Hamilton County School Spot Zoning
Something came to light recently in Hamilton County. The Hamilton County School Board approved a new “frame work” for spot zoning of subdivisions. What is this you ask? How does this affect me?
First, let’s describe spot zoning. Spot zoning is selectively choosing an area, in this case it is new homes, and zoning the homes to a school outside of their originally zoned schools. Second, let’s describe how this affects you in just a few of many ways. First, that new build house, in your current school zone, you want to buy may be zoned to a school far away for elementary, but not middle or any combination of that scenario. Additionally, this means these same homes, or any, may turn into pawns for the school board to manipulate capacity percentages between Hamilton County Schools, rather than building schools the growth demands or even worse not removing current students living outside the school zone and even outside the county in some cases. This will split communities and even neighbors. This will kick the can down the road even further on building schools where they are actually needed. This will also negatively impact housing affordability as it will greatly increase risk for builders and developers that are building homes in high demand school zones, because the builder or developer will no longer know what school that plot of land will be zoned for when prospecting lots and land. To better understand this, we will walk through a scenario.
The way development currently works, the school zones are known before the risk is taken. For example and using a fake development, the process is as follows. ABC builder finds a piece of land they are interested in building new homes on. This can be 10 homes or 200 homes. They agree on a price contingent on the engineering passing for what they want to build and contingent on passing Regional Planning Agency (RPA) and County Commission. The land is already zoned for particular schools (elementary, middle and high) and that may be the top reason that ABC Builder chose that land. The value of the land is even based on that zoning and demand at the time as well. The builder will take many months, and years sometimes, working on the septic/sewers, roads and lot count with the various engineers and agencies before the builder/developer will ever close on the land to ensure the project will be profitable.
With this new spot zoning frame work, as it was described to me by a Hamilton County School Board member, once the county approves a new subdivision then the school board has up to a year to decide and to approve the schools that subdivision will be zoned for. Here is the rub. They are actively trying to do this to subdivisions that are already approved and even with new phases of current subdivisions. The map below speaks to these facts. The yellow highlighted areas are inclusive both of new phases in current neighborhoods and new developments just on Signal Mountain. The Hamilton County School Board wants these yellow areas to be zoned for different schools almost 30 minutes away.
Now, I know the state law gives all school boards the right to rezone when schools become crowded. I am of the opinion that this proposal is a complete overreach and does not answer the demand for more capacity. What will happen to these children when the new zone reaches 95% capacity? Will wel be sending buses on long journeys a new direction. Bus routes will look like a plate of speghetti. How are long bus rides outside of their known communities helping our children? How does manipulating development and home owners answer the call for the board to solve the real problem of capacity in high demand areas? It sounds a whole lot like they threw their hands up and said lets buys some more buses and figure this out later. I can hear the can rattling.
This is a work around so Hamilton County Commission can save face and can go ahead and approve a new neighborhood and let the school board rezone it to a school that is much further away, and no one will ever purchase a home there. So, ABC Builder will not do that project. You know who looses the most? The land owner. He just lost immense land value that could have been his retirement plan. This is a very slippery slope and there has to be a better way. We need to get all the right people to the table to discuss real solutions to the capacity problem.
This is the proposed rezoning map for just one elementary school.
