The cost of concurrency: A legal and empirical analysis of adequate public facilities ordinances in North Carolina

Adequate public facilities ordinances (APFOs) are enacted by local governments to ensure concurrency between the timing of residential development and the availability of public infrastructure. Several counties in North Carolina have adopted this type of growth management regulation in recent years to provide an additional source of revenue for public school construction. Rather than constraining residential development, these ordinances allow real estate developers to move forward with their projects after voluntarily contributing to the cost of building new schools. The legal analysis presented in this dissertation indicates regulatory constraints imposed upon more traditional public finance mechanisms have encourage the approach even though it is currently unclear whether county governments in North Carolina have the authority to use APFOs in this manner. In addition, an empirical analysis was conducted to determine if the collection of voluntary development fees in Cabarrus County, North Carolina put upward pressure on new and existing housing prices throughout the market. The hedonic price equations and difference-in-difference identification strategy employed in the study indicated existing housing prices increased by approximately...