DEFUNIAK SPRINGS ? With school concurrency set to take effect statewide in 2008, the Walton County School District approved two key components to its concurrency plan at its March 6 meeting.
One of the cogs for concurrency is multipliers. They are used to determine how many new students will be generated from a new development.
?For single family dwelling the multiplier will be 0.099 (south of Choctawhatchee Bay),? said Wayne Miller, WCSD administration and operations supervisor. ?In other words, if you have 100 homes in South Walton that are going to be built that would generate almost 10 students for those 100 homes.?
North of Choctawhatchee Bay a multiplier of 0.381 will be used generating 38 new students if 100 single family homes were built.
Gene Boles, with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, who is working with Morris-Depew Associates Inc., the firm hired to help the county with concurrency, came up with the multipliers.
?The Student Generation Multipliers for Walton County are derived from the 2000 Census,? Boles said. ?They represent estimates of the number of public school students residing on average in single family homes, mobile homes and multi-family homes in Walton County. The multipliers for South Walton County are calculated separately because of the high number of seasonal dwellings.?
The concurrency plan also calls for developers to help the county facilitate the new students by paying a ?proportional fair share.?
Miller estimated the current cost per student in the county is $18,000 - $23,000. If 38 new students were generated, a developer?s proportional fair share cost at $20,000 per student would be $760,000.
?That is what we?ve been missing out on every month for the last 15 to 20 months,? Miller said.
WCSD Superintendent Carlene Anderson and Miller have talked about meeting with Pat Blackshear, director of planning for the county, to try to get developers to voluntarily give contributions until concurrency takes effect.
?We want to meet with Ms. Blackshear and on these large scale developments we are going to be asking that the developer set aside a proportional share to accommodate the needs this district is going to have to meet the growth of this county,? Miller said.
Board member Darrell Barnhill questioned why developers would offer up money when they don?t have to.
?Until we get some teeth in it I don?t see why a developer will voluntarily do that unless the county is going to deny (their development order),? Barnhill said. ?In real life a developer is not going to say, ?Oh, $760,000, I?ll bring it to you in the morning.??
The county runs the risk of getting sued by developers if they try to withhold development orders before concurrency takes effect, WCSD attorney Ben Holley said.
The county doesn?t plan on withholding development orders from developers and is only asking for voluntary contributions, Blackshear said.
Another part of concurrency is the fee schedule developers will have to pay when their development is reviewed by the Walton County School District Planning Department.
The fee is assessed at the time the proposed development is reviewed by the WCSDPD. Fees range from $200 to $1,050 and will be collected by the cities of Paxton, Freeport and DeFuniak Springs and the county and reimbursed to the WCSD.
Walton County is one of six counties participating in a pilot program funded by the Department of Community Affairs to implement school concurrency. The others are Lake, St. Johns, Sarasota, Hillsborough and Indian River.
One of the cogs for concurrency is multipliers. They are used to determine how many new students will be generated from a new development.
?For single family dwelling the multiplier will be 0.099 (south of Choctawhatchee Bay),? said Wayne Miller, WCSD administration and operations supervisor. ?In other words, if you have 100 homes in South Walton that are going to be built that would generate almost 10 students for those 100 homes.?
North of Choctawhatchee Bay a multiplier of 0.381 will be used generating 38 new students if 100 single family homes were built.
Gene Boles, with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, who is working with Morris-Depew Associates Inc., the firm hired to help the county with concurrency, came up with the multipliers.
?The Student Generation Multipliers for Walton County are derived from the 2000 Census,? Boles said. ?They represent estimates of the number of public school students residing on average in single family homes, mobile homes and multi-family homes in Walton County. The multipliers for South Walton County are calculated separately because of the high number of seasonal dwellings.?
The concurrency plan also calls for developers to help the county facilitate the new students by paying a ?proportional fair share.?
Miller estimated the current cost per student in the county is $18,000 - $23,000. If 38 new students were generated, a developer?s proportional fair share cost at $20,000 per student would be $760,000.
?That is what we?ve been missing out on every month for the last 15 to 20 months,? Miller said.
WCSD Superintendent Carlene Anderson and Miller have talked about meeting with Pat Blackshear, director of planning for the county, to try to get developers to voluntarily give contributions until concurrency takes effect.
?We want to meet with Ms. Blackshear and on these large scale developments we are going to be asking that the developer set aside a proportional share to accommodate the needs this district is going to have to meet the growth of this county,? Miller said.
Board member Darrell Barnhill questioned why developers would offer up money when they don?t have to.
?Until we get some teeth in it I don?t see why a developer will voluntarily do that unless the county is going to deny (their development order),? Barnhill said. ?In real life a developer is not going to say, ?Oh, $760,000, I?ll bring it to you in the morning.??
The county runs the risk of getting sued by developers if they try to withhold development orders before concurrency takes effect, WCSD attorney Ben Holley said.
The county doesn?t plan on withholding development orders from developers and is only asking for voluntary contributions, Blackshear said.
Another part of concurrency is the fee schedule developers will have to pay when their development is reviewed by the Walton County School District Planning Department.
The fee is assessed at the time the proposed development is reviewed by the WCSDPD. Fees range from $200 to $1,050 and will be collected by the cities of Paxton, Freeport and DeFuniak Springs and the county and reimbursed to the WCSD.
Walton County is one of six counties participating in a pilot program funded by the Department of Community Affairs to implement school concurrency. The others are Lake, St. Johns, Sarasota, Hillsborough and Indian River.
