Court Opinion

ID: 9633983
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:10:51.361102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:46.668163
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J., Concurring.
 I concur in the plurality’s judgment, and agree with much of its analysis. I fully agree with part V of the plurality opinion—that Culver City (the City) may be able to charge a fee for the loss of property designated for recreational use, but that it failed to employ the proper method of calculating such a fee. I agree, too, with part VI of the plurality opinion—that the art fee is constitutional. I write separately to address the larger question of the appropriate constitutional standard for reviewing monetary exactions on development. As I will elaborate below, the heightened standard of scrutiny found in Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n (1987) 483 U.S. 825 [97 L.Ed.2d 677, 107 S.Ct. 3141] (Nollan) and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994) 512 U.S. 374 [129 L.Ed.2d 304, 114 S.Ct. 2309] (Dolan) is generally not applicable to development fees; the present case is thus more the exception than the rule. This view is consistent with the plurality’s analysis, and our difference in this regard is more one of emphasis than of substance.
As explained below, nothing in the United States Supreme Court’s recent takings jurisprudence can be understood to signify a change in the rule— founded on the fundamental principles of the separation of powers and judicial restraint—that state and local governments possess considerable authority to impose different and unequal financial burdens on property owners, subject only to the rational basis requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Only when the government engages *888in the physical taking or invasion of real and personal property, or singles out individual property owners by conditioning development permits on the payment of ad hoc fees not borne by a larger class of developers or property owners, does the heightened scrutiny of Nollan and Dolan apply.
I.
A. Physical Takings, Regulatory Takings, and the Nollan/Dolan Standard.
Nollan and Dolan must be viewed within the general framework of takings jurisprudence. One of the cornerstones of such jurisprudence is the special protection given to the physical invasion or occupation of real property under the Fifth Amendment. A government regulation that affects the use of land, such as a zoning ordinance, is generally not deemed to be a taking unless the regulation “does not substantially advance legitimate state interests [citation] or denies an owner economically viable use of his land [citation].” (Agins v. Tiburon (1980) 447 U.S. 255, 260 [65 L.Ed.2d 106,112, 100 S.Ct. 2138].) In these cases, the burden rests with those challenging the regulation to demonstrate its unconstitutionality. (See Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at p._, fn. 8 [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 320, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2320].) However, “regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical ‘invasion,’ ” will generally be determined to be takings “no matter how minute the intrusion, and no matter how weighty the public purpose behind it.. . .” (Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992) 505 U.S. 1003, 1015 [120 L.Ed.2d 798, 812, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 2892], italics added.)
The centrality of physical invasion in takings jurisprudence is nowhere more clearly stated than in Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. (1982) 458 U.S. 419 [73 L.Ed.2d 868, 102 S.Ct. 3164] (Loretto). There the court invalidated a New York law requiring owners of apartment buildings to permit cable television companies to install cable wires and boxes on their premises. The court stated that it had “long considered a physical intrusion by government to be a property restriction of an unusually serious character for purposes of the Takings Clause. Our cases further establish that when the physical intrusion reaches the extreme form of a permanent physical occupation, a taking has occurred. In such case, ‘the character of the government action’ not only is an important factor in resolving whether the action works a taking but is also determinative.” (Id. at p. 426 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 876].) As the court emphasized, “[a] landowner’s right to exclude [is] ‘one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property.’ ” (Id. at p. 433 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 881].) In a permanent physical occupation of property “the government does not simply take a single *889‘strand’ from the ‘bundle’ of property rights: it chops through the bundle, taking a slice of every strand.” (Id. at p. 435 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 882].) The court therefore found the cable statute to be unconstitutional because of its requirement that landlords consent to the permanent occupation of their property, although the economic impact of this statute was far less onerous than a number of other regulations upheld by the court that restricted the use of property but did not authorize its physical invasion. (See, e.g., Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City (1978) 438 U.S. 104 [57 L.Ed.2d 631, 98 S.Ct. 2646] [denial of permit to build a high rise for the sake of historical preservation]; Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis (1987) 480 U.S. 470 [94 L.Ed.2d 472, 107 S.Ct 1232] [regulation requiring coal mines to keep 50 percent of coal in the ground in order to prevent subsidence not a taking].)
Nollan must be considered as a further development of the principles enunciated in Loretto. In Nollan, the court considered a government regulation that permitted the physical invasion of property as a condition of granting a development permit. The Nollans sought to replace a dilapidated bungalow on property bordering the ocean, and were required to obtain a coastal development permit. As a condition of the permit, the Nollans would have been compelled to provide lateral public access along a portion of their property bounded by the ocean and their seawall, to enable members of the public to walk between two public beaches bordering the Nollans’ property.
The court began its analysis by reaffirming the holding in Loretto that “[w]here governmental action results in ‘[a] permanent physical occupation’ of the property, by the government itself or by others [citation], ‘our cases uniformly have found a taking to the extent of the occupation, without regard to whether the action achieves an important public benefit or has only minimal economic impact on the owner ....’” (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at pp. 831-832 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 686], quoting Loretto, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 434-435 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 882].) The court continued: “We think a ‘permanent physical occupation’ has occurred, for purposes of that rule, where individuals are given a permanent and continuous right to pass to and fro, so that the real property may continuously be traversed, even though no particular individual is permitted to station himself permanently upon the premises.” (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 832 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 686].)
Given that view, it might be expected that the court would hold that the easement in Nollan, like the cable statute in Loretto, was a per se taking, for which the government must pay no matter what the justification. But the court recognized that the regulation in the case before it, unlike the statute in Loretto, was imposed as a condition of approving a development application, *890and that a public agency could, if the proposed development contravened a valid land use regulation, deny that application altogether. “If a prohibition [to development] designed to accomplish [a lawful state] purpose would be a legitimate exercise of the police power rather than a taking, it would be strange to conclude that providing the owner an alternative to that prohibition which accomplishes the same purpose is not.” (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at pp. 836-837 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 689].)
Thus, the otherwise unconstitutional imposition of a public easement on private property derives its constitutional legitimacy from the fact that a prohibition on development is constitutionally justified. “The evident constitutional propriety disappears, however, if the condition substituted for the prohibition utterly fails to further the end advanced as the justification of the prohibition.” (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 837 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 689].) Without this “essential nexus,” between the permit condition and the development ban, “the building restriction is not a valid regulation of land use but ‘an out-and-out plan of extortion.’ ” (Ibid.) The Nollan court found no such nexus in the case before it. The purported justification for limiting development—the interference of the newly constructed house with a public view of the ocean—was not served by a lateral easement allowing individuals to walk along the ocean. (Id. at pp. 838-839 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 690].)
That the Nollan case turned on the fact that the regulation was a physical taking is further accentuated by Justice Scalia at the conclusion of the majority opinion: “We view the Fifth Amendment’s Property Clause to be more than a pleading requirement.... [0]ur cases describe the condition for abridgment of property rights through the police power as a ‘substantial advancing]’ of a legitimate state interest. We are inclined to be particularly careful about the adjective where the actual conveyance of property is made a condition to the lifting of a land-use restriction, since in that context there is a heightened risk that the purpose is avoidance of the compensation requirement, rather than the stated police-power objective.” (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 841 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 692], second italics added.) Thus in Nollan, the rule that the government’s physical occupation of private property is a per se taking is transformed, in the context of a development application, into a rule of heightened scrutiny to ensure that a required development dedication is not a mere pretext to obtain or otherwise physically invade property without just compensation.
In Dolan, the court considered the issue of how close the nexus between the development restriction and the dedication must be. In that case, Dolan sought the expansion of her hardware store. The court conceded that the city had legitimately found that the expansion would affect two valid government *891interests. First, the store expansion, adjacent to a floodplain, would increase the risk of flooding by paving over a greater surface area. Second, the expanded store would increase traffic congestion on nearby streets. The court also conceded that there was a nexus between those impacts and the development conditions in question—the dedication of an easement along the floodplain for a public greenway, and the dedication of an additional easement for a bicycle path. (Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at p__[129 L.Ed.2d at p. 313, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2314].) The court found, however, the nexus to be insufficient. There must be a “rough proportionality” between the development impact and the dedication, and a public agency “must make some sort of individualized determination that the required dedication is related both in nature and extent to the impact of the proposed development.” (Id. at pp. [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 320, 114 S.Ct. at pp. 2319-2320], fn. omitted.)
The Dolan court, like the Nollan court, reiterated that its holding depended in part on the special protection that the takings clause affords against the physical occupation of private property by the government. The development conditions in Dolan “were not simply a limitation on the use petitioner might make of her own parcel, but a requirement that she deed portions of her property to the city. In Nollan, supra, we held that governmental authority to exact such a condition was circumscribed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Under the well-settled doctrine of ‘unconstitutional conditions’ the government may not require a person to give up a constitutional right—here the right to receive just compensation when property is taken for a public use—in exchange for a discretionary benefit conferred by the government where the property sought has little or no relationship to the benefit.” (Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at pp. _-_ [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 316, 114 S.Ct. at pp. 2316-2317], italics added.) The Dolan court found an additional reason for treating the dedication in question according to a higher standard. Most land-use regulations “involved essentially legislative determinations classifying . . . areas of the city, whereas here the city made an adjudicative decision to condition petitioner’s application for a building permit on an individual parcel.” (Id. at p. _ [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 316, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2316].) The court also made clear that in such cases the burden rests with the city “to justify the required dedication.” (Id. at p. _, fn. 8 [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 320, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2320].)
Are development fees more like dedications, which will receive a heightened judicial scrutiny, or like zoning and other land-use restrictions, which are reviewed with greater deference? The answer to that question is not simple—to some extent monetary exactions are sui generis. But in one fundamental sense, monetary exactions are more like zoning restrictions: like these restrictions they do not involve a physical invasion of property, *892but merely a diminution in its economic value. As such, development fees may be placed in a class not only with such land use regulations, but also with other sorts of economic regulations that may significantly reduce the profit or value derived from property, yet are not deemed to be takings unless the regulations are arbitrary or confiscatory. (See 20th Century Ins. Co. v. Garamendi (1994) 8 Cal.4th 216, 292-297 [32 Cal.Rptr.2d 807, 878 P.2d 566] [rate regulation can only be a taking if confiscatory]; United States v. Sperry Corp. (1989) 493 U.S. 52, 60 [107 L.Ed.2d 290, 301, 110 S.Ct. 387] [reasonable user fees that reduce the value of arbitration award not a taking].)
It could be argued that the appropriation of a property owner’s money, in the form of a development fee, can be considered a “physical invasion” of monetary assets, and therefore as constitutionally objectionable as the physical occupation of real property. The United States Supreme Court has decisively rejected such equivalency. In United States v. Sperry Corp., supra, 493 U.S. 52 (Sperry), a case that will be discussed at greater length below, the court upheld a deduction of a percentage of an award received from the Iran-United States claims tribunal as a reasonable user fee. Plaintiff corporation argued that such a dedication “was akin to a ‘permanent physical occupation’ of its property and therefore was a per se taking requiring just compensation [citing Loretto].” (Id. at p. 62, fn. 9 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 303], italics omitted.) The court responded: “It is artificial to view a deduction of a percentage of a monetary award as physical appropriations of property. Unlike real or personal property, money is fungible. No special constitutional importance attaches to the fact that the Government deducted its charge directly from the award rather than requiring [plaintiff] to pay it separately. If the deduction in this case were a physical occupation requiring just compensation, so would be any fee for services, including a filing fee that must be paid in advance. Such a rule would be an extravagant extension of Loretto.” (Ibid.)
In fact, unlike the physical appropriation of real property, the government “takes” money from property owners in numerous circumstances with typically minimal constitutional constraints, as discussed immediately below.
B. Constitutional Review of Taxes, Assessments, User Fees, and Other Fees.
To put the matter simply, the taking of money is different, under the Fifth Amendment, from the taking of real or personal property. The imposition of various monetary exactions—taxes, special assessments, and user fees—has been accorded substantial judicial deference. As elaborated below, many if *893not most development fees resemble such exactions in that they are categorically applied to a general class—to all developments or to certain types of development. The imposition of such development fees, like other general fees, has also been given substantial deference. What follows is a brief account of the constitutional standards used for determining the validity of these various types of monetary exactions.
First, government is obviously able, constitutionally, to take money from property owners as part of a valid scheme of taxation. The separation of powers doctrine dictates that courts allow states and their subdivisions considerable flexibility in the imposition of varying tax burdens on different classes of taxpayers. “Of course, the States, in the exercise of their taxing power, are subject to the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that clause imposes no iron rule of equality .... [States] may impose different specific taxes upon different trades and professions and may vary the rate of excise upon various products. [They are] not required to resort to close distinctions or to maintain a precise, scientific uniformity with reference to composition, use or value.” (Allied Stores of Ohio v. Bowers (1959) 358 U.S. 522, 526-527 [3 L.Ed.2d 480, 484, 79 S.Ct. 437].) Courts will not invalidate a state taxation scheme unless the classifications used are without “rational basis” and are “palpably arbitrary.” (Id. at p. 527 [3 L.Ed.2d at p. 485].)
Of particular relevance for the issue of development fees, California courts have upheld on numerous occasions excise taxes that charge fees on new development for purposes of raising general revenue, in which no close “nexus” or “reasonable relationship” is required. (See Centex Real Estate Corp. v. City of Vallejo (1993) 19 Cal.App.4th 1358 [24 Cal.Rptr.2d 48] [upholding excise tax of $3,000 per unit of residential development and $.30 per square foot of nonresidential development]; The Pines v. City of Santa Monica (1981) 29 Cal.3d 656 [175 Cal.Rptr. 336, 630 P.2d 521] [upholding $1,000 fee for sale of new or converted condominiums]; Westfield-Palos Verdes Co. v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (1977) 73 Cal.App.3d 486 [141 Cal.Rptr. 36] [upholding excise tax of $500 per bedroom, up to a maximum of $1,000 per dwelling unit]; Associated Home Builders, Inc. v. City of Newark (1971) 18 Cal.App.3d 107 [95 Cal.Rptr. 648] [upholding per-bedroom excise tax].) As the Court of Appeal recently explained in Centex Real Estate Corp., supra, 19 Cal.App.4th at page 1364; “ ‘[A]n excise tax is a “tax on the exercise of one of the incidences of property ownership,” such as the ability to transfer or devise property or the ability to use, store, or consume it.’ ” Accordingly, “[a]n excise tax may properly be imposed on the privilege of developing property” as one such incidence of property ownership. (Ibid.)
*894While the takings clause is concerned in part with preventing those whose property has been appropriated or destroyed by government action from “bearing] public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole” (Armstrong v. United States (1960) 364 U.S. 40, 49 [4 L.Ed.2d 1554, 1561, 80 S.Ct. 1563]), the equal protection clause generally permits government to impose unequal tax burdens on individuals as long as they are rationally based. There is no indication that Nollan and Dolan have superseded equal protection doctrine in the realm of taxation, even if the taxes affect the value of property or the profits from development. But if a municipality can constitutionally impose a development tax as long as it is rationally based, why is a higher level of constitutional scrutiny required when, as in the case of generally applicable development fees, the “tax” is earmarked for use in alleviating specific development impacts rather than for the general fund?
Another kind of monetary exaction on property owners which is subject to a fairly deferential standard of judicial review is special assessments. Special assessment districts are established to permit cities and counties to charge groups of property owners for improvements from which they will especially benefit; the individual assessments are to be calculated in proportion to the estimated benefits to the parcels against which they are assessed. (Sts. & Hy. Code, §§ 10203-10204; Dawson v. Town of Los Altos Hills (1976) 16 Cal.3d 676, 683-684 [129 Cal.Rptr. 97, 547 P.2d 1377] (Dawson).) Although no recent California case considers a takings challenge to a special assessment, the case of Waters v. Montgomery County (1994) 337 Md. 15 [650 A.2d 712] is directly relevant. In that case, Maryland’s highest court upheld a “development impact tax” that functioned much like a benefit assessment or excise tax, imposing monetary exactions on all development within certain undeveloped areas of Montgomery County according to a per-residential-unit or per-square-foot measurement, and spending the funds to improve roads and other transportation facilities within these areas. (Id. at p. 714.) The court considered an equal protection challenge to the fee, and upheld the fee as an economic regulation with a “rational basis”—it was reasonable to conclude that development in the two areas would lead to a need for increased transportation facilities. (Id. at pp. 721-723.) The court also rejected the argument that the takings clause, as interpreted by Dolan, requires that such an assessment be subject to greater constitutional scrutiny than the equal protection clause would demand. It concluded that Dolan was distinguishable in part because it required that the property owner “ ‘deed portions of the property to the city.’ ” (Id. at p. 724.) The tax in question neither compelled a physical invasion of the property nor denied “ ‘all economically *895beneficial or productive use of [the] land,’ ” and was therefore not a taking. (Ibid.)1
The government is also given broad discretion to charge user fees, and the recent case of Sperry, supra, 493 U.S. 52, makes clear that judicial review of such fees under the takings clause is similarly narrow. In that case the court upheld against a takings challenge the deduction of a portion of a judgment awarded to plaintiff corporation from the Iranian government in order to pay for the expenses of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, although the corporation claimed not to have proportionately benefited from the tribunal. (Id. at pp. 63-64 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 304].) As the Sperry court reaffirmed, “the Just Compensation Clause ‘has never been read to require the . . . courts to calculate whether a specific individual has suffered burdens ... in excess of the benefits received’ in determining whether a ‘taking’ has occurred.” (Id. at p. 61, fn. 7 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 302].) In order to withstand a takings challenge, a user fee does not have to be “precisely calibrated to the use that a party makes of Government services. ... All that we have required is that the user fee be a “ ‘fair approximation of the cost of benefits supplied.’ ” (Id. at p. 60 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 301].) The court recognized “that when the Federal Government applies user charges to a large number of parties, it probably will charge a user more or less than it would under a perfect user-fee system, but we [decline] to impose a requirement that the Government ‘give weight to every factor affecting appropriate compensation *896(Id. at p. 61 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 302]; see also Webb’s Fabulous Pharmacies, Inc. v. Beckwith (1980) 449 U.S. 155, 163 [66 L.Ed.2d 358, 366,101 S.Ct. 446] [user fees will be upheld if they have some police power justification].)
Many development fees bear a close resemblance to the excise taxes, assessment fees and user fees discussed above. They are perhaps best characterized as a special assessment placed on developing property, calculated according to preestablished legislative formulae based on square footage or per unit of development. (See J.W. Jones Companies v. City of San Diego, supra, 157 Cal.App.3d 745 [fee apportioning projected future public costs of development among developers in several areas of the city]; see also Tahoe Keys Property Owners’ Assn. v. State Water Resources Control Bd. (1994) 23 Cal.App.4th 1459 [28 Cal.Rptr.2d 734] [$4,000 per lot environmental mitigation fee]; Garrick Development Co. v. Hayward Unified School Dist. (1993) 3 Cal.App.4th 320 [4 Cal.Rptr.2d 897] [school fees of $1.50 per square foot of nonresidential development]); Blue Jeans Equities West v. City and County of San Francisco (1992) 3 Cal.App.4th 164, 170-171 [4 Cal.Rptr.2d 114] [transportation fee of up to $5 per square foot levied on commercial development]; Commercial Builders v. Sacramento (9th Cir. 1991) 941 F.2d 872, 874-875 [upholding low-income housing fee on commercial development according to legislated formula]; Shapell Industries, Inc. v. Governing Board (1991) 1 Cal.App.4th 218 [1 Cal.Rptr.2d 818] [school fees of $1.50 per square foot].) Courts have granted considerable discretion to local government to impose such fees, and have upheld them against takings and related challenges. (See, e.g., Garrick Development Co. v. Hayward Unified School Dist., supra, 3 Cal.App.4th at p. 337; Tahoe Keys Property Owners’ Assn. v. State Water Resources Control Bd., supra, 23 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1477-1478; Blue Jeans Equities West v. City and County of San Francisco, supra, 3 Cal.App.4th at pp. 170-171; Commercial Builders v. Sacramento, supra, 941 F.2d at pp. 874-875.)
The above cases illustrate the difference, for purposes of takings clause jurisprudence, between judicial review of the government’s physical taking of property and its charging of fees. A comparison of these cases with Loretto, supra, 458 U.S. 419, brings this difference into clearer focus. While laws that impose generally applicable taxes, assessments and fees will be upheld if they are rationally based, an equivalent, generally applicable measure that authorizes the physical occupation of a small portion of property belonging to a large class of property owners—forced access for cable television wires and boxes—is deemed to be a taking. (Loretto, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 438 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 884].) It is therefore illogical doctrinally to assert, as plaintiff and his numerous amici curiae do in this case, that *897development fees will invariably be subject to the same rigorous constitutional scrutiny as compelled dedications of property.
In sum, it does not appear that Nollan or Dolan alter the restricted judicial review applicable to general governmental fees—a restriction rooted in the separation of powers doctrine—merely because a property owner can recast his challenge to a fee as a takings claim, asserting that he was being asked to pay for a disproportionate share of public improvements or services in exchange for a development permit. On the contrary, the cases show that the constitutionality of such fees will be judged under a standard of scrutiny closer to the rational basis review of the equal protection clause than the heightened scrutiny of Nollan and Dolan.
This is not to imply that legislative development fees do not implicate the takings clause. Because these fees are forms of land use regulation, they must “advance legitimate state interests.” (Agins v. Tiburon, supra, 447 U.S. at p. 260 [65 L.Ed.2d at p. 112].) A disproportionate fee raises the possibility of arbitrary or discriminatory government action. But Nollan and Dolan do not change the basic principle that courts will not unduly interfere with the essentially legislative function of adopting fees and fee structures that advance the public interest. In other words, such fees are “public program[s] adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good” which will be reviewed by courts in a more deferential manner than physical invasions of property. (Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 124 [57 L.Ed.2d at p. 648].)
Of course, a court’s constitutional inquiry will vary with the nature of the state interest purporting to justify the monetary exaction under review. If the government’s interest is in raising revenue generally, then courts will uphold the tax so long as the special burden it imposes on developers is rationally based. If, as in the case of the art in public places fee at issue in this case, the fee is for the purpose of furthering certain legitimate aesthetic objections, then this fee will be upheld if it can be shown to substantially further those objections. If the fee is imposed to mitigate the impacts of development, then it will be upheld if there is a reasonable relationship between the fee and the development impact. (See Associated Home Builders etc., Inc. v. City of Walnut Creek (1971) 4 Cal.3d 633, 640 [94 Cal.Rptr. 630, 484 P.2d 606, 43 A.L.R.3d 847].) If the fee is defined as a user fee, then the fee will be upheld if there is a reasonable relationship between the government’s cost of service and the fee. But in each of these cases, the degree of scrutiny is not appreciably different. Courts will, for federal constitutional purposes, defer to the legislative capacity of the states and their subdivisions to calculate and charge fees designated for legitimate government objectives, unless the fees are plainly arbitrary or confiscatory.
*898There are, of course, a number of legal constraints in this state—other than the Fifth Amendment—on the government’s ability to impose development fees. Government Code section 66000 et seq. extensively regulates the imposition of development fees, including requirements that the purpose of the fee must be identified with specificity, and that a “reasonable relationship” must exist between the fee’s use and the type of development project on which the fee is imposed. (Gov. Code, § 66001, subd. (a)(3).)2 The statutory scheme also mandates a public hearing process for the adoption of a fee, and a procedure for the refund of unused portions of the fee. (Gov. Code, §§66001, subds. (e) & (f), 66016-66018; see also Garrick Development Co. v. Hayward Unified School Dist., supra, 3 Cal.App.4th 320.) Moreover, a development fee which exceeds the burdens and benefits of development will be found to be a special tax that requires two-thirds voter approval under article XIII A, section 4 of the California Constitution. (See Bixel Associates v. City of Los Angeles (1989) 216 Cal.App.3d 1208, 1220 [265 Cal.Rptr. 347] [invalidation of excessive fire hydrant fee as a special tax]; Beaumont Investors v. Beaumont-Cherry Valley Water Dist. (1984) 165 Cal.App.3d 227, 238 [211 Cal.Rptr. 567] [invalidation of water system hookup fee as a special tax].)
*899Even under more deferential review, a court’s inquiry into the validity of the reasonable relationship between a development fee and a development impact will not be a “rubber stamp.” (See, e.g., Shapell Industries, Inc. v. Governing Board, supra, 1 Cal.App.4th 218, 235-236; Balch Enterprises, Inc. v. New Haven Unified School Dist. (1990) 219 Cal.App.3d 783, 794-795 [268 Cal.Rptr.2d 543].)3 But Nollan and Dolan in most cases impose no additional constitutional burden on the government to justify development fees beyond the burden it already bears under the state constitution and statute. (See Garrick Development Co. v. Hayward Unified School Dist., supra, 3 Cal.App.4th at p. 337; Blue Jeans Equities West v. City and County of San Francisco, supra, 3 Cal.App.4th at p. 171.)
In sum, general development fees will usually be subject to a less exacting standard of review under the takings clause than the physical taking of property.
C. Nollan, Dolan and the Recreation Fee.
Nonetheless, I agree with the plurality that a somewhat higher level of constitutional scrutiny should be applied to a development fee when it is imposed “neither generally nor ministerially, but on an individual and discretionary basis.” (Plur. opn., ante, at p. 876.) The heightened scrutiny under these circumstances is derived from Nollan’s and Dolan’s central concern that government not convert a valid regulation of land use into “ ‘an out-and-out plan of extortion’” (Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at p. _ [129 L.Ed.2d at p. 317, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2317], quoting Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 837 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 689]) that does not advance a legitimate governmental objective. Although development fees are not physical takings of property, they bear greater similarity to physical takings than to zoning and other such land-use regulations in this sense: both physical and monetary exactions require developers to directly contribute valuable assets to the public weal in exchange for permission to develop their property. In both cases, there is a potential for the government to engage in extortionate behavior. This risk diminishes when the fee is formulated according to preexisting statutes or ordinances which purport to rationally allocate the costs of development among a general class of developers or property owners—indeed, as discussed above, the separation of powers doctrine clothes such a fee in a presumption of constitutionality. But when the fee is *900ad hoc, enacted at the time the development application was approved, there is a greater likelihood that it is motivated by the desire to extract the maximum revenue from the property owner seeking the development permit, rather than on a legislative policy of mitigating the public impacts of development or of otherwise reasonably distributing the burdens of achieving legitimate government objectives.
Indeed, even in the case of zoning regulations, to which courts have been traditionally deferential, a more rigorous form of judicial review, fueled by a suspicion of legislative motive, has been employed when the regulation applies uniquely to a single property owner—so-called “spot zoning.” Spot zoning is said to exist “ *[w]here a small parcel is restricted and given less rights than the surrounding property . . . .’ ” (Ross v. City of Yorba Linda (1991) 1 Cal.App.4th 954, 960 [2 Cal.Rptr.2d 638].) When the zoning ordinance appears to subject a property owner to a special restriction not applicable to similarly situated adjacent property, courts will conduct a more searching inquiry into the reasons and motives of the legislative body to determine if the zoning is arbitrary and discriminatory. (See Wilkins v. City of San Bernardino (1946) 29 Cal.2d 332, 338 [175 P.2d 542]; Ross v. City of Yorba Linda, supra, 1 Cal.App.4th at pp. 962-963; Arnel Development Co. v. City of Costa Mesa (1981) 126 Cal.App.3d 330, 337 [178 Cal.Rptr. 723]; see also Longtin, California Land Use (1995 supp.) § 1.34.) As explained in Arnel Development Co.: “The usual test when a zoning ordinance is attacked as being in excess of the police power is whether or not the ordinance bears a substantial and reasonable relationship to the public welfare. [Citations.] However, ‘[t]he principle limiting judicial inquiry into the legislative body’s police power objectives does not bar scrutiny of a quite different issue, that of discrimination against a particular parcel of property. “A city cannot unfairly discriminate against a particular parcel of land, and the courts may properly inquire as to whether the scheme of classification has been applied fairly and impartially in each instance.” ’ ” (Arnel, supra, 126 Cal.App.3d at p. 336.)
In the same manner, when a municipality singles out a property developer for a development fee not imposed on others, a somewhat heightened scrutiny of that fee is required to ensure that the developer is not being subject to arbitrary treatment for extortionate motives. These singular fees present a greater possibility that the government is unfairly imposing disproportionate public burdens on a lone, and therefore particularly vulnerable, property owner. Hence the need for closer judicial review.4
That is not to imply that a local government’s actions will be subject to heightened scrutiny each time it engages in the individualized assessment of *901a development project’s public impacts. Indeed, such assessments may be preferable, for reasons of fairness and accuracy, to fees that are completely predetermined according to rigid legislative formulae, and it would be illogical to impose on them more formidable constitutional hurdles. But when, as in this case, the local government exacts a type of development fee which is imposed on no one else, and which is based on no preexisting legislative guidelines, a more searching constitutional inquiry into the basis of the fee is required.
Thus, the type of judicial review set forth in Nollan and Dolan is necessary, under the limited circumstances described above, to ensure “that the [government’s] monopoly power over development permits is not illegitimately exploited by imposing conditions that lack any logical affinity to the public impact of a particular land use.” (Plur. opn, ante, at p. 876.) I therefore conclude that the recreation fee at issue in the present case is required to meet the “rough proportionality” standard prescribed under Dolan.
II.
As stated above, I concur in the plurality’s analysis of the recreation fee. I would add two additional points.
First, this is not a case in which the government has asserted an interest in the protection of specific facilities or improvements, as when government regulates the closure or conversion of rental housing. (See Terminal Plaza Corp. v. City and County of San Francisco (1986) 177 Cal.App.3d 892, 898-899 [223 Cal.Rptr. 379] [controls on conversion of residential hotels and requirements to contribute to replacement costs upheld]; Nash v. City of Santa Monica (1984) 37 Cal.3d 97 [207 Cal.Rptr. 285, 688 P.2d 894] [upholding ordinance controlling exit from rental housing business]; Gov. *902Code, § 65863.7, subd. (e) [authorizing local governments to require that mobilehome park owners who close their facilities pay the “reasonable costs of relocation”]; Gov. Code, § 7060.1, subd. (c)(1) [affirming the power of public entities to “mitigate any adverse impact on persons” displaced as the result of the closure of residential hotels].) In such cases, the government may have a constitutionally legitimate interest in preserving an existing private facility that has public value, and in requiring mitigation fees if the facility is closed or put to a different use. But in the present case, the City had asserted no interest in preserving any particular facility, and had, indeed, permitted without condition the demolition of plaintiff’s health club. As the plurality correctly conclude, the sole interest advanced by the City is in the preservation of a type of land use rather than of a facility, and any recreational fee must be measured in terms of the loss of that use.
Second, it should be recognized that although the City must employ a “rough proportionality” analysis on remand, the issue before it is a different one from that presented in Nollan and Dolan. In both those cases, the courts assumed that the developments in question had public impacts of some magnitude but found the evidence lacking that the taking of public easements significantly mitigated those impacts. (Nollan, supra, 483 U.S. at pp. 838-839 [97 L.Ed.2d at p. 690]; Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at p. _ [129 L.Ed.2d at pp. 321-323,114 S.Ct. at pp. 2320-2322].) The question that must be addressed in the present case, on the other hand, is whether and to what extent the change in the recreational land use designation of plaintiff’s property had a public impact—the loss of recreational opportunities to the residents the City—that would justify a special recreational fee. But assuming that a public impact is identified and a fee of some amount is constitutionally justified, there is no question that the City’s proposed use of such fee—to construct public tennis courts or other such facilities—would directly mitigate that impact.
Thus, although the City must calculate the amount of the recreation fee in terms of the added costs of inducing the creation of private recreational facilities attributable to the changed land use (plur. opn., ante, at p. 884), it is not constitutionally forbidden from determining that the best use of the fee is to build public tennis courts or other facilities. It is the role of the legislative body, rather than the courts, to determine the best uses of the revenue obtained from a development fee, as long as the expenditure of the fee is reasonably related to the alleviation of the development impact that is its purported justification.
I also agree with the plurality that the art fee is a generally applicable fee substantially related to legitimate aesthetic objectives promoted by the City. It is therefore constitutional, and not subject to the Nollan/Dolan analysis.

 Although there are no recent takings cases in California involving special assessments, a challenge to a special assessment district is typically framed in terms somewhat similar to a takings challenge—that a property owner is being asked to pay for services from which he or she does not specially benefit, and which should be borne by the public as a whole through taxation. (See Knox v. Orland (1992) 4 Cal.4th 132, 143 [14 Cal.Rptr.2d 159, 841 P.2d 144] [assessment is challenged as failing to provide special benefits and is therefore a “special tax”].) But as we have stated: “The scope of judicial review of such [assessments] is . . . narrow. ‘The board of supervisors is the ultimate authority which is empowered to finally determine what lands are benefited and what amount of benefits shall be assessed against the several parcels benefited.... This determination is made after a full hearing accorded to all persons interested to make such objection as they see fit. In such a case the court will not declare the assessment void unless it can plainly see from the face of the record, or from facts judicially known, that the assessment so finally confirmed is not proportional to the benefits, or that no benefits could accrue to the property assessed.” (Dawson, supra, 16 Cal.3d at p. 684; see also Knox v. Orland, supra, 4 Cal.4th 132, 147 [reaffirming the validity of the Dawson standard]; see also J.W. Jones Companies v. City of San Diego (1984) 157 Cal.App.3d 745 [203 Cal.Rptr. 580] [approving benefit assessment for new development based on long-range estimates of the need for public facilities generated by the new development].)
Moreover, even if a special assessment is found to be disproportionate to the benefit provided, and therefore a “special tax” within the meaning of article XIII A, section 4 of the California Constitution, it does not follow that the assessment would also be a taking. The conclusion that a development fee is really a special tax only signifies that the fee cannot be adopted without the approval of two-thirds of the electorate, not that it cannot be lawfully adopted at all, as would be the case were the assessment a taking.

I agree with the plurality that Government Code section 66001 incorporated a “reasonable relationship” standard set forth in Associated Home Builders etc., Inc. v. City of Walnut Creek, supra, 4 Cal.3d at page 640, and its progeny, a standard less exacting than Dolan’s “rough proportionality” test. A review of the legislative history of Assembly Bill No. 1600, 1987-1988 Regular Session (Assembly Bill No. 1600), which included section 66001, confirms that view. In an analysis of Assembly Bill No. 1600 by the Senate Local Government Committee immediately before the enactment of the bill, it was stated: “The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 Nollan [case] overturned the California Coastal Commission’s imposition of a lateral public access easement as a condition of approving a residential development in the coastal zone. . . . Some observers have interpreted this decision as an instruction to local agencies to find a more direct link between exactions and public purposes. [Assembly Bill No.] 1600 moves in this direction. The issue will be whether it goes far enough. Because the bill does not take effect until January 1, 1989, the Legislature will have ample opportunity to conform it with the Nollan case, if it chooses.” (Sen. Local Gov. Com. Rep. on Assem. Bill No. 1600 (1987-1988 Reg. Sess.) as amended Aug. 18,1987, p. 2.) The fact that the Legislature did not amend the bill after that indicates that it did not intend to fully incorporate the Nollan standard to development fees, much less the Dolan standard formulated seven years later. The same report also makes clear that the “reasonable relationship” standard of section 66001 was intended to “conform to case law,” i.e., Associated Home Builders and related California cases. (Sen. Local Gov. Com. Rep. on Assem. Bill No. 1600 at p. 3.)
Whether the less demanding statutory standard or more demanding constitutional standard applies is ultimately a constitutional question and depends, as I have argued, and as the other members of this court appear to agree, on whether or not the fee is generally applicable. Whichever standard applies, the plurality is, of course, correct in concluding that anyone challenging either the statutory or constitutional validity of a development fee must follow the procedures set forth in Government Code section 66020 et seq. And, while section 66001 cannot be said to have incorporated the Nollan/Dolan standard in any formal sense, I agree with the plurality that “the term ‘reasonable relationship’ embraces both constitutional and statutory meanings which, for all practical purposes, have merged to the extent that the Dolan decision applies to development fees . . . .” (Plur. opn., ante, at p. 867, italics in original.)

Indeed, it is arguable that even under a more deferential standard of review, the recreation fee in this case would have been invalid, because it was based on a fundamental methodological or conceptual flaw. (See, e.g., Shapell Industries, Inc. v. Governing Board, supra, 1 Cal.App.4th at pp. 235-236 [school fee erroneously attributing all future expansion of enrollment to new development partially invalid].)

I note that the distinction between generally applicable regulations and those imposed discretionarily on a single-property owner is critical in the context of takings jurisprudence *901only when monetary fees, rather than the physical occupation of land, is in question. As explained above, even generally applicable laws which authorize the physical occupation of property are takings (see Loretto, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 436-437 [73 L.Ed.2d at p. 883]), or, in the case of regulations that occur in the development permit process, subject to a greater presumption that a taking has occurred. (Dolan, supra, 512 U.S. at pp__-__[129 L.Ed.2d at pp. 311-312, 322-323, 114 S.Ct. at pp. 2313, 2321-2322].) Thus in Dolan, the bicycle path dedication regulations were legislatively formulated, derived from the City of Tigard’s Community Development Code, which mandated dedication of land for bicycle pathways consistent with a bicycle/pedestrian pathway plan. (Id. at p__[129 L.Ed.2d at pp. 311-312, 114 S.Ct. at p. 2313].) Although it may have been constitutionally permissible for the city to impose a bicycle path “tax” or assessment on all downtown developers, with little or no showing of the individual impact of each development, it was not similarly constitutional to compel developers to cooperate in the city’s land banking scheme by requiring them to dedicate a portion of their property to the city for a bicycle path in fulfillment of the city’s general plan, irrespective of the public impacts of their developments.