Opinion ID: 1189801
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Merger Provisions' Procedural Safeguards

Text: Section 66451.11 provides that [a] local agency may, by ordinance which conforms to and implements the procedures prescribed by this article [§§ 66451.10-66451.21], provide for the merger of a parcel or unit with a contiguous parcel or unit held by the same owner if at least one of the parcels meets certain requirements. The prescribed procedures, found in sections 66451.12 through 66451.18 and described more fully in the margin, are somewhat elaborate. [21] The local agency must initiate a merger by a notice of intention to determine status that may be recorded as well as mailed to the record owner. (§ 66451.13.) [22] The owner may request a hearing and present evidence on whether the parcels meet the standards for merger specified in the ordinance. (§§ 66451.14-66451.16.) After deciding whether to merge the parcels, the local agency must record either a notice of merger or a release of the notice of intention to determine status. (§§ 66451.16-66451.18.) Petitioners contend that the county ordinances improperly transgress a legislative intent that a required merger of parcels be accompanied by these procedural safeguards. But as the record in this case illustrates, a property owner receives just as much due process under the ordinances as would be afforded under the Act's merger provisions. Under the Act, a merger of parcels is initiated by recorded notice to the owner of an intention to determine status. Such a notice would be superfluous under the ordinances because application of the merger requirement is initiated by the owner's own application for a development permit. Under both the Act and the ordinances, an owner desirous of resisting the merger is entitled to a hearing. Here, plaintiffs were heard before the county's planning commission and board of supervisors. The only issue on which the Act provides a hearing is whether the property meets the standards for merger that are specified in the merger ordinance as authorized by the Act. (§§ 66451.13, 66451.16.) Here, plaintiffs were fully heard before the county's bodies on their contention that the ordinances' merger requirements did not apply because the parcels adjacent to plaintiffs' block 132 were under separate, rather than common, ownership. Finally, the county ordinances provide that any merger they require be put into effect by the owner's own recordation of a reversion to acreage, voluntary merger, final parcel map or final tract map. (Ord. No. 3718, § 2, amending § 35-102.3.) Thus, there is no need under the ordinances for the requirement, imposed by sections 66451.12 and 66451.16 through 66451.18 of the Act, that the county itself record a decision to merge or not to merge. Since the county ordinances provide as much procedural protection to parcel owners as the Act's merger provisions (§§ 66451.12-66451.18), the ordinances are not impliedly preempted by the state concern underlying those provisions for the owners' procedural rights.