Opinion ID: 159185
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gunnison County Land Use Restriction

Text: “The crux of [HCCA’s] appeal,” Aplt’s Reply Br. at 1, is that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously by finding County Resolution 86-42 irrelevant to the decision of whether to issue the special use permit to the Paulys. As noted above, Resolution 86-42, adopted by the Board of County Commissioners of Gunnison County on December 16, 1986, granted a land use change to the previous owners of the inholding. The resolution authorized the construction of a single family residence in the following terms: “Land Use Change Application No. 1986-27 is hereby approved as a 13 development of Minor Impact, not intended for year-round occupation.” Aplt’s App. at 791. It further provided, “T[his] R[esolution] and the approval granted hereby shall not be effective unless and until a copy is recorded in the Office of the Clerk and Recorder of Gunnison County at the expense of the applicant.” Id. In his decisional memorandum, Mr. Storch reported that he took Resolution 86-42 into account. However, he made two observations: the “resolution was evidently not of public record at the time the Paulys purchased the property and the resolution did not specifically eliminate winter-time use of the residence.” Id. at 167. HCCA challenges both observations. As to Mr. Storch’s comment that the resolution did not eliminate wintertime use, it contends that the phrase employed in the resolution—“year-round”—is synonymous in Gunnson County with “used in wintertime.” See Aplt’s Br. at 15. Thus, “[w]here winter dominates life for six months of the year, ‘year round’ is a common colloquialism—a road that is ‘open year-round’ is open in winter; a house that has ‘year round access’ is one you can drive to in winter.” Id. It points out that the Forest Service has often used the phrase “year-round” in the same way. See id. at 16. Thus, HCCA maintains, when the County resolution provided that the residence on the Paulys’ inholding was “not intended for year-round occupation,” it meant that the house was not intended to be a wintertime residence. As to Mr. Storch’s other observation—that the “resolution was evidently not of public record at the time the Paulys purchased the property”—HCCA invokes Colorado 14 property law. It notes that “a property owner is subject to conditions or restrictions imposed by a local development approval regardless of whether or not it was recorded.” Aplt’s Br. at 14 (citing Southcree Assocs. v. Bixby & Assocs., 781 P.2d 1027 (Colo. 1989)). It adds that the resolution was in fact recorded by the time that the initial snowplowing permit was issued in 1994. See Aplt’s Reply Br. at 6. It therefore concludes that the Forest Service’s approval of the special use permit was based on a misunderstanding of the applicable law. Although HCCA makes a strong linguistic point about the connotations of the phrase “year-round” in Gunnison County, it has not established that Mr. Storch acted arbitrarily or capriciously in considering Resolution 86-42. Significantly, many of HCCA’s examples of the use of the phrase “year-round” do not involve the situation that confronts us here—the interpretation of an enactment of a governmental body that purports to restrict citizens’ use of property. Moreover, the wording of the resolution still leaves many issues unresolved. For example, even if “year-round” generally means “wintertime,” it is not clear from the resolution how much wintertime use is prohibited. Thus, if the owners of the inholding use the residence for one day in the winter, or one week, or two months out of three, the resolution does not specify which of these uses, if any, would be prohibited. Notably, HCCA itself has suggested that the resolution is somewhat unclear. In a July 20, 1995 letter to the Regional Forester, HCCA’s President acknowledged: 15 [t]he restriction put on the Pauly (at that time Kolosta) house was vague. It was a tentative step in a time when the County was just beginning to emerge from the laissez-faire approach to land use. Today, new homes proposed for construction in Cement Creek and elsewhere receive much more thorough scrutiny and restrictions. What’s done is done and we will have to live with the County’s earlier action. I believe it will be a tough case should the County seek to enforce its “less than year-round occupancy” restriction on the Pauly’s. Aplt’s App. at 361-62. The ambiguity of the resolution is further confirmed by evidence cited by the district court. In particular, David Leinsdorf, one of the members of the Gunnison County Board of Commissioners who voted to approve Resolution 86-42, responded to an inquiry from the Paulys’ attorney by explaining that the resolution was not intended to prohibit wintertime use of the residence on the inholding: Although I had no specific recollection of this approval prior to reviewing the Minutes and Resolution, I do know that, as County Commissioner, I was always concerned that, when people proposed construction in areas not served by a plowed public road, they should not expect County plowing. Therefore, I often had the record establish that the County would not provide winter maintenance, as I did during the meeting on December 9, 1986. The language “not intended for year round occupation” in Resolution 42, Series 1986 was to reflect the fact that the County, in approving the Land Use Change, assumed no winter maintenance responsibility. I certainly had no intention to prevent the owners from using the house in winter as long as they did not expect the County to plow. Id. at 758. 16 Minutes from the meetings in December 1986 confirm Mr. Leinsdorf’s recollection that the Board of County Commissioners was concerned about the costs of winter road maintenance when it approved Resolution 86-42. When the resolution was first proposed, Mr. Leinsdorf asked whether the owners of the inholding (the Kolostas) understood “that the County has no foreseeable plans to provide winter maintenance.” Aplt’s App. at 755 (minutes of Dec. 9, 1986 meeting). Another member of the board, Rikki Santorelli, said, “It’s up to them if they want to get there let In its appellate brief, HCCA criticizes the district court’s reliance on the comments of Mr. Leinsdorf. It observes that these comments were not cited in Mr. Storch’s decisional memorandum. Moreover, according to HCCA, Mr. Leinsdorf’s comments are inconsistent with the Forest Service’s position in this case. HCCA observes that while Mr. Leinsdorf appears to believe that Resolution 96-42 imposed no restrictions whatsoever on the use of the inholding (as long as the residents themselves paid for maintenance costs like snowplowing in winter), the Forest Service has repeatedly acknowledged that the resolution does impose restrictions on use. See Aplt’s Reply Br. at 17 7-9. Because “an agency’s action must be upheld, if at all, on the basis articulated by the agency itself,” Aplt’s Reply Br. at 2 (quoting Motor Vehicles Ass’n, 463 U.S. at 43), HCCA maintains that the Forest Service may not now rely on Mr. Leinsdorf’s interpretation of the ordinance. We are not convinced by HCCA’s challenge to this evidence. It is true that Mr. Storch’s decisional memorandum discusses neither Mr. Leinsdorf’s interpretation nor the Board of County Commissioner’s proceedings. However, that evidence illustrates a larger point that the memorandum does address: that the resolution may be reasonably read to allow some use of the property in the wintertime. As the Forest Service observes in its appellate brief, Mr. Storch was not required to cite every item of evidence supporting his view. See Bagdonas v. Department of Treasury, 93 F.3d 422, 426 (7th Cir. 1996) (noting that “[t]he statement of reasons need not include detailed findings of fact but must inform the court and the petitioner of the grounds of decision and the essential facts upon which the administrative decision was based’”) (quoting Kitchens v. Department of the Treasury, 535 F.2d 1197, 1200 (9th Cir.1976)). Accordingly, like the district court, we conclude that the evidence surrounding the enactment of Resolution 8642, including the comments of Mr. Leinsdorf, may be considered in assessing the Forest Service’s decision to issue the special use permit. Mr. Leinsdorf’s interpretation, HCCA’s acknowledgment that the resolution was “vague,” and the wording of the resolution itself, provide support for the Forest Service’s 18 view that, in spite of the resolution, it was still reasonable for the Paulys to use the residence during winter. We therefore conclude that the Forest Service did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in analyzing the resolution’s effect.1