Subdivision Staging Policy FAQs
Formerly called the Growth Policy, the Subdivision Staging Policy (SSP) seeks to ensure that Montgomery County’s infrastructure, particularly schools and transportation, keeps pace with new development. The policy is updated every four years to ensure that the best available tools, such as a delay-based transportation test or recently updated student generation rates, are used to help to achieve this goal.
The Subdivision Staging Policy (SSP) is the tool by which the county ensures its schools and transportation systems keep pace with development. It tests the county’s infrastructure for adequacy, based on projected capacity, growth and future development. Regarding schools, the SSP calls for an annual test of school and school cluster utilization, the ratio of student enrollment to school or cluster capacity to determine if any part of the county should be placed in a development moratorium. A school cluster is a group of geographically defined attendance areas that include the elementary and middle-level schools that feed into a particular high school or consortium school.
The Subdivision Staging Policy (SSP) is a monitoring system. It helps pace new development with the infrastructure needed to support it. The policy relies on the best planning tools, predictions and information to signal to planners and elected officials when roads, transit and schools are becoming overcrowded.
The Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) is a set of laws in the Montgomery County Code requiring the government to find that there is sufficient public infrastructure to support development before the approval of certain plans and permits. The SSP supplements the APFO by explaining how those findings are made.
A development moratorium means temporarily halting the approval of new residential projects in a particular area to alleviate the impact that new housing has on school overcrowding.
The annual school test, undertaken to determine the status of enrollment and capacity for each school and cluster, takes effect every July 1 and is based on the capital budget adopted by the County Council in May and the most current enrollment projections released by Montgomery County Public Schools. A development moratorium, a temporary halt to residential projects in a particular area to prevent school overcrowding, is determined through the following:
- School Cluster Threshold: An entire cluster service area is placed in moratorium if any school level (elementary, middle or high) is projected to exceed 120 percent capacity utilization cumulatively across the cluster five years in the future.
- Individual School Thresholds: An individual school service area is placed in moratorium if the school’s projected utilization (capacity to enrollment ratio) five years in the future exceeds 120 percent and if the school is over capacity by at least 110 students (elementary) or 180 students (middle). There is no individual school test at the high school level since that test is equivalent to the cluster-level test, given that there is only high school per cluster.
The three main features of the 2016 Subdivision Staging Policy (SSP) update that relate to schools are:
- New School Level Test: The annual test used to evaluate school capacity previously considered all the schools in a cluster, the geographically defined attendance areas for the elementary and middle-level schools that feed into a particular high school or consortium school. Now capacity at the individual school level is also evaluated. The decision to halt development temporarily in a particular area of the county is triggered when any elementary or middle school in that area has a projected utilization (enrollment to capacity ratio) greater than 120 percent and the school is over capacity by at least 110 students (elementary) or 180 students (middle). Since there is only one high school per cluster, no individual school test is needed at the high school level since that test is equivalent to the cluster level test.
- Elimination of the School Facility Payment: Previously, a developer was required to pay a fee if any level of the school cluster serving the planned dwelling units had a capacity utilization of 105 percent or more. This threshold and its corresponding fee were eliminated in the 2016 SSP.Instead, the school impact tax was increased by 33 percent. This tax is paid by a developer for each new unit of housing produced, regardless of school utilization. The change is anticipated to generate approximately five times as much revenue over six years for school construction funding as under the previous system of school facility payments.
- Student Generation Rates: A student generation rate is the number of students generated by a particular type of housing – single-family, townhouse, garden-style apartment or high-rise apartment. The 2016 SSP updated the student generation rates used to estimate the impact of new development on schools. Furthermore, the SSP now requires that the rates are updated on a biennial basis, accounting for actual updates in enrollment and housing. Together with updated school construction costs, these student generation rates are used to update the school impact taxes paid by developers.
During preliminary plan review, Montgomery Planning evaluates a development application for infrastructure adequacy. For schools, Planning staff calculates the estimated enrollment impact of a project by multiplying the net number of planned dwelling units by the current per unit student generation rate.
Historically, different housing types (single-family home, townhouse, apartments, condos) have generated different rates of students. Therefore, the student generation rates are applied and calculated by housing type. Staff then identifies the cluster and individual schools servicing the residential project, and compares the estimated enrollment impacts to the applicable development moratorium thresholds to determine school adequacy.
Each fall, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) releases an updated set of enrollment projections for each of the next six years for each school in the system. In calculating these projections, MCPS determines the likelihood of a development project being completed within the six-year time frame of projected enrollments and adding students to the school system.
The Planning Department assists MCPS by providing information about the projects in the development pipeline. However, any final determination of how any individual project factors into the enrollment projections is made by MCPS, typically after consultation with the developer to ascertain the project’s construction schedule.
Montgomery County Code now requires the Planning Department to update school impact taxes on a biennial basis in odd-numbered years. To calculate the taxes, it is necessary to have updated student generation rates based on the most current school enrollment figures. In the fall of each even-numbered year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides the Planning Department with a dataset that includes the address and grade of every MCPS student (all other identifying information is scrubbed from the dataset).
The Planning Department then cross-references this information with parcel data that identifies the type of housing at the student’s address (single-family home, townhouse, multifamily housing, etc.). Using updated housing stock data, the Planning Department is then able to calculate rates for the number of elementary, middle and high school students generated by different types of housing across various areas of the county. When the rates were last calculated using fall 2016 enrollment data, staff was able to match 99.1 percent of the more than 159,000 MCPS students to a housing type and update the school impact taxes.
In general, school infrastructure improvements are funded through a combination of county general obligation bonds; state aid; and property, recordation and school impact taxes.
Yes. Montgomery County imposes impact taxes on developers of new housing projects to help fund school improvements necessitated by their developments. School impact taxes are levied on all new residential development, whether or not the schools in the area of development are overcrowded. The school impact tax helps pay for the construction or expansion of school facilities across the entire county.