Minutes - Council - 05/18/2005 - Special

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William K. Goodrich May J 7, 2005 /btgc 5 .';aprcmc Court's view, because it would prevent a city from using "dedication regulations to cxacl land or fees from a subdivider far out of proportion to the needs created by his subdivision il~ order to avoid imposing the burden of paying for additional Services on all citizens via taxation." Id. The saving language in the park dedication statute upheld in Collis has no ccmnterpart in the Proposed Amendment. Instead of placing such a limitation on the amount that ca~) bc t;hargcd to the petitioning parties, the Proposed Amendment conclusiv.ely presumes that all c()sts of the improvements that would otherwise bc divided among of the benefited properties are costs that result from the approval of the p~titioning properties' development, and which the petitioning parties alone should be required to bear. While it may be possible Cout difficult) to imagine circumstances in which that presumption will be tree, the Proposed Amendment is r~t:ve~thaless unconstitutional on its face because it would deprive'the City of the flexibility nccd(;d to allocate the costs of such projects in a constitutional manner. See Alton v. V/abedo Ybw,ship, 524 N.W.2d 278, 282 (Minn. Ct. App. 1994) (declaring the map recording procedure in Minn. Stat. § 164.35 subd. 4 unconstitutional under the Minnesota Constitution's takings clause "to the extent it requkes recording of town roads to a width greater than that of actual public use, and dedication of that width"). The limitation that saved the park dedication statute in Co/lis was, in the Supreme Court's words, "of necessity, a facts-and-circumstances test, but it is thc only kind of test that will consider the myriad of facts which may bear on a municipality's nc~ds fbr certain kinds of facilities and the rclationship of a particular subdivision' to those ~ccds." Cotlix, 310 Minn. At 1§, 246 N.W.2d at 26. Here, by contrast, .the Proposed Amtmdments render the particular facts and circumstances of a given situation beyond the City's a. NIity to consider when setting a charge. Under these circumstances, we conclude that this flaw renders thc Proposed Amendments "manifestly unconstitutional." It is also noteworthy that the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has declared unconstitutional a development condition because it required a single property owner to bcar thc full burden of areawide improvements. In Christopher Lake Development Co. v. St. Louis Co., 35 F.3d 1269 (8~" Cir. 1994), the Plaintiff alleged that "the County's approval for its development of Waterford Estates was conditioned on the Partnership's construction of a comprehensive drainage system for the entire watershed area."-Id, at 1273. Regarding the merits et' thc property owner's takings claim, the Eighth Circuit essentially found based on the record created by the parties' dispute regarding the sufficiency of the' Plaintiff's complaint that the Com]ty's action violated the takings clause: IF]rom our review of the record, the County has forced the Partnership to bear a burden that should fairly have been allocated throughout the entire watershed area. "A strong public desire to improve the public condition will not warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change." Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, .... , t14 S.Ct. 2309, 2322, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994) (quotation omitted). We