End Cost-Shifted Growth. Restore Accountability. Make Growth Pay for Growth.

To: Brunswick County Board of Commissioners

From: Residents and Taxpayers of Brunswick County, North Carolina

WHY WE ARE HERE

Brunswick County residents are being asked to approve a school bond because the County has funded other growth-enabling improvements with public money, improvements that could lawfully have been required of development, leaving school construction as the remaining unfunded, unavoidable obligation.

This is not a vague frustration. It is a clear policy sequence:

Development proposals are approved and occupancy follows.

Growth immediately increases demand for public capacity.

The County pays to expand or upgrade key capacity improvements that enable growth to proceed.

Student enrollment rises as homes are occupied.

School capacity then becomes the “next emergency,” and taxpayers are asked to cover it through a bond.

In plain English:

Because the County paid for other growth-related improvements that developers could have funded, residents are now being asked to pay for schools through a bond.

North Carolina law provides lawful tools to ensure development accounts for many of the public costs it creates, through rezoning conditions, development phasing, infrastructure requirements, and development agreements. These tools are commonly used across the state and do not require new legislation. When those tools are not fully used, costs do not disappear. They are shifted.

The proposed school bond should be understood as the deferred bill for student-generating growth that was permitted to proceed without fully internalizing its public costs at the time of approval.

This petition exists because Brunswick County cannot continue to operate under a model where:

private profits are captured immediately, and

public costs are socialized later,

with children absorbing harm first and taxpayers paying forever.

THE CORE REALITY

This growth model harms children and burdens taxpayers.

Children experience the impacts immediately:

overcrowded classrooms,

reduced individualized support,

increased stress and disruption,

diminished educational outcomes.

Taxpayers experience the impacts later:

bonds,

tax increases,

“temporary” facilities,

retrofits and emergency expansions,

long-term infrastructure maintenance.

This is not accidental.

It is the predictable result of cost-shifting.

SCHOOLS ARE CHILD-SAFETY INFRASTRUCTURE

Schools are not amenities.

They are essential safety and development infrastructure for children, like fire protection and clean water.

When housing is approved faster than schools can be built, local government knowingly creates overcrowded learning environments. The consequences of overcrowding are documented and foreseeable.

According to studies and large evidence syntheses in education research:

Overcrowding and larger class sizes are associated with lower academic performance, particularly in foundational subjects like reading and math.

As class sizes rise, individualized instruction and teacher attention decline, reducing learning gains—especially for children who need the most support.

Crowded classrooms correlate with higher stress, more behavioral disruption, and higher teacher burnout, which further degrades educational quality.

These harms are not evenly distributed. Students from lower-income households and those needing additional academic or behavioral support are disproportionately affected, widening inequality.

When a county approves growth in a way that predictably produces overcrowding, it is making a capacity decision with known consequences for children.

TEMPORARY FACILITIES ARE EVIDENCE OF SYSTEM FAILURE

Portable classrooms are often described as “temporary.” In practice, when approvals continue without a recovery window, temporary facilities become semi-permanent operating infrastructure.

Research and national data show that portable classrooms are widely used when permanent capacity is exceeded, and studies have examined concerns related to learning environment quality, supervision dynamics, and indoor conditions in temporary instructional spaces. Reliance on portables institutionalizes overcrowding and diverts resources from permanent solutions.

Temporary structures do not resolve a capacity problem created by continued approvals.

They confirm that approvals have exceeded planning limits.

CAPACITY CANNOT RECOVER WITHOUT A PAUSE

School construction takes years. Enrollment pressure arrives immediately with occupancy.

When approvals continue while schools are at or over capacity:

demand continues to rise,

recovery windows disappear,

overcrowding becomes the baseline.

Capacity cannot “catch up” while new demand is continuously added. A pause is not extreme—it is mathematically necessary to restore balance.

SCHOOLS WILL BE FUNDED—REGARDLESS OF THE MECHANISM

Under North Carolina’s system, if children arrive, schools must be funded through one or more of the following:

bonds,

taxes,

portable classrooms,

emergency appropriations,

deferred maintenance that increases long-term costs.

This is why the bond conversation cannot be separated from the approval pipeline. Bonds are not isolated decisions, they are downstream consequences of growth approvals.

Therefore:

If Brunswick County does not want to fund additional schools through bonds, taxes, or ongoing temporary measures, the only responsible option is to stop approving student-generating growth until capacity exists and is funded.

There is no alternative path that avoids both overcrowding and public cost.

WHY RESIDENTS ARE PAYING MORE

Major residential development produces predictable public costs:

school seats and facilities,

buses and staffing,

transportation upgrades,

stormwater and drainage systems,

emergency services expansion,

long-term maintenance obligations.

When these costs are not internalized at the time of approval, development proceeds faster and profits are realized sooner, while the public assumes responsibility later.

The proposed school bond represents deferred costs created by growth that was allowed to proceed after public funds were used for other enabling improvements. That is why residents feel squeezed: they are being asked to pay again—after development has already benefited from publicly funded capacity.

This is not a personal accusation.

It is a structural accounting outcome.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ARE PART OF THE SAME SYSTEM

Growth that exceeds infrastructure capacity also creates environmental and fiscal liabilities:

increased runoff and flood displacement,

degraded water quality,

wetland loss,

long-term stormwater maintenance exposure.

These impacts return directly to children and families through disrupted schooling, health exposure, and increased disaster vulnerability.

Environmental harm, educational harm, and fiscal strain are not separate problems. They are interconnected symptoms of a growth model that approves demand faster than it funds capacity.

WHAT WE DEMAND

 ONE AND DONE

We demand Brunswick County adopt a binding, countywide resolution that includes all of the following:

1) Temporary Regional Growth Moratorium

A temporary pause on major residential rezonings, planned developments, and large subdivisions until school capacity and infrastructure concurrency standards are implemented.

This is a reset, not a ban.

2) School Capacity Concurrency

Require that major residential approvals demonstrate:

available classroom capacity at the time of occupancy,

funded expansion plans identified prior to approval,

development phasing aligned with seat availability.

No capacity. No approval.

3) Make Growth Pay for Growth

Commit to full use of lawful tools to prevent cost-shifting, including:

rezoning conditions,

development phasing,

concurrency requirements,

development agreements,

refusal of approvals dependent on future taxpayer bailouts.

Growth must be priced honestly at the time it is approved.

4) Formal Support for Impact-Based Funding

Adopt a formal resolution supporting impact-based funding mechanisms and pursue enabling authority at the state level so development bears its proportional public costs rather than transferring them to residents.

5) Mandatory Environmental Impact Review

Require independent, cumulative environmental impact assessments for large developments, including:

stormwater and flood impacts,

water quality and wetland loss,

long-term public maintenance obligations shifted to the public.

6) Truth-in-Approvals Fiscal Disclosure

For major projects, require a public-facing summary stating:

projected student generation,

school assignments at occupancy,

total public facility costs,

funding responsibility,

whether a future bond would be required as a result of approval.

Decisions that cannot be explained clearly should not proceed.

THE DECISION BEFORE YOU

Continuing approvals without funded capacity guarantees:

continued overcrowding,

continued reliance on temporary facilities,

continued cost-shifting to residents,

and continued erosion of public trust.

Pausing approvals to restore balance protects children, taxpayers, and long-term stability.

FINAL STATEMENT

According to decades of education research, overcrowded schools harm student outcomes and widen inequality. According to basic fiscal reality, costs not paid up front do not disappear, they are transferred.

Brunswick County residents are being asked to approve a school bond because public funds were used to cover other growth-enabling improvements that could have been funded by development, leaving schools as the remaining deferred cost.

This petition asks Brunswick County to stop transferring those costs onto children and residents and to restore a system where growth pays for growth.

Protect our kids.

Protect our wallets.

Protect our county.

Make growth pay for growth.

-Josh,

Founder, Citizens for Better Brunswick