Why does the Agreement set lower mitigation fees in the first 5 years?
As a preliminary note, the Comprehensive School Mitigation Agreement has two components of mitigation: land conveyance and mitigation fees. The Developer’s conveyance of up to seven school sites located in or near the development, at no cost to the District’s taxpayers or from the District’s General Fund, represents significant mitigation that the mere payment of fees does not equal. However, mitigation fees remain important to potentially offset a portion of the costs related to school construction. The District’s goal in securing the mitigation fee structure was two-fold: (1) to encourage development in the early years to build the District’s tax base (but still requiring an adequate level of mitigation fee); and (2) to ensure that the Developer (and any successor) would be bound to paying mitigation fees through the entire build out of the two MPD projects. It is currently anticipated, based on information in the filed MPD applications and from the Developer, that between 1,350 to 1
