Area of City Impact Agreements

Abstract

Area of city impact agreements, or growth management tools negotiated between cities and counties, are required by Idaho Code section 67-6526 “to delineate areas of future contiguous growth in order to assure their orderly development and thereby reconcile potentially competing designs for boundary expansion with accepted land use planning principles.” City of Garden City v. City of Boise, 104 Idaho 512, 514 (1983). In Fall, 2012, the University of Idaho College of Law’s Economic Development Clinic worked with a coalition of partners to review existing area of city impact agreements. The Clinic obtained 125 area of city impact agreements, one of the largest collections of local government agreements addressing growth management ever assembled in Idaho, and likely anywhere in the country. Based upon its research, the Clinic drafted this report with detailed guidance for Idaho cities and counties negotiating future area of city impact agreements. Outside of Idaho, this report will be of use to state and local government law and land use law scholars interested in growth management, smart growth, and extra-territorial powers of cities. The Clinic's guidance document and the original agreements are available in this file.