There’s some concern with how the school site acquisition tax is being applied, to help pay for land to build new schools in Aberdeen.
The fee will be for all new housing units built in Kamloops in the next 10 years.
Councillor Mike O’Reilly says a family might live in a new home in Sun Rivers, Tobiano or Savona with kids who go to school in Kamloops, and says they won’t have to pay the tax.
“And again, I just didn’t see that as the most equitable way to do that for the people living in Kamloops. You don’t have to drive very far; you drive one minute, two minutes across the river and you’re not paying this fee. But you’re still using the schools that the rest of Kamloops is paying for to be built.”
Mayor Ken Christian says Tobiano and Savona are “clearly left out” of the new tax, as those communities are in the catchment area for Kamloops schools.
“They have a schools of choice policy now, so there is no hard, fast catchment areas like there used to be. So there is that transfer of students back and forth. If they want arts, science, French immersion, those kinds of specialties.”
The school site acquisition tax will be $288 for new single-family homes, $259 for low-density multi-family homes like townhouses, and $201 for high-density multi-family homes like condos. That will help the school district buy 17 acres of land in Aberdeen, to build a new high school and elementary school.
The city’s director of development services, Marvin Kwiatkowski, was asked if the fee should only include new homes in Aberdeen.
“That was discussed, but it actually works best to include the whole boundary. Things are obviously more dynamic now with schools of choice. There’s no guarantee that a good percentage of the students that live in Aberdeen would attend the schools up there. But nowadays there’s much more fluidity, as far as where you live and what school you go to.”
The school district expects the 17 acres of new land to cost $7.28 million, and it’s allowed to raise up to 35 per cent of that amount through the school site acquisition tax.
