The Special Exception Process for Schools

At the November 13, 2008 meeting of the Joint Committee of the Board of Supervisors and School Board, members of both boards discussed, along with staff, a new process for acquiring land for schools. This process was to give the Supervisors up-front approval of land sites before LCPS entered into negotiations with property owners. This process was followed over the past six months and resulted in a contract on the Wheatland property. The meeting transcript is available online. I thought I'd go back and revisit some of what was said. The emphases in the text are mine. I have provided strike-throughs where I have changed individual words from the original transcript to reflect what I believe was actually said.

Jim Burton:
But once we’ve settled jointly between us boards on a site, and allowed them to go forward and negotiate a price, once that price is agreed to and if it meets the parameters we gave them, then there will be more than apple opportunity for the public to comment, I do believe, because we will have to go through a public process for a Commission permit, and until we get rid of this Special Exception, more often than not, that will still be there.

Sarah Howard-O’Brien:
We have tried and to negotiate contracts that will allow us to complete the entire Land Use process, in other words, get our special approval or legislative approval before we close on the property. The point that I want to raise here that everyone should be award of is that because of the time involved with the Land Use process, getting land owners to agree with that is becoming increasingly difficult. The policy makers need to be award of that in terms of future contract negotiations that folks are reluctant to tie up their property or keep it off the market for extended periods of time.

John Stevens:
But wouldn’t the ability to back out of a contract on that site for a cause like that, not be part of the Special Exception process, but simply part of the contract. Do we have that in our contracts already?

Jim Burton:
You can write contracts with all kinds of language that provide escape clauses. And you have all kinds of eager lawyers who would help you with that.

John Stevens:
Is that a current practice, Dr. Adamo?

Dr. Sam Adamo:
We typically right now try to protect the School Board as much as possible. And typically we always schedule our closings for dates that we believe that we should have all necessary approvals in place. As Sarah outlined, that is becoming more and more difficult. But we do try to protect the School Board’s position at all times.

(Assistant County Administrator) Paul Brown:
But there are times that because we know a Special Exception is going to have to be done, we have brought contracts and recommended to the Board, taking the risk, that even if you subsequently deny this Special Exception, we think that you should buy the property now because the property owner is not willing wait until the end of that process. The risk we are taking is, that at the end of the day, the Board could vote and say, no you can’t put a Fire Station there, it’s not going to work, and we would still have to buy that property. We’d have to sell it or look for another use. So that risk is inherent right now in the current process.