Opinion ID: 853628
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Failure to Provide Municipal Utilities

Text: Finally, New Harmony asserts that the trial court erred in concluding that the Town was required to provide improvements to Parker's property and in determining that the Town's plan for providing these services was inadequate. In issuing its judgment, the trial court made the following finding of fact: Parker, prior to filing this action, made demand on the Town of New Harmony to fulfill its obligation to provide ... services required under Indiana's statutes and the Town of New Harmony refused to do so and continues to refuse to provide said services. (R. at 119.) The evidence does not support this finding. Certainly, the Town did offer to provide utilities to Parker, as attorney Berger's letter to her on the Town's behalf demonstrated. It made this offer, however, with the stipulation that Parker would be responsible for a portion of the cost of providing these services. The trial court concluded that the Town had an obligation to install these utilities on Parker's land at the expense of other taxpayers. Parker asserts that the Town's refusal to provide services at the public expense deprived her of economically viable use of her property. (Appellee's Br. at 18.) This language is from the law of takings. While the trial court did not specifically label the Town's failure to provide Parker with an adequate plan for services a taking, it appointed appraisers to assess damages under the eminent domain statutes, indicating that it believed a taking occurred. See Schuh v. State, 251 Ind. 403, 408, 241 N.E.2d 362, 364 (1968). There are two kinds of takings. One involves seizing private land for public use, like building a fire station. The other sort of taking occurs not through acquisition of title but through regulation. So-called regulatory takings come in many forms. They may consist, for example, of regulations that compel a property owner to suffer a physical invasion of his property, or they may consist of regulations that deny all economically beneficial or productive use of the land. Board of Zoning Appeals v. Leisz, 702 N.E.2d 1026, 1028-29 (Ind.1998). The Supreme Court has described the Takings Clause as designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole. Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 123, 98 S.Ct. 2646. Deciding whether a taking occurred is an ad hoc, factual inquiry focusing on several factors: the economic impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 175, 100 S.Ct. 383, 62 L.Ed.2d 332 (1979); Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 124, 98 S.Ct. 2646. Parker had no reasonable investment-backed expectation that must be recognized or compensated under the Fifth Amendment. Property owners are charged with knowledge of ordinances that affect their property. Leisz, 702 N.E.2d at 1030. When Parker purchased her property, she was deemed aware of the ordinance and she testified that she knew that the lots were not equipped with certain utilities. [12] The only reasonable expectation was that the Town may, or may not, allow her to develop the property. The character of the governmental action points in the same direction, as it takes nothing away from Parker. See id. at 1031. Parker contends that the Town has an obligation to provide municipal utilities to her lots at no cost to her. This is not the case. Certain services, such as fire and police protection, have traditionally been provided to all citizens of a municipality, financed through property taxes. Certain other services, such as water, sewer, gas, electric, and roads, were traditionally thought of as proprietary and are still largely provided through assessments to the landowners of the parcels benefiting from the installation of utilities. For example, with respect to sewer service, Ind.Code § 36-9-2-16 provides: A unit may regulate the furnishing of the service of collecting, processing, and disposing of waste substances and domestic or sanitary sewage. This includes the power to fix the price to be charged for that service. A municipality may also charge a fee for connections to the sewer based on the pro rata cost of constructing a local or lateral sewer sufficient to serve the property. See Ind.Code Ann. § 36-9-23-29 (West 1997). The same is true of new streets and roads. Under Ind.Code § 36-9-2-5, a municipal body has exclusive control over, and regulation of, its streets. See Town of Syracuse v. Abbs, 694 N.E.2d 284, 286 (Ind.Ct.App.1998); Cason v. City of Lebanon, 153 Ind. 567, 572, 55 N.E. 768, 770 (1899). With this control comes the power to assess property owners for improvements upon or maintenance of streets. See Ind.Code Ann. § 8-23-6-5 (West Supp.1999) (This chapter does not annul, limit, or abridge the right of a city or town, either at its own expense or at the expense of property owners subject to assessment, to improve the sidewalks and curbs along a street ..., to construct sewers and drains, or to construct or maintain a part of the roadway of the street not improved or maintained by the [Department of Transportation].) (emphasis added). Regarding water, Ind.Code § 36-9-2-14 states that a unit may regulate and furnish water to the public and establish, maintain, and operate waterworks. With this power, we have long held, comes the power to assess the properties benefiting from such service. See City of Angola v. Croxton, 185 Ind. 250, 112 N.E. 385 (1916). The reasoning behind the power of assessment was explained in Baldwin v. Moroney, 173 Ind. 574, 579, 91 N.E. 3, 5-6 (1910) (internal quotations omitted) where we stated: Every one who acquires an interest in land takes it subject to the right of the sovereign to lay general taxes upon it and to impose upon it the burden of paying the expenses of public improvements which confer upon the land a special benefit.... Whoever holds an interest in the land profits by the appurtenance, and ought, in justice, to be subjected to the lien which secures the assessment. Here, the Town responded appropriately to Parker's request for installation of utilities, by offering to provide Parker with various pieces of beneficial infrastructure under the condition that she assume responsibility for some of the cost of the improvements pursuant to the Barrett Law, Ind.Code § 36-9-36-1. [13] This plan proposed to bring appropriate utilities to Parker's property without requiring users to pay the bill. We conclude that the trial court erred in finding the Town's proposed improvement plan inadequate and in appointing appraisers to assess damages.