(1)The demand for public facilities is increasing at a fast pace due to the rapid industrialization and urbanization in the outskirts of metropolitan areas as well as in rural areas of Korea. However, the supply of public facilities has not kept up ...
(1)The demand for public facilities is increasing at a fast pace due to the rapid industrialization and urbanization in the outskirts of metropolitan areas as well as in rural areas of Korea. However, the supply of public facilities has not kept up with the pace of demand and Korea faces shortage of public facilities. Under these circumstances, the main issue is how to secure the funds for constructing, maintaining, and managing these necessary public facilities. Nowadays municipal authorities are experiencing difficulties in funding the necessary public facilities due to the limited financial capacity, and how to develop alternatives to fund new public facilities without burdening their cost to residents who have already paid for costs of the existing public facilities in the area is emerging as the important issue.
(2)In the United States of America, many municipalities have adopted various kinds of policies to fund the new public facilities generated by new comers to the area, and land dedication, fees in lieu of land, and development impact fees are among them.
(3)With respect to the legality and constitutionality of bearing cost for public facilities by residents, there have been two issues: one over the illegality and constitutionality of these measures due to the absence of legal foundation within the state Statutes and Constitution, and the other over irrational regulations or disguised taxes beyond the police power. To counter these claims, a number of states have enacted legislation to provide the legal bases for land dedication and development impact fees, and recent judicial decisions consider bearing cost for public facilities by residents as authentic land use control that falls under the police power.
Three major tools such as land dedication, fees in lieu of land, and development impact fees have been used to support the public facilities caused by development in most states in the United States of America, and the measure of development impact fees is increasingly being adopted. The courts in the United States of America judge that the dual rational nexus requirements be satisfied to justify the cost bearing of public facilities by residents.
(4)In the case of Korea, the public facilities that should be created concurrent with development are constructed based on the various kinds of development-related laws concerning individual facilities and individual development projects. However, reciprocal relations between related laws are not systematic, and the laws themselves do not provide sufficient provisions concerning needed public facilities, standards, and bearing costs for them. In addition, although some measures are stipulated in the laws able to be adopted to fund the needed public facilities, voluntary dedications are mainly used, and these are not as diverse as various methods in the United States of America. Furthermore, Korea faces the problem of not bearing cost for enough public facilities in case of developments generated in small-scale and taking place at different periods.
Also even the method of voluntary dedication, the most widely used measure at present, entails problems of misuse such as bearing for unrelated projects, illegal bearing, and double bearing, etc.
(5)Compared to the American system, Korea needs to adopt mandatory cost bearing system for public facilities to effectively prevent disordered development generated especially by small-scale development projects. Furthermore, there is a strong need to enhance the link between installation of public facilities and land use plan. The principle of not allowing any development projects without guaranteeing of adequate public facilities should be firmly established. The method of calculating cost bearing of public facilities should also be improved to be more objective and rational as in the United States of America.
(6)With the recent disordered development emerging as a serious social issue, Korea is currently drafting the so-called "Act on National Territory Use and Urban Planning," with focus on adopting bearing system for public facilities. The Act includes the following: principle of bearing public facilities, permission of development conditional bearing public facilities, designation of bearing public facilities zones, establishment of bearing public facility plan, bearing public facilities and construction thereof, and introduction of special district-level planning system.
(7)However, "Act on National Territory Use and Urban Planning" is judged to have the following problems: there are no specific provisions of law concerning the methods of total bearing cost amount and the assessment mechanism, there are no provisions of law related to defrayment period and restitution in case of defrayment failures, and there are no provision of law ensuring transparent operation and management of public facility cost bearing funds and supervision thereof. In particular, the lack of a unified provision concerning rearrangement and coordination of various existing cost bearing systems for public facilities can be pointed out as a critical problem.
(8)Considering these problems, there is a need to legislate a new Act stipulating more general and comprehensive cost bearing system for public facilities with long-term and pro-active view like the one in the United States of America mentioned above. The new Act should provide the legal foundation for voluntary dedication and contain unified regulations which rearrange and coordinate various cost bearing system for public facilities. In addition, the Act should mention specific standards regarding the types, amount and level, bearing methods, and the time schedules, etc. of cost bearing system for public facilities which are generated by and are to be constructed by private developers.
(9)Furthermore, the new Act should include various types of bearing system for public facilities which are in effect in many states in the United States of America, and introduce the accumulative system and joint bearing system for public facilities in order to prevent disordered development occurring at intervals in small-scale development types. On the other hand, the new Act should stipulate time limit within which the amassed public facility cost bearing funds are to be spent as well as reimbursement in case needed public facilities are not constructed within a certain given period. Also, it would be desirable to set up a special fund or a special account independent from the general account so as to ensure convenient accounting of collected public facility cost bearing funds.
(10)This study intended to review overall cost bearing system for public facilities, and is incomplete in some aspects. For example, the study on how to develop a rational standard for calculating cost bearing to be borne by each individual public facility needs to be supplemented in a follow-up study in the future.