Court Backs School Fees on Developers : Right to Force Developers to Pay for Schools Upheld

The state Supreme Court today upheld the power of local governments to impose school construction fees on residential developers when rapid urban growth threatens to overcrowd schools.

The ruling will be a boon for suburban school districts hard-pressed in recent years to raise money to pay for new school construction and expansion in areas undergoing home-building booms.

“Developers who are expected to cause or aggravate overcrowding (by the new home construction) are required to mitigate it; others are not,” Justice Stanley Mosk wrote in the court’s unanimous decision in a San Diego County case.

The school fee decision reversed lower-court rulings as well as a 1979 opinion by then-Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian and found that San Diego County could impose $60,000 in building fees on Candid Enterprises, developer of a condominium project in Santee, to help pay for expansion of the Grossmont Union High School District.

Allowed Limited Development

The fees imposed in 1977 called for Candid to pay $1,000 per single-family home and $500 per unit of all other construction. The county used the fee scheme to allow limited development at a time when much of the area’s building was being curtailed due to fears of overcrowding.

Candid agreed to pay a portion of the school building fees in order to win a building permit for its condominium project.

But in 1980 the school district stopped collecting school building fees because of declining school enrollment.

Later developments were not required to pay. Candid protested the system, saying it was treated differently than other builders.

Mosk rejected that argument.

The court also said the School Facilities Act of 1978 does not preempt cities and counties from imposing building fees for permanent schools, as claimed by Candid.

Patchwork Measures

According to Mosk, since the passage of property tax-cutting Proposition 13 in 1978, “financing for school construction and facility maintenance has been a series of stopgap, patchwork measures.

“There still exists no long-term, comprehensive solution to the acute and chronic facilities financing needs of local school districts,” according to the Grossmont statements cited by Mosk.

In another ruling, the court overturned the death sentence of Richard G. Montiel of Bakersfield for the 1979 killing of a 78-year-old handicapped man.

The court upheld Montiel’s conviction in the throat-slashing murder of Gregorio Ante but sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration of the penalty phase due to improper jury instructions.