Joe Antush, STAMP member, addressed council on February 5, 2002, as follows:
Ohio Schools Facilities Commission design manual requires that an elementary school be built on a minimum of 10 acres plus one acre for each 100 children. So a school for 200-400 pupils needs 12-14 acres minimum.
The Waterbury PCD development is supposed to give six acres for a proposed elementary school. That is not even close to the acreage required. This donated acreage was touted as a significant amenity by those council people voting for and those supporting PCDs.
I believe the council and the school board should have made it known that it was not big enough, but I guess council's greatest concern and efforts were directed to keeping the citizens from voting on PCDs.
I have yet to see any real amenity or benefit to the citizens that will counter all the problems that a PCD development will cause.
Even before I knew the acreage required by the state, commons sense told me that six acres wasn't enough. When the STAMP committee was negotiating with the developers in return for dropping our lawsuit and objections to the PCDs, one of the issues was that the school acreage would have to be increased.
It is interesting to note that the school board is considering putting a levy on the ballot--one of the reasons for the levy is their anticipation of the big increase in pupils because of the PCD developments. It seems that they weren't that concerned about the impact when asked for their comments when PCD developments were being introduced. |