Granville

I know I've been AWOL for a while on this issue. (Too many things going on, as usual.) But we have yet another county that's starting to take a look at impact fees as a way of covering the spiraling costs of keeping educational construction up to speed with growth. This time, it's Granville county, which sits just north of Durham and Wake counties, home to Creedmoor, Butner, and Oxford, among other small communities. Sprawl, coming largely out of Durham County but also to a degree out of Wake, is putting pressure on their school system, and they're trying to find a way to pay for it.

Folks, I need help on this. I'm not terribly good at organizing -- I've tried, and haven't gotten anywhere. But the problem is that the NC Homebuilders will fight this to their dying breath, and that's more power than any one county has. (Orange and Chatham slipped through school construction impact fees in the '80s, before the Homebuilders had a chance to organize against them.) Or, if one county does muster the power, they might slip that one through, then draw a firewall on the rest. Durham County's legislative delegation tried for 12 years to get permission from the legislature to charge school construction impact fees, and were blocked by the Homebuilders every time. The ONLY way this happens is if there's enough local government and activist pressure on enough legislators that eventually there's too many for the homebuilders to stop.