Developers ask land cash fee wavier for project in Aurora portion of Oswego School District 308

Age-restricted subdivision would generate no additional students, school board told

The Oswego School District Board of Education during a meeting in the Community Room at Oswego East High School, 1555 Harvey Road, Oswego.

Developers of an age-restricted subdivision planned for construction in the city of Aurora portion of the Oswego School District, are seeking a waiver of land cash fees that would be paid to the school district.

As proposed, the Lincoln Prairie development will cover more than 500 acres of land between Wolf’s Crossing Road, South Eola Road, 111th Street, and will be located south of Bednarcik Junior High School and Wolf’s Crossing Elementary School in Aurora.

The development will include Lincoln Crossing, consisting of 163 traditional single-family homes; the Lincoln Prairie commercial center; the Lincoln Prairie by Del Webb area, including 548 total housing units; and flex parcels for possible additional housing developments.

Homes in the Lincoln Crossing and Lincoln Prairie areas are expected to be priced at more than $400,000 per unit.

During the Jan. 11 meeting of the Board of Education, board members were presented with a request from developers to waive the land cash fees for the Lincoln Prairie portion of the development, an age-restricted area for residents over the age of 55 to be constructed by the Del Webb company.

Municipalities negotiate impact fee payments from developers as they approve new housing developments within their boundaries. The fees are intended to help local school districts and other government agencies cover the cost of extending public services to residents moving into new housing developments.

Russell Whitaker, an attorney with the Naperville firm Rosanova & Whitaker representing the developer Pulte Homes, owners of the Del Webb brand, explained that as the Del Webb homes are an age-restricted subdivision and generate no students for the district, by law they are excluded from paying impact fees.

“We pay impact fees to the school district when we generate kids, because there is a need created by our project,” Whitaker explained.

Impact fees would be paid on the single-family Lincoln Crossing homes - another component of the project with a total of 163 homes. The commercial center would not generate impact fees, as it creates no students for the district.

The fees generated by the Lincoln Crossing homes, he continued, would generate more than $500,000; a similar amount to the Del Webb homes.

Whitaker told the board that the estimated Equalized Assessed Value (EAV) for the Lincoln Crossing single family subdivision came in at almost $22 million, while the EAV for the Del Webb homes estimated to come in at $68 million.

The commercial properties would generate about $10 million in EAV.

Property tax revenue generated annually for OSD 308 from the three properties would total an estimated $6.5 million, Whitaker told the board.

“There’s an extraordinary win here for District 308, and I think that’s part of the reason that we’ve been working so cooperatively, and I think the city of Aurora has been excited about the development potential,” he added.

Whitaker said his clients are asking for a waiver of fees “not because we’re negotiating, not just because we’re generating $6 million of revenue in this project, but because pursuant to Supreme Court law, it’s not appropriate because there is no impact to the school district.

“There is no cost to the school district associated with educating kids, therefore it is inappropriate by operation of law to charge an impact fee.”

Board of Education member Brent Lightfoot later clarified that Whitaker was actually asking for a waiver of land cash fees, as his presentation focused on waiving impact fees.

“(Land Cash Fees) is money that the district sets aside that can only be used for bricks and mortar buildings,” Lightfoot said. “Our problem is sevenfold, tenfold. We’re underfunded from the state. That impacts our general education funds...the issue is, that we have very little money right now in our land cash fees.”

At some point in the future, OSD 308 will have to build another building, Lightfoot said. Due to the size of the district’s debt, it cannot borrow money.

“When development comes in, that’s why we have to do our best for the taxpayers in the community, to ensure that we’re getting land cash fees so that when the time comes that we have to build a school, we have the most money to do it,” Lightfoot explained.

As impact fees would be naturally waived due to the age-restricted nature of the homes, Whitaker confirmed that the project was looking to waive land cash fees for the complex.

“I group those things very similarly together. To me they’re both impact fees, but it’s the land cash,” Whitaker said. “The pricing of our homes, I think would put us above the threshold for Aurora’s payment of land cash.”

Board attorney Maureen Lemon confirmed Whitaker’s statements, that impact fees are “tied” to the impact a property would have on the district.

“If there are no students, there would be no impact,” she said.

Board of Education Director Lauri Doyle asked Whitaker what would happen if a student needed to move in with a grandparent who lived in the Del Webb homes.

“There are things...that would require us to educate that student if they lived with their grandparent, even if it was short-term, and if it’s age-restricted to the extent that you’ve demonstrated, that student would have to qualify as a homeless student in order to live there, I would imagine,” Doyle said. “That can bring pretty significant costs to our district moving forward if we then have to educate that student for the rest of the year.”

A situation like that would be addressed in the covenants of the subdivision, Whitaker said.

“Those covenants, you voluntarily assume and agree to comply with those covenants when you choose to buy a home in that subdivision,” he said. “We will have a set of covenants...those covenants say that someone under the age of 19 may not reside or may not spend the night in the community for more than 90 days in the year.

“There is no basis for someone registering for District 308 with an address in our Del Webb community.”

However, Doyle pointed out that a student in that situation would then have to register as “homeless” with the district due to the covenant of the subdivision and its location near Wolf’s Crossing and Bednarcik.

There is a distinction between a covenant prohibiting a student from living in the subdivision, Lemon pointed out. The district would be required to educate that child, she said.

A student would then be required to be educated for the rest of the year, no matter where they live, Doyle said.

Board Secretary Ruth Kroner, who lives in a planned community with an age-restricted residential area, suggested looking at that subdivision as an example.

“I think we could look to that as an example and a resource of information as to what has been done in the past, and how it played out,” Kroner said.

School districts do not have a say in setting the amount of impact fees or land cash fees a municipality requires as payment to the district.

Given the size and scale of the project, Whitaker told the board that the entire development is expected to take about 10 years to complete.

City of Aurora Director of Development Strategy and Facilitation Trevor Dick told the board that the city is also working on improving transportation in the area, including the nearby intersection of Eola Road and Heggs Road.

Developers would be required to expand Eola Road and 111th Street, and the city would work with the village of Oswego to expand Wolf’s Crossing Road, a plan long on the books for Oswego.

Board member Alison Swanson also asked if there could be a guarantee that the homes would not be changed from age-restricted to single family or another type of home. Whitaker said there would be no problem with that.

The Oswego School District 308 Board of Education will next meet at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 25, in the Community Room of Oswego East High School.