Capital Construction Fee Proposed

To the Editor:

Billion-dollar corporations, and smaller profiteers, come to Newtown looking to cash in on our quality of life and — especially — our well-regarded school system. They buy up a tract of land, build as many residences as possible, sell them for as much as possible, take a handsome profit, and leave for the next, greener, pasture.

The taxpayers of Newtown are left with the capital projects and debt service required of us by these developers. Most importantly, we have to build more schools to educate the children of the families that purchase these new residences. These avoided capital costs go right to the bottom line of these profiteers.

We are faced with a potential buildout in town of some 2,700 additional homes, and student enrollment as a percentage of the town’s population is going up. We’re heading for a train wreck; and everybody knows it.

In effect, we have been subsidizing residential development in Newtown. If we do not remove that subsidy, our debt will skyrocket, taxes will continue to spiral upward, our ability to plan for the future will be crippled. The biggest losers will be our schools and the children in them.

My proposal is to levy a capital construction fee on all new residences, to be escrowed for the sole purpose of school construction. These funds will not go into the general fund and cannot be used for any form of operating expense. Based on the buildout of 2,700 homes and a per residence fee of $30,000, the capital fund would accumulate some $81 million. With new homes in town selling for $750,000 to $1 million, the $30,000 fee is — if anything — too modest.

To the extent that such a fee does suppress the rate of buildout, it will reduce the rate of expansion in the student population, with the implication of extending the life of our existing capital investments and our planning horizon. Doing that contributes to our financial strength which, when reflected in improved bond ratings, will tend to further reduce our cost of borrowing, and help relieve pressure on the mill rate.

Things will tend to get better.

Voters in the Second District can e-mail me at councilmanchris@gmail.com or call 364-1611, and my street address follows for regular correspondence.

Sincerely, Chris McArdle Candidate for Legislative Council,

Second District

41 Bennetts Bridge Road, Sandy Hook                October 16, 2007