DEVELOPER FEES TO DIP BY MILLIONS.Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer LANCASTER -- Antelope Valley Union High School District The Antelope Valley Union High School District (A.V.U.H.S.D.) is located in the Antelope Valley area of California, in northern Los Angeles County. The district includes eight public high schools, one trade school, and two continuation high schools in the cities of Palmdale officials are forecasting that its collection of developer fees will drop by almost half from $18 million to $10 million this school year because of a slowdown in Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley home building. The drop, if it materializes, will reduce the money available for finishing Eastside High School Eastside High School or East Side High School can refer to:
``We're projecting a softening softening /sof·ten·ing/ (sof´en-ing) malacia. softening a change of consistency, with loss of firmness or hardness. in the real estate market will reduce developer fees signficantly but not completely,'' trustee Al Beattie said. ``We would like staff to work with conservative numbers. We are OK even if developer fees fall way off this next year.'' District officials are basing their lower estimate on anecdotal evidence anecdotal evidence, n information obtained from personal accounts, examples, and observations. Usually not considered scientifically valid but may indicate areas for further investigation and research. : talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to" lecture, speech rebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to local home builders, viewing tract maps, and hearing reports by the media. ``Developers come in here and pull permits. As they do it, we talk to them and find out how the housing market is going,'' said Mat Havens, director of facilities, acquisition and development. ``Tract maps get sent to us; we keep a pulse on it. From what you read, houses are not selling as much. You can see that the building market and housing development is going to slow down. It's happening already.'' The district will spend about $25 million, or more than two-thirds of the $32 million it has collected in a developer fee fund, to complete construction of Eastside High School. The district is being forced to dip deeper into that fund after the failure of its $177.5 million school construction bond measure in June that was supposed to finance finishing up Eastside as well as build two more high schools and do other improvement projects. Had the bond passed, the district probably would have only used between $10 million to $12 million in developer fees on the Eastside project. Eastside's permanent campus, the district's eighth comprehensive school located at Avenue J-8 and 35th Street East, is under construction. The school has ninth- and 10th-graders housed in portable classrooms. The board has approved spending $42 million to build the 200,000-square-foot main classroom building. The bid was awarded to San Diego-based Douglas E. Barnhart, which submitted the lowest of five bids. Left to be built are the cafeteria cafeteria: see restaurant. , fine arts building The Fine Arts Building may refer to:
Originally, in Islamic architecture, an open circular pavilion consisting of a roof supported by pillars. The word has been applied to a Turkish summer garden pavilion and a type of early Persian mosque. , which should bring the total construction budget to about $120 million. The district separated construction of Eastside into phases in March after the sole construction bid came in nearly 50 percent more than the estimated cost. Sylmar-based Tutor-Saliba sent in a bid of $141.7 million, which was more than the district's estimated projected cost of $95 million. School officials hoped that breaking up the work would draw more interest from smaller companies, which might not be able to complete the entire campus but could do portions of the work. After voters rejected the bond, the district postponed indefinitely in·def·i·nite adj. Not definite, especially: a. Unclear; vague. b. Lacking precise limits: an indefinite leave of absence. c. building Eastside's administration and theater/fine arts buildings. ``Our objective was to build with what the district has available and attract more competition, and we've done that,'' Havens said. Havens said the projected $8 million drop in developer fee revenue is equivalent to the cost of Eastside's administrative offices. ``Any $8 million decline in revenue is significant for us. If the projections are wrong, then that additional revenue could be earmarked for Eastside,'' Havens said. The district also uses developer fee money to pay for ongoing leases on portable buildings, and will use it to pay for more temporary buildings for Eastside as the school adds two more classes of students and to fund design work for the district's ninth and 10th high schools. The board last November approved a 5 percent hike in the fees it charges home builders to $1.57 per square foot. The state has set $2.63 per square foot as the standard residential developer fee for financing school construction, but in the Antelope Valley that fee must be shared among more than one school district. In the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County portion of the Antelope Valley, developer-fee revenue is divided between the high school district and the individual elementary school elementary school: see school. districts within the high school district boundaries. karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com (661) 267-5744 |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion