New Revenue Stream For Grayslake Schools

Round Lake Beach is now set to help out the local schools by collecting transitions fees from new housing developments.

ROUND LAKE BEACH – The village will now collect school district transition fees. These fees are different from impact fees in that they are based on the cost of educating a child and do not have to be limited to capital improvements or land acquisition, according to Village Attorney Scott Puma. Puma added that Lake Villa is also considering adoption of the fees. He noted that the fees are helpful to school districts because they are collected before a property is placed on the income tax rolls. The fee is determined by multiplying $10,000 by the number of children expected from the residence, Puma said.

Now we need to get the rest of the villages to start collecting these fees and raising impact fees so new residents pay for their own education instead of everyone paying for it when a new referendum is passed.

This should also help the Grayslake schools with the new developments planned along Rollins Road. These were discussed at the 6/12/2006 school board meeting when they were attempting to use this as an example of why they needed to keep more of our money than we approved.

I would like to know how they arrived at the $10,000 figure. Did the schools have input into this? If not, I am also positive that most schools will claim this is not nearly enough money.