Concurrenty or Adequate Public Facilities (APF)

Description of Technique
Under this technique, local or state governments are authorized to deny approval of any new developments unless the principal categories of infrastructure needed to accommodate those developments—i.e., roads, streets, sewers, sewage treatment systems, water systems and sometimes schools—have already been or will be built in time to serve the developments. This technique is designed to prevent creation of new developments that place excessive additional loads on existing infrastructure because no capacity has been added.

Potential Benefits of Technique From General Public Point of View
If this technique were carried out in practice, new housing subdivisions and commercial developments would not throw much larger loads onto previously existing infrastructure. Additions to the capacity of that infrastructure would be created before those new subdivisions and other developments were opened for business. This would prevent the over-loading of existing infrastructure typical in fast-growth areas where new housing subdivisions and commercial developments are built without expanding previously-existing infrastructure. Hence this technique would prevent—or at least moderate—worsening traffic congestion and the overloading of schools and other key infrastructure from population and other growth.

Potential Drawbacks of Technique from General Public Point of View
This technique has the following disadvantages:

• It requires public bodies responsible for the creation of these key categories of infrastructure to raise funds for the expansion of that infrastructure to accommodate new growth before the new growth comes into existence, or simultaneously with that growth. Therefore, those public bodies cannot initially acquire such funds by taxing the new growth to be accommodated, since that growth does not yet exist when those funds must be raised. This means the required infrastructure expansion must be financed, at least initially, through bond issues or by raising taxes on existing residences and commercial properties.

• Public bodies that are reluctant to fund added infrastructure by imposing higher taxes on owners of existing properties may simply fail to provide the added infrastructure needed to accommodate new housing subdivisions and commercial projects. In fact, this is the most common response of such bodies to rapid local growth. In that case, the new growth tends to overload previously existing roads, schools and other infrastructure, imposing a lower quality of life on both the new residents and residents who previously lived in the area.

• Public bodies reluctant to fund added infrastructure by imposing higher taxes on owners of existing properties may pay for creating that new infrastructure by under-investing in the maintenance and repair of previously-existing infrastructure. This will result in the deterioration of existing infrastructure, lowering the quality of services for all citizens in the region.

• Local governments may use the concurrency requirement to block creation of needed additional housing subdivisions and commercial projects by claiming that they should not be built until adequate additional infrastructure is funded, and then refusing to fund the creation of that added infrastructure. This is a tactic frequently used by anti-growth interests even in communities where no legally-binding concurrency requirement has been adopted.

• Property owners prevented from starting new developments on their land because of the lack of adequate infrastructure may cause assessors to lower their property values, thereby reducing the property tax revenues available to those communities.

• If concurrency requirements force developers themselves to pay for the added infrastructure to serve their subdivisions, this raises the cost of housing in those areas. Doing so would reduce the supply of housing affordable to low-and-moderate income families even more than would occur if no concurrency requirements existed. Note: It is possible for a state to partly offset the housing-cost impacts of concurrency requirements by simultaneously adopting a statewide tax (such as a slight increase in the property transfer tax, as in Florida) and earmarking its proceeds to finance additional low-and-moderate income housing in areas where home prices have risen significantly.

• Developers refused permission to build new subdivisions in close-in regions because the roads there are already over capacity simply move farther out to more rural areas, where the roads are not yet as heavily traveled. Thus, concurrency may simply move future development farther out into low density areas, thereby aggravating suburban sprawl.

Practical Lessons from Application of Technique
This technique has not stopped new developments from being created in Florida even before adequate infrastructure was put in place to serve those developments. In addition, the following problems with the implementation of concurrency have been identified by the Florida Transportation and Land Use Study Committee in its Final Report of January 1999:

• The state government has not always appropriated sufficient funds to build the new infra-structure to accommodate the new subdivisions needed to serve added population caused by continued migration into the state. This is particularly true concerning expansion of the Florida Interstate Highway System (FIHS). Such new subdivisions can nevertheless be approved for construction if their private developers provide the required infrastructure. However, in many cases, providing for that infrastructure has lagged behind the construction of additional subdivisions and commercial properties. This lag has undermined the basic purpose of concurrency funding.

• One alternative under concurrency is “pay and go,” in which developers pay standardized fees or fees equivalent to a project’s expected consumption of infrastructure capacities, and then can proceed with their projects even if the actual infrastructure capacities do not yet exist. This approach is the most favored by developers, but may not avoid the problem of overload of streets and other infrastructure elements.

• Traffic within a local community is often raised beyond the permitted level of service by vehicles flowing through that community between points of origin and destination outside the community. When that happens, the community is prohibited from approving further development within its own borders because of forces completely beyond its own control—forces that may have nothing to do with the developments already existing in or proposed for that community itself.

• In highly urbanized areas, the Florida Interstate Highway System (FIHS) carries not only long-distance traffic, but a tremendous amount of purely local traffic, especially during peak hours. This local traffic often raises the level of congestion on the FIHS beyond that which would allow new local development. Consequently, new developments may be prohibited along the FIHS for reasons having little to do with the nature of possible additional developments there in itself. Yet increasing the capacity of the FIHS is difficult because of limits on that capacity adopted by the Florida legislature. And even if that capacity were raised, the principle of triple convergence would still cause peak-hour congestion levels to surpass those under which new development would be permissible.

• When high levels of traffic congestion prohibit further development in urbanized areas, developers tend to start new projects farther out into rural areas where levels of congestion are lower. This both aggravates suburban sprawl and makes it difficult to promote in-fill development and urban redevelopment within relatively dense urbanized areas—even though the latter two techniques might help reduce sprawl and traffic congestion in the long run.

• Many local governments have failed to revise their capital improvements programs, as required by state law, to keep up with development proposed in their jurisdictions. Consequently, they do not have plans for the creation of the added infrastructure necessary to service planned future developments. Yet these local governments suffer no penalties for such failures to meet the state’s requirements.

• The state government does not maintain current information about the levels of service being provided by local governments in various types of infrastructure. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how well localities are meeting the concurrency requirements, or whether those requirements are successfully matching new developments with infrastructure needs.

• In determining whether a given roadway has sufficient capacity to meet existing or projected future needs associated with proposed development, it is important to evaluate each road segment as part of a larger network containing alternative routes—not just as a single segment. Focusing on each segment in isolation from the system in which it is embedded may overlook the possibility that traffic can be diverted from overloaded segments onto other parts of the larger system that are not yet overloaded.

Advantages from NAIOP’s Perspective
Where concurrency is required and either state or local governments do indeed provide adequate funding for creation of new infrastructure to support proposed new development, this reduces the cost of new development to private developers and the ultimate occupants, compared to private financing of that same infrastructure. It also may make planning of new subdivisions and receipt of entitlements to build them easier, more definite, more reliable because the timing and availability of required infrastructure can be clearly known in advance.

Disadvantages from NAIOP’s Perspective
Where concurrency is required, developers of new projects may encounter long delays before public bodies adequately finance the new infrastructure necessary to support their planned projects. Such delays can be reduced if the concurrency regulations permit the required infrastructure to come into use at the time a new development becomes occupied, or at some stated interval after that time, which may be as long as three years. Developers may have to finance those new infrastructure themselves, adding greatly to project costs.

In addition, new developments within a locality may be prohibited because of high levels of traffic congestion there caused mainly by pass-through traffic that has nothing to do with developments within that community itself. This may prevent owners of land within that community from realizing the economic potentials of their sites.

Sources of Further Information
Florida Transportation and Land Use Study Committee, “Getting Concurrency Right” in Final Report of the Florida Transportation and Land Use Study Committee (Tallahassee, Florida: January 15, 1999) 18-30.

John M. DeGrove and Dennis E. Gale, “Linking Infrastructure to Development Project Approvals: Florida’s Concurrency Policy Under Statewide Growth Management,” Florida Atlantic University, November 1994.