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PaperclipPerfector
7hr ago
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Notes -
Item 1 of 2
In year 2011, a tourism-reliant village with fewer than 3000 inhabitants (though, hilariously, it officially is called a "city") enters into an agreement with a developer for the annexation and residential development of a 360-acre property in adjacent unincorporated land. The development agreement allows the developer to start building anytime within the next 25 years at its sole discretion (since "the parties understood that the housing market was slowly recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and that the market was not ready for the project").
However, just eight years in, the village govt. expresses its opinion that the agreement that it signed is "outdated, one-sided, and incomplete", and starts ignoring its provisions (e. g., an expedited permit-approval process). The developer is forced to file three separate arbitration proceedings in order to counter the village govt.'s reluctance to abide by the agreement. In the third proceeding, it finally asks for damages. The arbitrator finds that the village govt. has "persistently breached the development agreement", and awards to the developer a "conservative damages calculation" of 22 M$ bearing interest of 12 %/a. (See document 81 page 6 for the arbitrator's decision, document 81 page 1 for the developer's viewpoint, and document 12 for the village govt.'s viewpoint.) The village is unable to satisfy even the interest payments on this penalty, and files for bankruptcy.
The developer objects to the bankruptcy. It alleges that the village govt. did not file in good faith; rather, its problems arose entirely from its own bad-faith breach of the development agreement, and it made no attempt to reduce expenses or to increase revenues before filing for bankruptcy. However, the bankruptcy judge rejects the developer's arguments. The village govt. engaged in multiple months of good-faith mediation with the developer, and filed for bankruptcy only after the mediation failed and the developer garnished the village govt.'s bank accounts. The village govt.'s breach of contract does not necessarily imply bad faith. And the judge refuses to follow a decision from a different bankruptcy court under which govt. bankruptcy is a last resort, available only after the govt. has tried to fix its budget by implementing austerity measures (which indeed may lead only to a "death spiral" rather than to an improved financial position).
Item 2 of 2
Fun activity:
(1) Check a government GIS map and find a big rural parcel (1 2)
(2) Sketch it in your preferred CAD program at the correct scale
(3) In the sketched parcel, draw a residential subdivision compliant with the local government's subdivision and zoning codes (or just with the International Zoning Code)
You may or may not care to abide by the stormwater provisions in the subdivision code. For example:
You probably have seen some giant grassy ponds (extended-detention basins) used to control stormwater runoff. Well, in New Jersey you aren't allowed to use those any longer, because they remove only 40–60 percent of the suspended solids (i. e., sediment). Are you allowed to use giant vegetated ponds (large-scale bioretention systems)? No. They can remove 80–90 percent of suspended solids, but they still aren't quite good enough to be usable without a variance, for reasons that are not clear to me from reading the linked documents. The only kind of pond you can use without getting a variance is a small vegetated pond (small-scale bioretention system), with maximum catchment area of 2.5 acres.
In contrast, Pennsylvania lets you use the giant vegetated pond.
Either way, the calculations don't seem that annoying. You just have to make the basin(s) big enough (maximum water depth after the 100-year storm is one foot in NJ or two feet in PA; maximum side slope is 1/4, to prevent errant vehicles from flipping) to hold all the water that the 100-year storm (adjusted to account for future climate change) will dump on the new impervious surfaces that you expect to build (and that you expect the homeowners to build)—say, one foot of rain (the 100-year storm), multiplied by the area of your roads and sidewalks plus X percent of the subdivided lots' area as prescribed by the zoning code's "maximum impervious coverage" figure (probably around 50 percent). If you take the worst-case scenario that the entire non-basin area of the parcel will be impervious, and if for simplicity you assume that the basin has vertical sides, then voila—in Pennsylvania the basin must occupy one-third of the parcel (2/3 of the parcel is impervious × 1 foot of water on the impervious area = 1/3 of the parcel is basin × 2 feet of water in the basin), while in New Jersey the basin must occupy one-half of the parcel (1/2 of the parcel is impervious × 1 foot of water on the impervious area = 1/2 of the parcel is basin × 1 feet of water in the basin). (Disclaimer: I probably have misinterpreted something here. I was a roadway engineer, not a hydrology engineer. Do not rely on these calculations to take out a small loan of one million dollars and buy a bunch of vacant land in Pennsylvania.)
Or you can just ignore the stormwater provisions, and draw your roads and lots with wild abandon. (Note, however, that trying to align multiple rows of blocks while abiding by the recommended block length of 300–600 feet can be more difficult than it appears.)
On Item 1, skipping the legal analysis completely (IANAL), it seems crazy to me that the village with so few people couldn't.... approve permits quickly?
Wouldn't that have been far superior to paying millions in arbitration and being garnished? Why enter into any development agreement at all?!? I find document 81 far more sympathetic than document 12, in short.
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