A Defence of Community Amenity Contributions

During my sabbatical earlier this year I wrote a paper on community amenity contributions (“CACs”). I got a little carried away and the paper is over 65 pages long, which is way too long for most people to read let alone to include in this seminar booklet. So instead of the full paper, I’ve included only its table of contents and several statutory provisions.

My main purpose in writing the paper was to argue that local governments likely have the legal authority to require CACs as a condition of adopting zoning amendments, despite the lack of express statutory authority for them. That position is probably a minority position amongst lawyers and involves addressing a number of quite challenging counter-arguments to my principal thesis which is that CAC regimes are lawful so long as the payments required under them are designed to offset burdens expected to be created by the zoning change at issue or to capture a portion of the benefits of that change.

Download pdf: A Defence of Community Amenity Contributions