Lexington County won’t seek school input on future development
Lexington County will drop feedback from local schools from its review process for new development, after a tight vote by county council .
The council, on Tuesday, voted to stop sending a questionnaire to local school districts asking about school capacity as a part of its concurrency review process on new housing development.
Lexington County adopted the revised review process last year, the first county in the state to do so. It considers responses from various public agencies about their capacity to deal with more growth in the fast developing county before the county signs off on new proposals in a particular area.
But council members said that while other agencies Lexington County consults with are county-directed agencies — fire, law enforcement, EMS and solid waste collection — how school districts choose to respond to growth is ultimately outside the county’s control.
“We can’t control what they put on there,” said Council Chairman Todd Cullum, arguing the county’s five different school districts don’t have consistent standards for how they measure development’s potential impact.
As long as school districts have access to the same data on development proposals as the county, Cullum said it would be their responsibility to make their own decisions about how to handle future growth.
“That’s how we decide how fire stations get built,” the chairman said. “As long as they get all the data they need to plan, do we even need to send the questionnaire?”
But other council members said they found the school district’s feedback valuable when deciding on whether to approve large new developments that could impact community schools. In September, the council denied a proposed 83-home development near Lexington for the first time, partly because of feedback from the Lexington 1 that neighboring schools would be overwhelmed by the expected influx of new students.
Supporters of the school feedback said the county and the districts could revise the questionnaire to get more constructive feedback.
“If there are problems, the superintendents helped us create the questionnaire,” said Councilwoman Charli Wessinger. “Maybe schools need to look at the questionnaire to decide what would work better.”
Councilwoman Beth Carrigg said the small Lexington 4 school district, serving the Gaston and Swansea area, had told the most recent Planning Commission that they had “zero seats” available for additional students in their area.
“They’ve got to say no because it will take a while to get a referendum ready to build new schools to accommodate what may be coming,” Carrigg said. “They can’t redraw the attendance lines because they don’t have other schools to send them to.”
But the majority worried the county would be on thin ice legally if they deny property owners the ability to develop without the ability to require schools to prepare for future growth.
“I don’t like us saying we’re going to turn it down because the schools said they’re full, because it’s going to end up costing the taxpayers money when we get sued,” said Councilman Todd Cockrell. “I don’t think there’s an attorney who would say ‘I can defend it if y’all get sued’... The schools can come up with something without us being legally bound to it.”
Cockrell, Cullum, Michael Bishop, Glen Conwell and Clifford Fisher voted to drop the school questionnaire. Carrigg, Wessinger and Larry Brigham voted to keep it.
Earlier, Community Development Director Robbie Derrick told county council that Lexington 1, which covers the central part of the county, has completed its own demographic study and is looking to complete a facilities study.
Lexington 4 is also studying growth in the district, and Lexington 2 in Cayce and West Columbia is also doing a demographic study. The districts will continue to receive planning proposals from the county, and can make comments on them absent a formal concurrency questionnaire.
Cullum said the schools would still have time to prepare for any influx of new students before proposed homes end up being built. “But that’s not our decision,” he said.
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