The price of a new home in Windsor-Essex will likely go up in the future to build new schools.
The Greater Essex County District School Board is considering doubling education development charges (EDC) this year from $305 to $605 for each new unit with the $300 phase-in to continue over the next five years until a proposed charge is reached. The proposed EDC for the city will reach $1,455 per unit in 2023/2024 and $682 in the county.
Education development charges are the primary source of funding for the board to buy land for future school sites.
A consultant projects just over 17,000 new homes will be built across Windsor-Essex over the next 15 years. He also projects that almost 2,200 new student spaces are needed in the area.
Krysta Glovasky-Ridsdale, who was at Tuesday night's public board meeting, said she felt the projections are wrong and there is no need to build more schools.
"We don't have a need to acquire more land to build more schools because we have existing space," said Glovasky-Ridsdale.
The consultant said the data comes from Statistics Canada and Census information between 2001 and 2016. He said new schools must be built where new development is built or students will be bused to existing empty schools, perhaps as far as an hour away.
Trustee Ron LeClair said he fears such a large EDC increase will hurt development growth.
"We're really trying to spur growth and I'm afraid that this might put a bit of a stymie on that growth and we might take a hit," he said.
Glovasky-Ridsdale said she thinks the formula is flawed because the population in the Windsor area is dropping or staying flat.
"We're assuming we need more schools because we almost sound like we're adding more children but the truth is we're not adding more children, we're moving children from here to there," she added.
Statistics Canada reported last week that Windsor is tied for the nation’s third fastest-growing city with a 2.5 per cent population growth.
The public school board must revise its EDC bylaw every five years or it will expire and can't collect the charges. The current bylaw expires in May and the deadline for public comments is April 4 at 5 p.m. Trustees are getting ready to approve the new bylaw at the board meeting April 16.