Escaping the Takings Maze: Impact Fees and the Limits of the Takings Clause

The cost of a new home in swanky Naples, Florida-home of charming shopping districts, lovely white-sand beaches, and more golf holes per capita than anywhere else in America-recently topped $450,000. Included in this cost is a staggering$33,000 impact fee bill from the county. Even amidst a meltdown in the housing industry and a severe economic slump, local politicians have refused to reconsider the high fees. Impact fees are levied by local governments on new developments to pay a share of the costs of providing public infrastructure for those developments. The money is used to improve sewers, roads, parks, and schools and has become increasingly important to local governments. For example, Naples\u27s high fees are due, in part, to cuts in revenue at the state level and voters\u27 rejection of a proposed sales tax increase to cover growth-related costs. Impact fees are not governments\u27 only tool for financing public- infrastructure improvements; governments also may use their powers of eminent domain to require land dedications or payments in lieu of dedications. Often, a government will demand, as a condition precedent to approving a development project, a physical exaction (referring to a land dedication) or a monetary exaction (referring to a payment in lieu of dedication, also known as an impact fee). The Fifth Amendment guarantees that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. \u27 Supreme Court takings jurisprudence, however, is murky; as even Justice Stevens admitted, [T]he wisest lawyers would have to acknowledge great uncertainty about the scope of this Court\u27s takings jurisprudence. Indisputably, judicial review of government-required land dedications-that is, physical takings of private property-is governed by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Fee imposition does not take, condemn, or appropriate private property in any traditional sense, so it should not trigger the Takings Clause. But takings jurisprudence is not limited to the traditional understanding of taking, condemning, or appropriating property; Justice Holmes famously stated that a government regulation also can become a compensable taking if the regulation goes too far. \u27 Much uncertainty remains as to whether impact fees go too far, and, more fundamentally, whether impact fees should be governed by the Takings Clause at all. Moreover, if the Fifth Amendment has an effect on impact fees, review of the fees will have to fit somewhere in the maze of takings jurisprudence. While a unanimous Supreme Court recently cleaned up its muddled takings jurisprudence in Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., the Court failed to clarify the future of monetary exactions like impact fees. In Lingle, Chevron brought a takings claim against Hawaii for passage of Hawaii\u27s Act 257, which sought to protect independent gasoline dealers by, inter alia, limiting the rent that oil companies could charge lessee-owned stations. A lower court struck down the Act, reasoning that it did not substantially advance a legitimate state interest. In overturning the lower court\u27s decision, the Supreme Court bluntly expurgated the substantially advances test, claiming it was a due process inquiry that had no proper place in the Court\u27s takings jurisprudence. In so doing, the Court further clarified takings jurisprudence by endorsing four reasonably straightforward categories of takings: physical invasions, deprivations of all economically beneficial use, regulatory takings, and physical exactions. Whether monetary exactions fit into any of these four categories, however, is still unclear to scholars and courts

Robotic path planning with obstacle avoidance

Planning can be used in a variety of applications. In this paper we will discuss those planning techniques that Apply to the task of robotic path planning - Here a planner is used to generate paths which a robot can follow to maneuver from some point A to another point B, while at the same time avoiding all obstacles. All approaches discussed in this paper are based on viewing the robot as a sphere . By assuming this , the need to consider the robot\u27s orientation as it moves along a proposed path is eliminated . Another requirement is that not only must a successful path be found, but this path should also be the shortest path through the space . Since finding the shortest path between two points that avoids a collection of poly-hedral obstacles in three dimensions is already computationally intractable and 3-D robotic vision may not be available, the discussion in this paper will be restricted to a 2D plane (this infers that the robot\u27s terrain is a flat hard surface). Object recognition will also not be considered, only the ability to determine that there is some object present (whether it \u27s a table, chair or T. V. doesn\u27t matter ) . Its length and width must be known or determined. The height of the object is not important as the robot will go around the object and not under or over it (can only obtain height information from a 3D plane) . To simplify the overall problem domain we assume that obstacles are not in motion (IE, the objects are not in constant motion; objects can be moved to new stationary locations and new paths around them searched for). The discussion will also restrict the degrees of freedom of the robot to 2. This is again done to reduce the complexity of the domain. As more degrees of freedom are considered, the path planning problem becomes increasingly complex. Finally, we will assume the robot\u27s velocity remains constant (again to reduce the complexity of the domain)

Primordial helium recombination III: Thomson scattering, isotope shifts, and cumulative results

Upcoming precision measurements of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at high multipoles will need to be complemented by a more complete understanding of recombination, which determines the damping of anisotropies on these scales. This is the third in a series of papers describing an accurate theory of HeI and HeII recombination. Here we describe the effect of Thomson scattering, the $^3$He isotope shift, the contribution of rare decays, collisional processes, and peculiar motion. These effects are found to be negligible: Thomson and $^3$He scattering modify the free electron fraction $x_e$ at the level of several $\times 10^{-4}$. The uncertainty in the $2^3P^o-1^1S$ rate is significant, and for conservative estimates gives uncertainties in $x_e$ of order $10^{-3}$. We describe several convergence tests for the atomic level code and its inputs, derive an overall $C_\ell$ error budget, and relate shifts in $x_e(z)$ to the changes in $C_\ell$, which are at the level of 0.5% at $\ell =3000$. Finally, we summarize the main corrections developed thus far. The remaining uncertainty from known effects is $\sim 0.3$ in $x_e$.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, to be submitted to PR

Multidimensional Tests of Thermal Protection Materials in the Arcjet Test Facility

Many thermal protection system materials used for spacecraft heatshields have anisotropic thermal properties, causing them to display significantly different thermal characteristics in different directions, when subjected to a heating environment during flight or arcjet tests. This paper investigates the effects of sidewall heating coupled with anisotropic thermal properties of thermal protection materials in the arcjet environment. Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) and LI-2200 materials (the insulation material of Shuttle tiles) were used for this study. First, conduction-based thermal response simulations were carried out, using the Marc.Mentat finite element solver, to study the effects of sidewall heating on PICA arcjet coupons. The simulation showed that sidewall heating plays a significant role in thermal response of these models. Arcjet tests at the Aerodynamic Heating Facility (AHF) at NASA Ames Research Center were performed later on instrumented coupons to obtain temperature history at sidewall and various radial locations. The details of instrumentation and experimental technique are the prime focus of this paper. The results obtained from testing confirmed that sidewall heating plays a significant role in thermal response of these models. The test results were later used to verify the two-dimensional ablation, thermal response, and sizing program, TITAN. The test data and model predictions were found to be in excellent agreemen

A Method for Individual Source Brightness Estimation in Single- and Multi-band Data

We present a method of reliably extracting the flux of individual sources from sky maps in the presence of noise and a source population in which number counts are a steeply falling function of flux. The method is an extension of a standard Bayesian procedure in the millimeter/submillimeter literature. As in the standard method, the prior applied to source flux measurements is derived from an estimate of the source counts as a function of flux, dN/dS. The key feature of the new method is that it enables reliable extraction of properties of individual sources, which previous methods in the literature do not. We first present the method for extracting individual source fluxes from data in a single observing band, then we extend the method to multiple bands, including prior information about the spectral behavior of the source population(s). The multi-band estimation technique is particularly relevant for classifying individual sources into populations according to their spectral behavior. We find that proper treatment of the correlated prior information between observing bands is key to avoiding significant biases in estimations of multi-band fluxes and spectral behavior, biases which lead to significant numbers of misclassified sources. We test the single- and multi-band versions of the method using simulated observations with observing parameters similar to that of the South Pole Telescope data used in Vieira, et al. (2010).Comment: 11 emulateapj pages, 3 figures, revised to match published versio

Variable-delay Polarization Modulators for Cryogenic Millimeter-wave Applications

We describe the design, construction, and initial validation of the variable-delay polarization modulator (VPM) designed for the PIPER cosmic microwave background polarimeter. The VPM modulates between linear and circular polarization by introducing a variable phase delay between orthogonal linear polarizations. Each VPM has a diameter of 39 cm and is engineered to operate in a cryogenic environment (1.5 K). We describe the mechanical design and performance of the kinematic double-blade flexure and drive mechanism along with the construction of the high precision wire grid polarizers.Comment: 8 pages, 10 Figures, Submitted to Review of Scientific Instrument

Recovery of Large Angular Scale CMB Polarization for Instruments Employing Variable-delay Polarization Modulators

Variable-delay Polarization Modulators (VPMs) are currently being implemented in experiments designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background on large angular scales because of their capability for providing rapid, front-end polarization modulation and control over systematic errors. Despite the advantages provided by the VPM, it is important to identify and mitigate any time-varying effects that leak into the synchronously modulated component of the signal. In this paper, the effect of emission from a $300$ K VPM on the system performance is considered and addressed. Though instrument design can greatly reduce the influence of modulated VPM emission, some residual modulated signal is expected. VPM emission is treated in the presence of rotational misalignments and temperature variation. Simulations of time-ordered data are used to evaluate the effect of these residual errors on the power spectrum. The analysis and modeling in this paper guides experimentalists on the critical aspects of observations using VPMs as front-end modulators. By implementing the characterizations and controls as described, front-end VPM modulation can be very powerful for mitigating $1/f$ noise in large angular scale polarimetric surveys. None of the systematic errors studied fundamentally limit the detection and characterization of B-modes on large scales for a tensor-to-scalar ratio of $r=0.01$. Indeed, $r<0.01$ is achievable with commensurately improved characterizations and controls.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, matches published versio

Interpreting The Unresolved Intensity Of Cosmologically Redshifted Line Radiation

Intensity mapping experiments survey the spectrum of diffuse line radiation rather than detect individual objects at high signal-to-noise ratio. Spectral maps of unresolved atomic and molecular line radiation contain three-dimensional information about the density and environments of emitting gas and efficiently probe cosmological volumes out to high redshift. Intensity mapping survey volumes also contain all other sources of radiation at the frequencies of interest. Continuum foregrounds are typically approximately 10(sup 2)-10(Sup 3) times brighter than the cosmological signal. The instrumental response to bright foregrounds will produce new spectral degrees of freedom that are not known in advance, nor necessarily spectrally smooth. The intrinsic spectra of fore-grounds may also not be well known in advance. We describe a general class of quadratic estimators to analyze data from single-dish intensity mapping experiments and determine contaminated spectral modes from the data themselves. The key attribute of foregrounds is not that they are spectrally smooth, but instead that they have fewer bright spectral degrees of freedom than the cosmological signal. Spurious correlations between the signal and foregrounds produce additional bias. Compensation for signal attenuation must estimate and correct this bias. A successful intensity mapping experiment will control instrumental systematics that spread variance into new modes, and it must observe a large enough volume that contaminant modes can be determined independently from the signal on scales of interest