Land Use Plan – 2002 - Stanly County, North Carolina

Weaknesses
STANLY COUNTY
Weaknesses of the TND model include the following:
Requires adoption of several planning and implementation policies such as a land use plan,
design guidelines and transfer of development rights to properly implement the concept.
Requires political will and private sector support to draft, adopt, and implement each policy
striving towards this development pattern.
Although used throughout the U.S., TND is still relatively unfamiliar to developers, lending
institutions, and other professions and institutions associated with the land development
process.
Figures 6-7 and 6-8 provide an illustration of the TND model.
Cost of Community Services
How It Works
Cost of community services (COCS) is the analysis of the revenues generated and costs to a
municipality, county, or other political jurisdiction associated with the provision of community
services to various forms of development. Different types of development, for example, office,
residential, industrial, or public uses generate differing levels of revenue (income, sales or
property taxes) for the local community and each land use has different needs as far as services
required (public safety, education, roads etc.) by that particular land use. This type of study
outlines the differences in revenue and cost of services by land use category. COCS can be
used as a means to evaluate the practicality of land use strategies such as the conversion of
farmland to a residential subdivision. It can also be used as a means to justify the imposition of
impact fees associated with development.
COCS was developed by the American Farmland Trust (AFT), a non-profit organization devoted
to the protection of farmland resources throughout the U.S. The first COCS study was
completed by AFT for Madison Township, Ohio, a township located at the eastern edge of the
growing Greater Cleveland metropolitan area in the early 1990s.
COCS as practiced by AFT involves the following steps:
1. Identifying and defining the appropriate land use categories such as residential, office,
commercial, industrial, and agricultural uses.
2. Collecting relevant financial data on revenues (tax receipts, local receipts) and expenditures
(public safety, health and human services, public works, education, government).
3. The results of this type of analysis generally show the following:
For every $1.00 of revenue generated by residential uses the cost of services is $1.10 to
$1.60.
For every $1.00 of revenue generated by commercial uses, the cost of services is $0.20
to $0.30.
For every $1.00 of revenue generated by farms/forest uses the cost of services is $0.15
to $0.40.
Land Use Plan 6-25 6/02