Editorial: Collier County Public Schools

Collier County School Board members at their last meeting expressed awe at nearly $660 million in old and new debt as they prepared to borrow $288 million for building and remodeling schools.

The old debt totaled some $252.4 million in principal and $118.3 million in interest.

Board members said the new schools are driven by growth and the board is being responsible by approving the new borrowing now and locking in at a favorable interest rate.

Because it is no surprise that enrollment has expanded, the board is hard-pressed to congratulate itself on being thrifty. This board was a party to a wait of 14 years for an increase in school impact fees — growth helping pay for growth — and even then the work was actually done by the Collier County Commission, which holds the power to enact fees and forged ahead in May rather than wait any longer for a board recommendation.

That means that the impact fee of nearly $1,800 imposed on a single-family home in 1992 remains the same until a new fee of up to $10,017 per house takes effect in a few months.

The old rate schedule brought in about $8 million a year. The new one is estimated to realize four times as much over time, as a building-permit rush is expected to beat the June 30 deadline.

Do the math and you see that the board is borrowing, and paying back with interest, millions more than should be necessary if the fees had been adjusted sooner. It would have spared us sticker shock too.

Every construction dollar not funded by impact fees has to come from somewhere else. Taxpayers, with newly increased taxable property values in hand, know who that is.

The bottom line is that the School Board would not be borrowing so much money now and have so much accrued debt if members and their staff advisers had done the right thing years ago and raised impact fees.