Voluntary Fees Mitigates Growth in Longmont

Colorado Courts have ruled in the past that developer of new homes cannot be forced to contribute to the local school district, even when the new families of their developments will push the local schools' capacity over their limits.

East of Longmont, the LifeBridge development approved by Weld County would include over 300 homes. In this case, LifeBridge worked out a voluntary deal with the St. Vrain Valley School District to pay $1400 per home to the District to cover some of the future costs of the anticipated new students the development will house. Now the Longmont City Council has been asked to annex the development into the City. However Longmont doesn't allow such fees to be paid and the City Council is thinking of changing their rules to allow this.

Some of the rationale in the past against such voluntary fees is that they can't truly match the costs, however such direct compensation is appropriate if you're going to approve a developemnt in th first place. This is a great tool to have developers assume more of the the true cost of their project - of course, these costs end up being passed on to the new homebuyers. Fair enough. The homeowners/parents of the kids should be paying into the school district, not simply the person building a home for sale.