## Facts

- The Town of Ramapo amended its zoning ordinance in 1969 to require a special permit (or variance) before subdivision plat approval could be granted.
- The special-permit eligibility depended on a points system keyed to the availability of public facilities and services (including sewers, drainage, parks, schools, roads, and fire protection) under the town’s long-term capital improvement program.
- Developers could accelerate approval by constructing needed facilities themselves to satisfy point requirements.
- Ruth Golden and her contract vendee sought preliminary subdivision approval; the Planning Board denied the application because they had not obtained the required special permit.
- Mildred Rhodes’s preliminary plat application was denied on the same basis; other developers and a builders’ association challenged the ordinance without applying, alleging application would be futile.
- The challengers argued the ordinance unlawfully regulated population growth, effectively froze development, exceeded municipal zoning authority, and amounted to an unconstitutional taking.
- The town supported the ordinance with evidence that existing public services were inadequate for anticipated growth and that unphased subdivision development would overburden municipal facilities.

## Issues

1. Whether New York zoning enabling statutes authorize a municipality to implement phased growth by conditioning subdivision approvals on the availability of public facilities under a long-term capital program.
2. Whether deferring development for as long as the capital program period renders the ordinance exclusionary or constitutes an unconstitutional taking or deprivation of due process.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of New York upheld the ordinance and reversed the Appellate Division.
- The court held that the zoning enabling statutes permit phased-growth regulation designed to coordinate development timing with the provision of public facilities.
- The court concluded the ordinance was not exclusionary because it regulated the sequence of development rather than permanently barring development.
- The court rejected the takings challenge because the challengers did not show the regulation was unreasonable or that the value reduction was tantamount to confiscation.
- The court directed entry of a declaratory judgment sustaining the ordinance.

## Legal Principles

- Municipal zoning authority may extend to regulating the timing and sequencing of development, not solely its location and type, when tied to legitimate zoning objectives and a comprehensive plan.
- A phased-growth system conditioning subdivision approval on planned public facilities can be a valid exercise of the police power when aimed at avoiding undue population concentration and ensuring adequate public services.
- A regulation that delays development, but does not permanently deprive property of economically viable use and is not shown to be confiscatory in effect, does not constitute a compensable taking.
- An ordinance is less likely to be deemed exclusionary when it seeks to manage growth to match infrastructure capacity rather than to exclude classes of residents or categories of housing.

## Conclusion

The court sustained Ramapo’s phased-growth zoning scheme as authorized by state enabling legislation and consistent with comprehensive planning, holding that coordinating subdivision approvals with planned infrastructure was a valid police-power measure that neither operated as an exclusionary device nor effected an unconstitutional taking.


Golden v. Plan. Bd. of Town of Ramapo, 30 N.Y.2d 359 (1972)