Agenda - Planning Commission - 01/03/2008

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Zoning Bulletin council during a public hearing that would be held on July 12. A group of residents who owned land that abutted the properties at issue opposed the rezoning. As part of their opposition, they re- searched the city's standards governing the exercise of zoning power, and, allegedly, found that no such standards existed-in violation of state law. In addition, the residents claimed that the zoning meeting was never held, and additional notices about the application process were inadequate. On July 18, the city council voted to rezone the nine plots, and the residents sued the city in court. The residents claimed that the decision to rezone the land was arbitrary, capricious, and made without any rational basis. The city asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that: 1) the court did not have jurisdiction over the matter, and 2) the residents had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Decision: Request to dismiss granted in part. The residents claims focused on two basic issues. First, they claimed that the city had violated substantive due process rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitution. Second, they claimed that the city's failure to adopt formal zoning standards vio- lated a state law. With regard to the first issue, the court found that no due process violations had occurred; the city's request to dismiss related to these claims was granted. The state law claim, however, was allowed to proceed. The court found that, usually, zoning decisions did not implicate constitutional due process guarantees because substantive due pro- cess protections only applied to rights created by the Constitution, and not to rights created by state law. However, the exception to this rule was when state-created rights were infringed upon by a legisla- tive act. Therefore, the court had to determine if the vote to rezone the land was a legislative act or non-legislative, or executive, act. The court noted that the distinction between executive acts and legislative acts was made by determining "the impact an act of the government had on the public." If the act applied to a "limited num- ber of persons," then it was an executive decision; if it "generally appl[ied] to a larger segment of-if not all of-society," then it was legislative decision. Here, the city council decided to grant nine ap- plications, and the court "struggle[d] to see how this vote affected a larger segment of-if not all of-society." Because the court deter- mined that the rezoning vote was an executive, not legislative act, the alleged deprivation of notice and hearings did not warrant sub- stantive due process protection. With regard to the state law issue, the city contended that the. claim had not been exhausted at the state level as required by law, 8 82 './J \ .. i(~) \ ). '---J' I II I, I I I I I I' II II II "I I I J