Agenda - Planning Commission - 07/12/2018

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Zoning Bulletin June 10, 2018 I Volume 12 I Issue 11 Standing —Landowners challenge constitutionality and construction of statutes governing rezoning of another's property City argues that landowners lack standing to bring such challenges Citation: Byron v. Synco Properties, Inc., 2018 WL 1385339 (N.C. Ct. App. 2018) NORTH CAROLINA (03/20/18)—This case addressed the issue of whether landowners, in seeking to invalidate city approval of another property owner's rezoning application, had standing to challenge the constitutionality and construction of the statutes governing the rezoning. The Background/Facts: In late 2014, SYNCO Properties, Inc. ("SYNCO") filed an application with the City of Charlotte (the "City") to rezone a tract of land it owned in the city. Pursuant to North Carolina statute (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 160A-385 (2013))—the "Protest Petition Statute" —several local property owners (the "Petitioners") filed a protest petition (the "Protest Petition") with the City opposing the proposed rezoning. Then, in July 2015, the North Caro- lina General Assembly, via Session Law 2015-160, replaced the protest proce- dure in the Protest Petition Statute with a "Citizen Comment" procedure, ef- fective August 1, 2015. Thereafter, in September 2015, SYNCO withdrew its rezoning application, but then filed a new rezoning application the following day. In January 2016, the City Council approved SYNCO's second rezoning application. William M. Byron and Dana T. Byron (the `Byron") filed a declaratory judgment action seeking to invalidate the City Council's approval of SYNCO's rezoning application. The Byrons were landowners in the city, but they had not been among the Petitioners who had filed a Protest Petition opposing SYNCO's first rezoning application. In their declaratory judgment action, the Byrons brought several claims, including allegations that: (1) the City and SYNCO misinterpreted the Protest Petition Statute and its applicability (and thus violated the Protest Petition Statute); (2) the City's actions violated the Byrons' due process rights; and (3) replacement of the protest petition procedures with citizen comment proce- dures deprived the Byrons of their constitutional right to petition the govern- ment for redress. Generally, with regard to those claims, the Byrons argued that because SYNCO filed its first rezoning application prior to the effective date of the Session Law 2015-160 (which replaced the protest petition proce- dure with the "Citizen Comment" procedure), the rezoning under its second rezoning application was a "zoning ordinance change[ ] initiated" prior to the session law's effective date. The Byrons argued that the City was thus required to have followed the Protest Petition Statute in the consideration of SYNCO's © 2018 Thomson Reuters 9