Developers to recoup Cary impact fees
Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 8:45am
Another good idea thwarted:
The town illegally required developers and homebuilders to set aside money for schools in exchange for approving their projects, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
The ruling, reaffirming a lower court decision, means Cary may have to pay close to $1 million to a group of builders - and that others may request similar refunds.
Cary enacted the ordinance for schools in 1999 and a few years later attached a fee to developments that didn't get certificates from Wake County schools.
Anotother way our legislature is rotten to the core
This same basic case has been heard a number of times. Local governments, trying to deal with the high costs associated with growth, have attempted to impose fees on development in order to get growth to help pay for the infrastructure it requires. The courts have ruled that unless that local government has the specific authority granted by the legislature, they cannot charge impact fees in most cases. Essentially, this limits impact fees to very straightforward and simple situations like water and sewer utilities.
Whenever the issue of impact-type fees comes up in the Legislature, the homebuilders and realtors start throwing lots of money and lots of threats around. This kills things every single time, even when the bill is structured so that fees could only be enacted after approval by local referenda. The scumbags with the realtor and homebuilder associations throw enough money and influence around that our "representatives" in Raleigh are too scared (or well paid off) to even let their constituents decide what works best for their local situations.
The only thing that ever slipped through was the option of a transfer tax a couple years back. It wasn't the best option, but it did somewhat target growth. We all know how that turned out. The homebuilder and realtors spent lots of money to brand the whole thing as a "Home Tax" and got it defeated in most counties where their influence was unable to keep the commissioners from putting it on the ballot.
Its all about money.