Perdita Holtz, planning systems coordinator for Orange County, said the school impact fee gathers funds for schools to help deal with the expanding amount of students in Orange County.
The fee is applied only to residential development for new single-family and multifamily housing, she said. The maximum school impact fee for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools varies by the number of bedrooms in a new home.
She said the fee applies to a plot of land, so rebuilding or moving into a preexisting house will not require the fee.
However, Holtz said the maximum fee hasn’t ever been reached.
“What these numbers really boil down to is the number of students that are coming from those types of housing units,” she said.
Board of Aldermen Member Jacquelyn Gist said the fees could deter middle-class families from building homes in Carrboro. An estimate of the fees showed that fees could add up to nearly $20,000 before building can begin.
“That truly is more than the house my parents bought in 1962, which was a 14-room house,” she said. “That’s $20,000 before you put a stick in the ground.”
Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Board of Aldermen member, said she was focused on protecting older neighborhoods.
