Builders and developers who paid Cary an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) fee between 1999 and 2004 have a Court of Appeals ruling on their side, yet the town is resisting giving them back the money. The ruling said the town didn’t have statutory authority to impose or collect the fee. From the Cary News comes comments from town spokeswoman Susan Moran:
The town’s new request is less about the validity of the ordinance and more about the precedent the appellate ruling sets when it comes to conditional zoning, Moran said last month.
But the builders’ lawyers say it is impossible to separate the two. The condition applied to developers said each home builder had to pay a per-bedroom school impact fee to comply with the town’s ordinance for schools.
Any zoning conditions set were “inextricably tied” to the since-repealed ordinance, the court said.
Cary’s petition also claims that the statute of limitations on the agreement has been reached, so Cary does not need to refund money to developers.
A couple years back, JLF’s Michael Sanera analyzed the use of APFOs by local governments in North Carolina in this paper and the faulty analysis that typically accompanies them.
