Longmont – The City Council has decided to start all over again on how to implement a local law that bars new developments in areas where schools can’t handle extra growth.
After weeks spent trying to come up with an interpretation of the ordinance that satisfied city leaders, the St. Vrain Valley School District and parents, the council decided to work with the school district to re-evaluate the law before deciding what to do.
Such a decision could leave the existing law in place, change the law or even scrap it and handle the issue through an intergovernmental agreement.
“There’s good reason to start over on this with some of the same principles,” Councilman Marty Block said at a meeting Tuesday night.
The ordinance now says the City Council will deny any new developments that would feed into schools that either are, or will be, 25 percent over capacity.
The problem has been how to implement the ordinance while considering dynamic and sometimes unpredictable factors: growth from existing developments, demographic changes and the school district’s efforts to mitigate overcrowding.
Since early this year, the council has mulled several proposals for how to apply the law, each opposed by some factions. Parents of students at Eagle Crest Elementary, an overcrowded school in southwest Longmont, have been most vocal in urging the council to protect schools from being overwhelmed by rapid growth.
One of those parents, Jill Franzel, said Wednesday that the parents have been convinced the council wants to preserve the ordinance in some form. Now, she said, they want to work with the school district to pass a mill levy override, which would give the district badly needed money to operate new schools.
“Once we realized the city probably wasn’t going to just ignore the issue and build houses without any other consideration, our focus shifted a little bit,” Franzel said. “… We feel like they listened to us. We feel like we’ve made a difference.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
