Opinion ID: 2313631
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Standards Governing Special Exceptions

Text: As noted earlier, § 502.1 of the BCZR provides: Before any special exception may be granted, it must appear that the use for which the special exception is requested will not: A. Be detrimental to the health, safety or general welfare of the locality involved; B. Tend to create congestion in roads, streets or alleys therein; C. Create a potential hazard from fire, panic or other danger; D. Tend to overcrowd land and cause undue concentration of population; E. Interfere with adequate provisions for schools, parks, water, sewerage, transportation or other public requirements, conveniences or improvements; F. Interfere with adequate light and air; G. Be inconsistent with the purposes of the property's zoning classification nor in any other way inconsistent with the spirit and intent of these Zoning Regulations; H. Be inconsistent with the impermeable surface and vegetative retention provisions of these Zoning Regulations; nor I. Be detrimental to the environmental and natural resources of the site and vicinity including forests, streams, wetlands, aquifers and floodplains in an R.C.2, R.C.4, R.C.5 or R.C.7 Zone. Within each individual factor, including the general factor in § 502.1(A) of the BCZR, lurks another test, the Schultz v. Pritts standard. Harford County v. Earl E. Preston, Jr., Inc., 322 Md. 493, 500, 588 A.2d 772, 776 (1991) (noting that the Schultz v. Pritts test applies with respect to a given factor (quoting Gotach Ctr. for Health v. Bd. of County Comm'rs of Frederick County, 60 Md.App. 477, 484-85, 483 A.2d 786, 790 (1984))); Mossburg v. Montgomery County, 107 Md.App. 1, 21, 666 A.2d 1253, 1263 (1995) (noting that the test announced in Schultz essentially adds language to statutory factors to be considered in evaluating proposed special exceptions). In this respect, the Schultz analytical paradigm is not a second, separate test (in addition to the statutory requirements) that an applicant must meet in order to qualify for the grant of a special exception. Rather, the Schultz explication speaks to two different contexts, one by which a legislative body decides to classify a particular use as requiring the grant of a special exception before it may be established in a given zone, and a second one by which individual applications for special exceptions are to be evaluated by the zoning body delegated with responsibility to consider and act on those applications in accordance with criteria promulgated in the zoning ordinance. See Earl E. Preston, Jr., Inc., 322 Md. at 500, 588 A.2d at 776 (noting that the Schultz test is normally regarded as consistent with general legislative intent (quoting Gotach, 60 Md.App. at 484-85, 483 A.2d at 790)); see also Earl E. Preston, Jr., Inc., 322 Md. at 503, 588 A.2d at 777 (Reading all of the provisions which pertain to special exceptions together, as we must to ascertain the intention of the County Council, we find no intention on the part of the [Harford] County Council to substitute a Gowl [v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 27 Md.App. 410, 341 A.2d 832 (1975)][ [18] ] test for the test applicable generally for measuring the adverse impact of a proposed special exception use which we adopted in Schultz. ). We shall explain how we arrived at this conclusion in some necessary detail.