Saturday, August 12, 2006

Charter Schools Must Pay Special Assessments

Despite that fact that they are publicly funded, established by statute, and otherwise must have open enrollement, the 5th DCA held that charter schools while are not public schools their exemption from Chapter 1013 means that they do not enjoy the statutory exemption from the payment of special assessments and other capacity fees that public schools enjoy, becuase it is provided in that chapter.

Seems like a silly piece of legislative oversight that could have dramatic impact on the fiscal viability of charter schools.

The case is Remington v. Education Foundation, here's the link to the opinion.

1 comment:

  1. Probably does - also see the convoluted and repeated litigation between Gainesville and the DOT on this. The courts get all hung up as to whether stormwater fees for a stormwater utility are special assessments or "fees for service".

    Nonetheless - if a school built by the school district had been located there, no assessments would have been due - or at least not under the theory that was litigated. Instead we would have had the VERY interesting question of what happens when a use locates in an CDD (or other improvement area) with validated bonds based on special assessments -- does the legislation trump the assessment resolution and bond validation?

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