the current fiscal year.
City officials say the cutbacks were not motivated by spite.
"We decided in the early years to overpay them. We paid them almost triple (per student) than other school districts because they had urgent repair needs. Now we've put them into a position of fairness," Mezera said.
Mayor Art Schultz said the city has reduced its gaming revenue sharing to all schools and community organizations because of the state's higher tax on casino profits.
"I was a little disappointed (by the lawsuit) because of all the riverboat money we've given them over the years," Schultz said.
Mezera said that when JTHS's enrollment peaked at 6,214 students in 1970, before the district closed and sold Joliet East High School, the community's total assessed valuation was $417 million. Now, with enrollment at 5,238, the assessed value is more than $1.8 billion.
"They're managing not only growth, but internal expenses. They've sold off assets, closed a school. It retrospect, that appears to be a short-term, short-sighted solution. Now with fewer students, their resources are far superior to what they were then."
No one from Pasquinelli responded to a message left at the company's Willowbrook headquarters Friday.
The city and its planning board have broad discretion to zone property for either residential or commercial purposes.
This is not a matter of 380 MORE students that the city must educate, it's merely a matter of building new homes that are available for people (parents included) to buy -- the students already exist. The school system must accomodate all students who currently reside in the City or will relocate to the City. Depriving them of housing won't decrease the demand for housing nor decrease the demand on public education.
The new residential housing development supplies the citizens of the city with new housing (based upon an existing demand) and a new property tax base. Kids are born and they need to be both housed and educated. Like it or not, housing developments in growing communities have to placed somewhere!
I don't think the school district has a leg to stand on . . . its case ought to be thrown out of court.
Perhaps it's b/c of the projected growth rate being so high...
http://www.stfrancis.edu/visitors/joliet.htm
Can any county seriously plan ahead for that sort of growth? I'm not sure...
And apparently there isn't funding for any new schools available whle the exisiting schools are overcrowded... Someone pointed me to that case and said it was worth watching b/c of how its outcome would affect other school districts approach to a national problem...
Here's another article on the lawsuit.
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/top/j13funding.htm
Quote:JOLIET ?- Land that Pasquinelli Development plans to develop on Joliet's south side is the latest battleground in the debate over adequate funding for schools in rapidly growing areas.
School districts have used courts in the past to challenge the legality of tax-increment financing districts, enterprise zones and other tax breaks with limited success. But the Joliet Township High School District's suit may be the first to claim that a city's approval of a housing development renders the school district financially incapable of fulfilling its obligation to educate children.
"It's unheard of, nationally, for a school district to do that," said Joliet City Manager John Mezera.
An Illinois State Board of Education representative said the state isn't aware of any other lawsuit quite like Joliet's.
"That's really different," Becky Watts said. "School districts work with municipalities all the time to make sure a district's concerns are being heard."
JTHS officials stress that their motivation for suing the city and Pasquinelli is that the school district simply won't have the resources to educate students from the new homes.
"This is protecting our ability to educate kids," said Arlene Albert, president of the high school board. "We promised our taxpayers we'd be aggressive in protecting our revenue sources."
Yet there is no doubt the unusual lawsuit will attract attention and increase awareness about the financial plight of many school districts struggling to make ends meet.
"We have to go to these ends to get the attention we need," Albert said.
Broader picture
In its suit, the district says 90 percent of its revenue is derived from local property taxes. The state is supposed to fund at least 51 percent of the costs of education, school officials say. "Everybody hates to pay for (education), but the state Legislature hasn't made any other source of funding available," said Tim Rathbun, an attorney for the school district. "To the state, we look like a rich county so we get very little aid." A school funding reform proposal, House Bill 750, gathered steam last year during a series of Senate Education Committee hearings throughout the state, including one in Joliet. Lawmakers this spring are being presented with a revised version of the proposal, which was chiefly drafted by the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.
"At some point the state has got to get past the rhetoric and get to a solution," Ralph Martire, the center's executive director, said in response to questions about the Joliet suit. "It's not that legislators don't care about children; the state is insolvent."
HB 750 seeks to increase income taxes and broaden sales taxes to include many services in order to reduce the property tax burden for funding schools. Gov. Rod Blagojevich opposes the measure, because he has vowed to not increase taxes.
"The governor during his first two years and again this year has proposed big increases in education funding for Illinois," Watts said. "Debate about education funding reform continues statewide, though the governor has made it clear he doesn't support a tax increase."
Critics say the governor's increases in school spending last year came at the expense of other essential services, such as corrections and human services, and that the new budget proposes to raid other funds to produce a meager increase in school funding.
"School districts need to stand up for themselves someplace," said Sharon Voliva, a Thornton Township School Board member who chairs the Better Funding for Better Schools reform advocacy group. "They aren't getting benefits from new developments, and they aren't able to pass referendums."
The Joliet school district's lawsuit is a bold move, she said.
"I think it's a wise school board that looks at the handwriting on the wall and says, 'Let's protect ourselves before it's too late,'" she said.
Some legislators embrace HB 750, while others are leery of the sweeping changes it would make to Illinois' tax structure.
"I'm of the opinion that property tax is not the way to fund schools, that we've got to find a better way," said state Rep. Jack McGuire, D-Joliet.
Joliet Township is the sole plaintiff in the suit, though the Pasquinelli development also will significantly impact the Laraway and Elwood grade school districts.
"I totally support JTHS in their endeavor. ... A development of this size will blow this district away," Elwood Superintendent Ronald Kanzulak said of Pasquinelli's 1,871 housing units. "(But) I'd rather spend our dollars on kids in school" than fighting a legal battle, he said.
The Pasquinelli project is the first development to propose sending children from homes in Joliet to schools in Elwood.
"My first experience in dealing with (the city of Joliet) is that schools don't seem like a high priority to them," Kanzulak said. "They've followed the rules. But sometimes the rules aren't exactly right."
Some say JTHS has no practical hope of an affirmative ruling in the suit, that at most the legal maneuver might cause a delay in issuing building permits and buy the district some time.
Officials from other districts negatively affected by rapid residential growth say taking a city to court purely on the basis of putting the brakes on development is an unusual strategy.
"One of the reasons Troy is in the situation we're in today is exploding growth," said Larry Wiers, superintendent of the Troy School District, which is hoping voters approve a tax increase referendum on April 5. Still, suing a developer or town "is not a strategy my board of education has discussed," he said.
Two sides of battle
Although they insist the lawsuit is not a publicity stunt, some JTHS officials are aware the suit may prompt state authorities to take notice.
"The failure of the state to pay 51 percent of the cost of public schools unfortunately causes school districts and municipalities to fight each other when they should be working together," said Pat McGuire, a member of the Joliet Township High School Board.
City officials clearly resent the claims that Joliet hasn't done enough to help schools. From voluntarily sharing casino gaming receipts with schools to creating landmark impact fees that require developers to share in the costs of school construction, city officials say Joliet is doing its part.
"If they want to use taxpayer dollars to create a publicity stunt, I think they should tell the public straight away what they're doing," Mezera said. "(The lawsuit) seems entirely ungrateful and unnecessary."
I don't get it. All property owners have to pay a school tax here even if they have no kids. There's also an impact fee of $1,400 for every home built that is dedicated to the school system. Wouldn't that negate the need for the system to sue the zoning board?
Interesting. Seems kinda backward to me. Here, developers aren't allowed to build til they can establish that the local systems can accomodate what they're planning. Roads, sewers, lighting, police, fire ... That includes no new houses unless, and until, the school board is prepared for more kids in a particular area. I think it's leftover legislation from the baby boom days.
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