The primary job of a legislator is to represent the interests of the constituents, but Mark Schaeffer has put the interests of developers first.
One of the ways in which Mark Schaeffer has acted in the interests of housing developers, and not his constituents, was in his opposition to the voluntary school assessment.
Both Kent and New Castle counties have a VSA or something similar, which is a fee paid by residential developers to compensate local school districts that do not presently have the capacity to serve the additional students who will occupy the new housing. The fees help pay for the construction projects necessary to accommodate more students.
Sen. Russ Huxtable, D-Lewes, sponsored legislation enabling Sussex County to implement a VSA. The legislation made explicit that the fee would not apply to 55-plus or low-income housing communities. However, Sussex County Council did not approve it, despite the unanimous support from school districts for its adoption.
The council member who most vociferously opposed the VSA was Mark Schaeffer, who also penned an op-ed in the Cape Gazette defending his opposition. He said the VSA was a tax on low-income families trying to buy a $200,000 house. The reality is that the median new housing price in Sussex is $500,000, and the legislation explicitly exempted low-income and 55-plus housing. Schaeffer's op-ed was filled with such egregious distortions that the editors of Cape Gazette felt the need to simultaneously run an editors' note correcting his misstatements.
Recently, at the Sept. 26 meeting of the Cape Henlopen school board, Oliver Gumbs, director of finance, reviewed for the board the parameters of the VSA, and what would have been its benefits to the district and the district's taxpayers. Gumbs estimated that if the program had been implemented in 2020, the local portion of the proposed high school expansion would have been completely covered by the VSA.
In other words, rather than impose a fee on developers, Schaeffer placed the burden of school development on existing homeowners – on us, his own constituents. The result? Higher school taxes for us and greater profits for developers. Perhaps that's why developers are pouring money into a political action committee that is supporting Schaeffer's campaign. They even named the PAC Preserve Sussex to trick voters into thinking the PAC is against development.
Enough with the deception! Time for a change! Let's elect Jane Gruenebaum, who will put the quality of life for residents of Sussex County first.
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