Agenda - Planning Commission - 11/04/2010

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September 25, 2010 I Volume 4 I No. 18 Zoning Bulletin The Supreme Court of Minnesota held that: (1) the city did not vi- olate Minnesota's interim ordinance statute; and (2) the city did not adopt the ordinance for an improper purpose. The court explained that under Minnesota's interim ordinance stat- ute, Minn. Stat. § 462.355, the city was authorized to adopt an interim zoning ordinance if: (1) at the time of adoption, the city was "conduct- ing studies or ha[d] authorized a study to be conducted;" and (2) the interim ordinance was adopted "for the purpose of protecting the plan- ning process and the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens." Interpreting the statute, the court found that it did "not specify whether the study [had to] be authorized prior to the adoption of the first reading of an interim ordinance, or prior to the final adoption of an ordinance." The court said that "[a]lthough the plain language of the statute certainly contains a temporal requirement ... that require- ment is met when the authorization of the study and the adoption of the ordinance occur at the same time." Here, the court found that the city had adopted the first reading of the interim ordinance in the same motion as the resolution authorizing the zoning study. The court con- cluded that the city therefore met the temporal requirement of the in- terim ordinance statute. The court also concluded that ordinance met the substantive re- quirement of the interim zoning statute. The city, in adopting the or- dinance, had not acted "unreasonably, arbitrarily, or capriciously," found the court. It appeared that one of the purposes of the interim or- dinance was "to have been to temporarily prevent Pawn America from operating a pawnshop at the property." Moreover, it was Pawn Amer- ica's plan to open a pawnshop that "prompted the adoption of the in- terim ordinance." "Nevertheless," said the court, "nothing in the [in- terim ordinance] statute precluded the [c]ity from adopting the interim ordinance when the [c]ity knew that the ordinance would affect only one particular entity —Pawn America." "[F]urther," noted the court, "nothing in the statute prevented the [c]ity from adopting the interim ordinance in an effort to preserve the status quo in response to Pawn America's pending application." Awareness of Pawn America's applica- tion did not, in itself, make the city's actions "arbitrary or unreason- able." Rather, the court found that the ordinance had been adopted for "the purpose of protecting the planning process and the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens." It appeared, "from the working of the in- terim ordinance itself," said the court, "that the [c]ity sought to make 10 ©2010 Thomson Reuters 98