Agenda - Planning Commission - 02/04/2016

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December 25, 2015 i Volume 9 i Issue 24 Zoning Bulletin Here, the court noted that the hearing was specifically limited to the size and location of the proposed Dollar General store building. The court found that the Residents failed to assert that they were denied a meaningful op- portunity to be heard on those issues. (Rather they had only asserted that they were denied an opportunity to be heard on issues other than size and location.) Accordingly, the court held that limiting discussion to the size and location of the proposed construction during the Board's hearing did not violate due process. As to the Residents' First Amendment rights, the court noted that the ap- plicable standard depended on the nature of the forum. Here, the court as- sumed without deciding that the public meeting was a "limited public forum." In a limited public forum, explained the court, "[t]he State may be justified 'in reserving [its forum] for certain groups or for the discussion of certain topics,' " but any such restriction on speech "must not discriminate against speech on the basis of viewpoint . . . and the restriction must be reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum." Here, the trial court's instructions to the Board on remand specifically limited the Board's consideration at the hearing to whether the plans met the size and location provisions of the zoning ordinances. Thus, the appellate court concluded that it was "reasonable, under these circumstances, once the evidence of the size and location provisions of the proposed building had been presented and not -disputed, to limit the public comments to one minute." The appellate court also found it "reasonable to require the comments pertain to the size and location of the building, and not to issues already addressed." Further, the court found no limitation placed on the Residents "which discriminated against their speech. on the basis of .their points of view." "Instead," the court found that "the limitations appear[ed] to have been based upon whether the issues had already been discussed and whether the issues discussed were on topic." Accordingly, the court held that the Board's limit- ing of public comments to one minute and requiring comments to pertain to size and location of the proposed building were reasonable restrictions on speech and thus did not violate the Residents' First Amendment rights. See also: Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98, 121 S. Ct. 2093, 150 L. Ed. 2d 151, 154 Ed. Law Rep. 45 (2001). Use—County zoning ordinance fails to listspecific land use and county thus says use is implicitly prohibited Landowners argue failure to address specific land use in zoning ordinance means it is unregulated Citation: Byrd v. Franklin County, 778 S.E.2d 268 (N.C. 2015) NORTH CAROLINA (11/06/15)—This case addressed the issue of whether, where a county land use ordinance fails to expressly allow a specific use, the ordinance should be construed to implicitly prohibit the specific use. 4 © 2015 Thomson Reuters