Making An Impact
As more and more towns in our region consider zoning revisions, building moratoriums and other steps to address the onslaught of large-scale development, one underlying question rises to the surface again and again: exactly how much can be done to prevent the suburban sprawl and skyrocketing property taxes that typically come with rapid growth?
The answer seems to be: quite a lot, certainly much more than many planners and politicians would like us to believe.
“Local governments in New York State have a wide swathe of authority to invent techniques needed to encourage appropriate uses of the land,” says Professor John Nolon of Pace University’s Land Use Law Center in White Plains.
With the right “techniques” in hand, towns can consider a broad gamut of options from rejecting outright a proposed subdivision to forcing revisions, density reductions and financial compensation from developers.
The primary law that enables towns in New York to regulate development is the 30-year-old State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, which governs the planning review of most large subdivisions. Under SEQRA, local governments are required by law to identify the “negative environmental impacts” that a development may have on the community and to impose measures that prevent or at least contain the damage.
SEQRA extends its scope well beyond preserving wetlands and insuring clean drinking water. Protecting a community’s economic health and even its scenic character are equally important aims of the law. State courts, for example, ruled in 1998 in favor of the small town of North Elba near Lake Placid which rejected an application by Wal-Mart to build a new superstore “based on the adverse impact expected on the downtown merchants and the scenic character of the area,” Professor Nolon noted.
Towns also have the ability under SEQRA to assess one-time fees on developers to cover the fair and carefully estimated costs of providing public services to the new development’s future residents or businesses. For the past 15 years, the Town of Colonie, just north of Albany, has charged “mitigation fees” to developers of as much as $4,500 per home to cover the cost of supplying new houses with adequate roads, water, schools, recreation and fire safety.
Under lobbying pressure from realtors and builders, the New York Legislature has so far rejected pleas from school districts and towns to pass specific legislation that would enable them to assess impact fees to defray the property tax increases caused by most developments. Lawyers, however, seem confident that town planning boards can follow Colonie’s lead today and impose the charges under existing SEQRA rules.
“SEQRA is an enabling statute for assessing a range of fees and obligations against individual developers when there are discernible impacts that the fees or obligations will be used to mitigate,” said Brian Morgan, a leading municipal attorney with the Orange County firm of Jacobowitz and Gubits.
The biggest economic impact from large new developments often falls on the shoulders of the surrounding school district’s taxpayers, and school boards, long excluded from the planning review process, are beginning to take note. Although school boards have no authority to assess impact fees directly, they can quantify the likely cost of educating students from the proposed homes and can exert influence on planning boards to focus on the “negative impact” of higher taxes in their SEQRA review and subsequent decision.
In a move closely watched by school boards across our region, the Spackenkill School District in Poughkeepsie has hired an attorney and commissioned impact studies in the hope of influencing the Town Planning Board’s review of a 470-unit housing development proposed in the district.
The Planning Board could ignore the district’s findings, but only “at its own peril,” Mr. Morgan said.
“Any professional appraisal of an impact should not be ignored,” he added, “though it could be contested as to whether it holds up against a competing study done by the developer.”
Whether the economic impact on the school and other public services will be sufficient to turn the Planning Board against the proposed development remains to be seen. But with several thousand homes now making their way through the approval process at planning boards around the region, it will be interesting to see how our elected town and school officials choose to weigh the negative impacts of growth and whether they have the courage to make a positive impact of their own.
The answer seems to be: quite a lot, certainly much more than many planners and politicians would like us to believe.
“Local governments in New York State have a wide swathe of authority to invent techniques needed to encourage appropriate uses of the land,” says Professor John Nolon of Pace University’s Land Use Law Center in White Plains.
With the right “techniques” in hand, towns can consider a broad gamut of options from rejecting outright a proposed subdivision to forcing revisions, density reductions and financial compensation from developers.
The primary law that enables towns in New York to regulate development is the 30-year-old State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, which governs the planning review of most large subdivisions. Under SEQRA, local governments are required by law to identify the “negative environmental impacts” that a development may have on the community and to impose measures that prevent or at least contain the damage.
SEQRA extends its scope well beyond preserving wetlands and insuring clean drinking water. Protecting a community’s economic health and even its scenic character are equally important aims of the law. State courts, for example, ruled in 1998 in favor of the small town of North Elba near Lake Placid which rejected an application by Wal-Mart to build a new superstore “based on the adverse impact expected on the downtown merchants and the scenic character of the area,” Professor Nolon noted.
Towns also have the ability under SEQRA to assess one-time fees on developers to cover the fair and carefully estimated costs of providing public services to the new development’s future residents or businesses. For the past 15 years, the Town of Colonie, just north of Albany, has charged “mitigation fees” to developers of as much as $4,500 per home to cover the cost of supplying new houses with adequate roads, water, schools, recreation and fire safety.
Under lobbying pressure from realtors and builders, the New York Legislature has so far rejected pleas from school districts and towns to pass specific legislation that would enable them to assess impact fees to defray the property tax increases caused by most developments. Lawyers, however, seem confident that town planning boards can follow Colonie’s lead today and impose the charges under existing SEQRA rules.
“SEQRA is an enabling statute for assessing a range of fees and obligations against individual developers when there are discernible impacts that the fees or obligations will be used to mitigate,” said Brian Morgan, a leading municipal attorney with the Orange County firm of Jacobowitz and Gubits.
The biggest economic impact from large new developments often falls on the shoulders of the surrounding school district’s taxpayers, and school boards, long excluded from the planning review process, are beginning to take note. Although school boards have no authority to assess impact fees directly, they can quantify the likely cost of educating students from the proposed homes and can exert influence on planning boards to focus on the “negative impact” of higher taxes in their SEQRA review and subsequent decision.
In a move closely watched by school boards across our region, the Spackenkill School District in Poughkeepsie has hired an attorney and commissioned impact studies in the hope of influencing the Town Planning Board’s review of a 470-unit housing development proposed in the district.
The Planning Board could ignore the district’s findings, but only “at its own peril,” Mr. Morgan said.
“Any professional appraisal of an impact should not be ignored,” he added, “though it could be contested as to whether it holds up against a competing study done by the developer.”
Whether the economic impact on the school and other public services will be sufficient to turn the Planning Board against the proposed development remains to be seen. But with several thousand homes now making their way through the approval process at planning boards around the region, it will be interesting to see how our elected town and school officials choose to weigh the negative impacts of growth and whether they have the courage to make a positive impact of their own.
posted by James Sheldon at 2:07 PM
2 Comments:
This is a great piece James. It's great to see that not having any zoning regulations, as in Pine Plains, doesn't necessarily make our town a sitting duck for development.
Hi - I’m a newbie trying to find some information
relating to consulting
However, I managed to find your Blog which I think is interesting and had some relevance to what I was looking for. Thanks for your post and do keep up your good work.!
Post a Comment
<< Home