SACRAMENTO – Assembly Member Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) today won the support of the Assembly Education Committee for a measure that will help school districts raise the funds they need to build new schools.

AB 2173 revises 10-year rules governing the fees that cities can impose on developers to fund schools.  The bill passed out of the Assembly Education Committee today on a 7-2 vote.

“This bill restores the spirit of a 10-year-old deal brokered by the Legislature between the development and education communities about sharing the costs of building new public schools,” said Caballero.  “It will eliminate outdated rules that are obstacles for communities that want to collect higher developer fees to build new schools.  Currently schools must operate multi-track year-round education calendars or have 20 percent of classrooms be portable classrooms.”

Current law links the fees imposed on developers to fixed state per-student grants.  Recent studies by the state and other groups have shown these formulas to be deficient in paying for new schools.  AB 2173 will correct this deficiency by linking developer fees to actual costs, a step toward ending the decade-long cycle of under-funding for schools.

The bill would preserve existing requirements that local school districts try to raise local dollars from local bond measures before adopting developer fees to help fund school facilities. 

Representatives of a number of school districts from around the state traveled to the State Capitol to testify in support of the measure.  Among them was Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Deborah Flores, who noted that her board of directors and City of Gilroy council members had talked to Asm. Caballero about the deficiencies of the current developer fee program.  Caballero introduced the bill to respond to these concerns.

“Our unmet school facility needs are in the range of $100 million, and we can’t meet them with the current developer fee system in place,” she said.  “Our voters passed a local bond measure to help meet our local share of costs and we will probably put another bond measure before the voters this fall. But we still need this adjustment in developer fees to make up the gap in school facility funding.

“This bill would also mean that we could meet important fire and life safety requirements, including handicapped accessibility.” 

Richard Lyon of the California Building Industry Association testified that his organization has concerns with the measure, but said that he is pleased with Caballero’s willingness to work with his organization.

Lyon noted that he had worked on the legislation enacted 10 years ago to establish the current developer fee program. 

“The comments today make me proud of what we did,” he said.  “Developers not only contributed fees, but helped communities to pass local bond measures.  All told, the program contributed $40 billion over ten years to build school facilities, housing more than one million children in new schools. 

“This is a good program,” he added.  “We don’t hear enough of that.”
 
Caballero acknowledged the important role that builders have played.  “They have long been solid partners with local governments in helping to build the school facilities needed by our rapidly growing communities,” she said.  “I’m confident that we’re going to continue to work with them to update the rules regarding developer fees, so that we can continue with this partnership.”

The bill will be heard next months in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

The bill is sponsored by the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, an association of school districts and county boards of education that was formed in 1979 to work for school infrastructure.