Date SUBMITTED: July 13, 2006
DATE
OF WORKSHOP SESSION: July 19, 2006
date
of public MEETING: N/A
To: MAYOR & Board of ALDERMEN
From: Chuck
Boyd, Deputy Director of Planning & Community Development
RE: Adequate
Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO)
PURPOSE: To present to the Mayor & Board
of Aldermen information on an APFO.
HISTORY: With
recent election, there has been a renewed push for the City of
There are several
exemptions in the County’s APFO. They
include: minor residential subdivisions
(5 or fewer lots), private or public schools and public safety facilities. In addition several residential and
non-residential developments were exempt for 3-10 years depending on the size of
the development.
The capacity for each facility is spelled out in the County’s Ordinance. Roads in a designated agricultural / rural or conservation category will be considered adequate if a level of service (LOS) of “C” or better is maintained. For roads outside of designated agricultural / rural or conservation category will be considered adequate if a level of service (LOS) of “D” or better is maintained.
In the County’s system, water & sewer are considered adequate factoring in existing connections, future connection from buildings under construction, recorded lots for which allocations have been made and multi-year tap agreements. For water source facilities, storage tanks and local pumping station have sufficient capacity to provide maximum day demand and peak hour demand in addition to fire flow and the distribution system is capable of providing normal required pressure.
The capacity of elementary and secondary schools shall be considered adequate if enrollment is less than 100 percent of the state-rated capacity. There are provisions for requesting that the BOE to redistrict if there is additional capacity is in an adjacent school district.
In 1997 & 1998, the City of
1) Decision
about school construction and redistricting essentially became decision as to
where developments can be approved.
These decisions are made by the County and the Board of Education and
not the City of
2) The APFO often passes small projects and fails larger project (unless the phasing option is used). To pass there must be enough seats available today for all students who would come from a development when totally built out.
3) The
Copies of the 1998 Draft is include in your packet for your review.
There
are other municipalities in the County that currently have an APFO. These include:
Other
jurisdictions within the state that have APFO’s include:
Anne Arundel Carroll
Harford Prince George’s Washington, Baltimore, Charles, Howard, Queen Anne’s,
Calvert, Frederick, Montgomery, St. Mary’s
Municipalities with
Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances
Boonsboro, Emmitsburg,
(Source: HB 1205)
DISCUSSION: First we must understand what an APFO can accomplish and what it cannot do.
An APFO is a form of
land use regulation that controls the timing of property development and
population growth with the purpose of ensuring that the public facilities
needed to serve new residents are constructed and made available
contemporaneously with the impact of the new development
Said another way, the
purpose of an APFO is to ensure that, to the maximum extent practicable,
approval of new residential development will become effective only when it can
reasonably be expected that adequate public facilities will be available to
accommodate such new development.
An APFO is a planning
tool that attempts to coordinate the local CIP and growth. An APFO can be applied to public facilities
such as schools, jails, transportation, utilities, parks and recreation,
etc…The most common uses for an APFO is for schools, roads, water and
sewer.
An APFO is not intended to stop growth, but to
manage it in a responsible manner. An
APFO is also not a financing mechanism, but can work to regulate development to
mirror pubic and private investments in infrastructure.
The staff has reviewed local and other jurisdictions APFO to
determine the list of facilities that could be considered in an APFO. Again, the
most common use for an APFO is for schools, roads, water and sewer. However, almost any facility could be included.
There are some
facilities that would be difficult to manage in an APFO. For example, Fire & Rescue is a County
facility. Fire & Rescue is also
typically determined to be adequate by their response time or by the percentage
of late and no responses to a call. In
the past the City has had little success in securing a new fire station. At this time the only means by which the City
can enhance Fire & Rescue service is through improved roads, enhanced fire
codes and adequate water pressure.
Police is a City wide
service that maybe difficult to include in an APFO. If the desired threshold is 2.0 officers per
1,000, then once that threshold is not met the entire City would be shut down until
the Mayor & Board fund the additional needed officers to meet that
threshold. If the Mayor & Board of
Aldermen want to develop a policy that the City needs 2.0 officers per 1,000,
then this issue could be monitored and addressed during the budget cycle.
If it is the desire
of the Mayor & Board of Aldermen, the City could be subdivide into areas
for police service. The most logical sub
area would be the 5 existing beats. Then a methodology would need to be
developed to ensure that adequacy is met in each of the beats. This would prevent the entire City from being
shut down from an inadequacy of sworn officers.
The third way to
address police is to establish an impact fee for police service. A calculation could be made on the cost to
outfit a new officer. This impact can
only be established for office space, training and equipment (not salary). Then this fee would be asset on each dwelling
unit.
At the direction of
the Mayor, staff quickly changed the Brunswick APFO for schools, water, sewer
and roads to accommodate the City of
These same policy decisions will need to be made with any type of growth management tool.
The big problem implementing the Brunswick APFO model is dealing with the issue of existing approved – yet unbuilt developments. The City has over 3,000 units in the development pipeline that have some type of approval. It is difficult interjecting an APFO requirement on the entire residential project when it is half completed. The issue becomes more complicated when there are several residential projects all moving forward at the time and an APFO requirement is imposed. Which of the projects would proceed forward (if any) and which ones get placed on hold.
Another way of looking at this problem is at the time of adoption of an APFO, there are three developments that are all grandfathered in because of approval of a preliminary plan. Combined these three developments make an elementary school capacity reach 121% when they are completely built. Which developments are allowed to move forward? Can all three developments move forward without regard to school capacity?
The staff believes that there may be several advantages to developing a combination of an Allocation and APFO. Those advantages would include:
The following issues are generic and staff believes that these should be included in any growth management tool.
1) Staff
believes that for schools, if a project is held up by an APFO Test (in whatever
form it takes) there should be a number of years that the project can be held
up before allowing to proceed. The 1998
School APFO draft staff suggested that 4 years be used as the sunset set
provision. This was include in the 1998
Draft as well as suggested today to deal with the issue that the City does not
control the Board of Education’s CIP.
2) Staff would also recommend that a development only needs to pass each test once in an AFPO (in whatever form it takes). For example if there are 5 tests and a development passes three the first year, in the second year this development would only need to be tested for the remaining two facilities. This is another policy decision that will need to be made by the Mayor & Board of Aldermen.
3) Staff would also recommend that a yearly report be issued to the Mayor & Board of Aldermen on a yearly basis indicating the status of the current facilities, number and status of projects in the system, and recommend CIP projects for the upcoming fiscal year.
Staff has attached a flow chart that shows how both systems could work within our current system. The attached flow chart is conceptual and is not the only way the process could work within our current system.
RECOMMENDATION: Staff would like direction on how to proceed with the APFO issue.
BACKUP INCLUDED: 1998 Staff Draft of the APFO
for schools
Staff
Draft APFO modeled on
Flowcharts
REVIEWED BY DEPARTMENT HEAD: Charles W. Boyd
CONCURRENCE BY:
Date Date
FINANCE ________ _______ LEGAL ________ ________
CITIZEN SERVICES ________ _______ FPD ________ ________
DEPT. PUBLIC
WORKS ________ _______
PLANNING ________ ________
ENGINEERING
________ _______ CIP ________ ________