MONROE -- Developers have been freed from paying extra fees for growth.

Judge Christopher Collier with the N.C. Court of Appeals declared Union’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, or APFO, void and the county might have to pay back any fees collected.

“This is a black day for Union County,” said former County Commissioner Roger Lane, who was on the board that passed the ordinance. “I’m saddened by the decision.”

Developers had the opposite reaction.

“It’s a success for the property owners of North Carolina and Union County,” said Steve Nash a local developer who also serves on the Homebuilders Association. He called the APFO “extortion fees,” that were illegal.

Thrice, in 1998, 2000 and 2005, the Union County Board of Commissioners sought approval from the N.C. General Assembly to impose school impact fees on developers. Commissioners argued that the tax revenue generated from the new properties did not cover the cost to the county to build enough schools for the families moving in those houses.

Commissioner Lanny Openshaw has long said that growth does not pay for itself, at least not at the current Union tax rate.

Nash said Openshaw was incorrect but that commissioners would just “throw away” any studies that proved developers were right in saying that growth does pay for itself. Furthermore, he said charging developers for growth was pinning the tail on the wrong donkey.

“We just react to growth,” he said. “If we could create growth, we would go to Anson County

See APFO / Page 9A

APFO

Continued from Page 1A

and start subdividing.”

Lane fundamentally disagreed with Nash. Developers would build major subdivisions, sell the houses and be out of the area before the impact on schools was truly felt, he said. The cost would then fall on the backs of taxpayers who approved school bonds and are now looking down the barrel of a 20-cent property-tax increase over the next five years, by county finance estimates.

“They know it but they don’t care,” Lane said. The APFO “was the only thing standing between us and financial disaster.”

Lane has committed run for a commissioner’s seat next year and said he would like to appeal the ruling. Commissioner Tracy Kuehler said the board might appeal to the General Assembly again.

“At the end of the day (the court of appeals) said that it’s still an impact fee, you’re just calling it something different,” she said.

The downturn in the economy slowed growth to a point that Kuehler said if the county did have to pay back any APFO fees, it would not be a large amount. “We’re not talking millions of dollars,” she said.

In Cabarrus County, Union County Judge David Lee already ruled an APFO unlawful saying that the county does not have “inherent authority ... to enact the APFO,” according to a Media General news source.