Opinion ID: 2526939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Applying RIPRA

Text: As we previously stated in Krupp, the basic provisions of RIPRA are subject to one categorical exception. [RIPRA] shall not apply to any legislatively formulated assessment, fee, or charge that is imposed on a broad class of property owners by a local government. § 29-20-203(1). It is upon this statutory language that we now turn our focus. The RIPRA exception for legislatively formulated fees, like its two-prong test, owes its inception to Nollan, Dolan, and related case law. [16] The Dolan court found that the sort of land use regulations that have withstood constitutional challenge involved essentially legislative determinations classifying entire areas of a city, as opposed to the case before the Court which made an adjudicative decision to condition petitioner's application for a building permit on an individual parcel. Dolan, 512 U.S. at 385, 114 S.Ct. 2309. Thus, in Krupp, we distinguished between generally applicable, legislatively formulated fees and adjudicatively imposed development exactions. Krupp, 19 P.3d at 696. In this respect, Krupp is entirely consistent with the case law of other states' high courts [17] as well as our own precedent. [18] Of course, the difficulty lies not in creating these categories but in determining where, exactly, generally applicable, legislatively formulated fees end and adjudicatively imposed development exactions begin. Wolf Ranch invites us to find that, because Colorado Springs singled out Wolf Ranch by denying its request for exemption, Colorado Springs should be precluded from claiming that the drainage fee falls under the exception. We decline this invitation. Both characteristics of a legislatively formulated fee that we identified in Krupp are evident in Colorado Springs' drainage fee system. The record clearly shows that the drainage fee has been assessed in a rational and consistent manner. Following the initial annexation of the Cottonwood Creek Basin in 1982, Colorado Springs determined that each of the estimated twenty-one property owners in the Cottonwood Creek Basin would be subject to a drainage fee. Since that time, every developer in the Cottonwood Creek Basin has been assessed an identical drainage fee. That subsequent judicial review was available and effective is equally apparent. As was true of the District in Krupp, Colorado Springs provided Wolf Ranch the opportunity to appear before an administrative body and contest the manner in which the fees were administered. [19] Having found this decision unsatisfactory, Wolf Ranch, like the Krupps, availed itself of the state courts. [20] Nor does the fact that Colorado Springs closed the Pine Creek and Kettle Creek Basins but refused to close the portion of Cottonwood Creek Basin owned by Wolf Ranch constitute an attempt by the city to single out Wolf Ranch for extraordinary concessions. The purpose of Colorado Springs' drainage fee system was (and remains) to share the cost of developing infrastructure for a particular drainage basin among the property owners located in that basin. [21] The annexation agreement expressly incorporates the existing drainage fee system; [22] thus, the exemption provision of the agreement must be read in a manner that is consistent with the local ordinances establishing that system. [23] Consequently, the appreciable class of property owners includes only those businesses and individuals who own property in the Cottonwood Creek Basin. Since the drainage fee was first instituted, Colorado Springs has, without exception, assessed a standard per-acre drainage fee against each property owner in the Cottonwood Creek Basin upon its application for a land-use permit. Thus, we find that Colorado Springs' decision to deny Wolf Ranch's request for an exemption was not an attempt to single out Wolf Ranch so that it must make extraordinary concessions as a condition of development. [24] In Krupp, we held that the District's water plant investment fee fell outside the narrow class of cases where a permitting authority, through a specific, discretionary adjudicative determination, conditions continued development on the exaction of private property for public use. Id. at 695. Because the facts here are largely analogous to those in Krupp, so too is our decision. Colorado Springs' drainage fee was authorized by the General Assembly, [25] publicly promulgated on a per-acre basis, [26] and equally applied to all new development in the Cottonwood Creek Basin. Therefore, neither the promulgation of the drainage fee nor Colorado Springs' decision to deny Wolf Ranch's request for exemption from the fee constituted a discretionary adjudicative activity subject to RIPRA. Id.