UPDATE:  At their meeting last night, the New Hanover County Commission unanimously voted to amend the ordinance and remove these illegal school and fire fees.  We thank the members of the Commission who unanimously voted for the item:  Jonathan Barfield, Jason Thompson, Ted Davis, Brian Berger and Rick Catlin.

For the past several years, BASE staff has been addressing an issue in New Hanover County which has cost our members millions of dollars in illegal school fees, land donations and fire fees. These fees or land donations were "required" by the Planned Development (PD) district in the form of an Adequate Public Facility Ordinance (APFOs). These types of APFO provisions have been litigated across North Carolina and shown to be illegal in every instance. In fact, several jurisdictions have voluntarily refunded illegal APFO fees instead of facing legal challenges.  In New Hanover County, the PD district's illegal provisions impacted 5 specific subdivisions: Landfall, Northchase, River Lights, Rose Hill Landing and Blue Clay Farms.  Since the PD Zoning District was established in 1984, all five of these subdivisions were subject to illegal requirements for adequate school and fire facilities as conditions of development approval. Fire fees were paid to New Hanover County or sites for fire stations were incorporated in nearly all the developments, as conditions of development approval. The provision requiring school sites was strengthened after the approvals of Landfall and Northchase. Had the River Lights project not been annexed into the City of Wilmington, it faced a $2.5 million illegal school impact fee as a condition of approval. The remaining two projects faced similar illegal conditions which required donation of a school site or fees in lieu of land donation.  After discussing the issue with County management, BASE committed to work with New Hanover County to craft ordinance changes that address the needs of the County in a manner that is lawfully authorized.