An attorney who frequently represents Aurora developers has criticized the city’s proposal to enact school impact fees, saying they will stifle development.
“If you want to shut off development in Aurora, that’s a great direction to go,” said attorney John Philipchuck. “They [developers] will try to go to communities that don’t have them. They tend to price people out of the marketplace.”
Philipchuck made his comments after a meeting of the City Council Finance and Planning and Development Committees at which aldermen considered the fees, proposed by Mayor David Stover’s administration as a way to help school districts build new schools.
Community Development Director Bill Wiet said taxes generated from residential development don’t always cover the cost of services and infrastructure, including new schools, made necessary by the new housing.
“Shutting down development that doesn’t pay for itself is not necessarily a bad thing for the community and its taxpayers,” Wiet said. “Every square inch of land doesn’t have to be developed today … If it doesn’t develop now, the land is just going to get more valuable.”
Aldermen asked Wiet to gather information about impact fees in other communities and provide details about the fees proposed for Aurora.
Under the proposal, impact fees of up to $3,000 per home would be paid by developers of newly annexed property. Those fees are typically added to the price of a new home.
“We have to find a way to fund public education in Illinois that is a fair way to do it,” Philipchuck said. “So far, it seems convenient to set it on a new home buyer, often newcomers to a community and therefore not voters who really have a say.”
Bill Catching, the mayor’s spokesman, noted that Ryland Homes of Schaumburg, which Philipchuck represents, agreed in principle to annexation fees when annexation of the company’s 180 far southeast side acres was approved by the Aurora council.
Stover has argued that fees are a better alternative to a controversial special tax levied on existing homes in the area to help pay for new schools in Oswego Community School District 308.
The special tax is unique in the state. Impact fees, by contrast, are common throughout the Fox Valley and other suburban areas.
“A majority of communities around Aurora have implemented impact fees,” Wiet said. He questioned whether fees would deter development.
School districts argue that the impact fees, which often come on top of developer land donations, are needed to build schools for students generated by new housing development.
Property taxes and state assistance alone don’t cover those costs, the districts argue.
Stover’s administration alerted the Greater Aurora Chamber of Commerce that the fees were to be considered and the Chamber Builders and Developers Committee has offered no objection to the discussion, as Philipchuck suggested, Catching said.
“We’d like to look at the proposal,” Chamber President Steven L. Hatcher said. “It appears that something has to be done to fund schools. Whether that’s the right way, I don’t know. We haven’t seen it yet.”
Stover’s proposal came after North Aurora approved an intergovernmental agreement with West Aurora School District 129, which also serves students in Aurora, that allows the village to negotiate fees with new developers.
District 129 attorney Peter Wilson was at the meeting to discuss a similar agreement.
Under the North Aurora agreement and the system being considered by Aurora, fees decline as the price of a home increases, based on the premise that owners of more expensive homes pay higher property taxes to the local school district.
The fees increase if the home has more bedrooms and is likely to add more students to the district’s enrollment.
Under Aurora’s proposal, the fees would be slightly lower than those in North Aurora and, unlike North Aurora, would be capped at $3,000 per home.
