Agenda - Council - 06/14/2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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would otherwise be borne by non-petitioning parties, by forbidding it "to fund sewer or water extension to leapfrog development if there are no petitioner(s) willing to sponsor and pay the entire cost. He pointed out that as a matter of constitutional law, the amount of assessments imposed upon a property owner for an improvement must not exceed the benefit that improvement confers upon the property. He cited the Minnesota Supreme Court case Johnson v. City of Eagan. "An assessment in excess of the benefit conferred by the local improvement on thc property assessed is an unconstitutional taking of private property. When the cost of an improvement exceeds the benefit, the difference must not be borne by a particular property, but instead by the municipality as a whole". On its face, the proposed amendment would deprive the City of the authority to set special assessments according to the "benefit conferred by the local improvement" on the petitioning property, as the Minnesota Supreme Court has found that the local takings clause requires. To the contrary, its principal function is to require petitioning properties to bear the entire share of the combined benefit of the local improvement to the petitioning properties and to the non-petitioning properties. The principal function of this amendment requires parties to pay all costs and because the Constitution limits the amounts you can charge, the City does not have the authority to do what the proposed amendment is asking lbr. Back in the 1970's, a challenge was brought forward against the City of Bloomington with regard to the City's authority to take park dedication fees. It ended up upholding the validity of park dedication because State Statutes authorizes the dedication of a reasonable portion of the land for purposes stated. It did not exceed the proportion of the cost appropriate for the party. Instead of placing such a limitation on the amount that can be charged to the petitioning parties, the proposed amendment conclusively presumes that all costs of the improvements that would otherwise be divided among the benefited properties are costs that result from the approval of the petitioning properties' development, and which the petitioning parties alone should be required to bear. While it may be possible to imagine circumstances in which that presumption will be tree, the proposed amendment is nevertheless unconstitutional on its face because it would deprive the City of the flexibility needed to allocate the costs of such projects in a constitutional manner, lte referenced the Collis v. City of Bloomington case and also the Christopher Lake Development Co. v. St. Louis County cases. He summarized them and the takings clause. If you require one developer to pay full costs under these types of circumstances, it's considered a taking. Flaws arise out of Section 8.9 of the proposed amendment. If the City Council accepts everything but 8.9, it would not work. He did not believe that Section 8.9 is severable from Sections 8.7, 8.8, and 8.10 of the proposed amendments, and therefore, concludes that the proposed amendments as a whole should not be placed on the ballot. The City Council is justified in not submitting this for an election. Councihncmber Elvig stated that if we move forward with this amendment and a developer put in a pro, ject and agreed to pay for all of these blocks and a third party sues the City and says it's unconstitutional, can the court proceed to get back funds and give them back to the developer and these people would have to pay now for what they thought was free. Mr. Baker sated that if the developer agrees to it, then the ability of the developer or the third party to do anything else is tough because they agreed to it. They could ask for approval without paying full costs and the Court could determine whether it was constitutional or not. If they feel it's a taking, they could make the City have the final burden of this. It would most likely be the City to hold it. City Council - Special Meeting May 18, 2005 Page 5 of 12