By JAMES KROHE JR.
The Naperville
Builders pay
WHO SHOULD PAY the public costs of private land development? The Illinois Supreme Court untangled part of that complex question on October 5, when it upheld the judgment of lower courts in the case of Krughoff v. Naperville. The story that ended in the panelled rooms of the court began in the council chambers of Naperville's city hall where on June 19, 1972, the council passed Ordinance 72-20, which required that land developers dedicate land or donate cash in lieu of land for new parks and schools as a condition of city approval of plans for new residential developments. Specifically, the ordinance required developers of new residential subdivisions inside or within a mile and a half of Naperville's legal limits to dedicate 5.5 acres of land for public use or, in lieu of that, money, in the amount of $15,000 for each of those acres. Naperville, like so many of its neighbors in suburban DuPage County, was growing fast. Barely 7,000 people lived there in 1950; 20 years later its population had swelled to more than 22,000, and by the time Ordinance 72-20 became law it was pushing 28,000. New people meant a need for new parks and schools, which the school system and the park district were hard-pressed to provide. Ordinance 72-20 was the city's attempt to force developers, whose new subdivisions were both symptom and cause of the population boom, to share some of its costs. Public support The ordinance had broad public support. Walter Johnson, executive director of the Naperville Park District, explains; "The people moving into a new area were pleased that parks and school space would be provided. The older residents were just as pleased because it meant that tax money would not be used to buy land or new parks." The only opposition, predictably, came from land developers. Some developers had made voluntary contributions of land, but they were the exception to the rule. Two developers who did not like the new ordinance were O. L. and James Krughoff, partners doing business as The K Company. The city failed to grant The K Company zoning approval for a subdivision plan because the company did not provide the land for public use required by the ordinance. The K-rughoffs sued, claiming that the city had no authority for such an ordinance under the Illinois Constitution and that the ordinance denied them equal protection of the law because, among other contentions, it exempted commercial and industrial developers from its requirements. The circuit court did not agree, nor the appellate court, nor, ultimately, the Illinois Supreme Court. Open space The idea of requiring residential developers to donate land or cash to help ease the social costs of development was not new when Naperville translated it into law in 1972. The city council in nearby Geneva, a suburb of 10,000 about 35 miles west of Chicago's Loop, had adopted Illinois' first land dedication ordinance in 1967. (Schaumburg had experimented with a voluntary donation program as early as 1954, but few other towns were able to duplicate its good results; Schaumburg itself made the practice mandatory around 1970.) Several other Chicago-area suburbs followed suit, among them Elgin, Aurora, North Aurora, Batavia and, in 1972, Naperville. The goal of these early ordinances was simple: to provide land (or cash to buy land) upon which to build new schools. But schools were not the only need. The provision of open space — in the form of parks, nature preserves and the like — was equally pressing. A 1969 survey undertaken by the National Recreation and Park Association revealed that Illinois was woefully deficient in open space for its citizens. Using the accepted ratio of one acre of open space for every one thousand people, surveyors determined that Illinois ranked a dismal forty-sixth among the nation's states and territories. The situation has improved only slightly in
JAMES KROHE JR. June 1978/Illinois Issues/23 the years since the survey was taken. The problem was serious all over the state but was most acute in the mushrooming suburban communities around Chicago. Eugene Berghoff, executive director of the Illinois Association of Park Districts (IAPD), says, "The tremendous flood of people moving out to the suburbs resulted in all the available open space being taken for development. Most park districts found they lacked the financial resources to buy the land when it was still open space and thus cheap. By the time it was subdivided it was too late." Naperville was no exception. However, under its land dedication ordinance, the Naperville Park District, which was organized at the same time the ordinance was passed, has taken title to approximately 110 acres of new parkland. Another 150-200 acres has been deeded to Naperville's Community Unit School District No. 203. The park district has also received $138,000 cash in lieu of land for development. "In cases in which no new land is needed," says park district director Johnson, "We turn the cash donation back into that neighborhood and use it to upgrade and maintain the existing park."
The cost of acquiring a site for a school is only about 3 to 10 per cent of the total cost of the school. The ratio of site acquisition costs to total development costs for parks, however, is higher; unlike schools, which are mostly building, parks are mostly land. Land dedication ordinances are thus a special boon to hard-pressed park districts. Money not spent for site acquisition may be allocated instead to park development. Johnson estimates that at Naperville the costs of converting raw land into parks — a process that includes grading, draining, seeding, tree planting and equipment purchase— amount to an average of $10,000 per acre. Naperville-type ordinances do not cure all the headaches caused by too rapid growth. Parts of School District 203, for example, lie more than a mile and a half beyond Naperville's boundaries. Accordingly, the ordinance cannot be used to compel the dedication of land for school sites in these areas. Park districts, too, are sometimes tripped up by the tangle of overlapping local governments. Naperville, unlike many Illinois cities, requires that developers annexing to the city also annex to the park district, and the park district grows as the city grows. Such cooperation between governmental units is difficult. Statewide attention For both schools and parks the problem is as often financial as it is jurisdictional. A school system given a site for a new school must still produce the capital funds to build it. Parks, too, must be able to develop and maintain their new acquisitions. "It's a tremendous strain just to maintain what they have," says the IAPD's Berghoff. "No district will turn down a gift of land that comes to it as a result of this kind of ordinance, but some might have to postpone its development for a while." Still, ordinances like Naperville's have proven their worth and are beginning for the first time to attract the attention of downstate school and park administrators. Few downstate cities have experienced the kind of growth that has characterized so many suburban Chicago communities, but even if their overall growth rates are modest, many downstate cities suffer from uneven growth. Whether it is caused by topographical, political, social or transportation factors, a proliferation of new housing developments in one part of a city will cause school overcrowding and put pressures on open space and related recreational facilities that are no less acute for their being purely local. After the court's decision was announced, Naperville's Johnson was getting an average of three calls a week from other park officials asking for copies of the ordinance; officials at the Naperville school board and city council are receiving similar requests. As Johnson notes, in explaining the renewed curiosity in the donation law, "I think it's an idea whose time has come." 24/June 1978/Illinois Issues
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