Court Opinion

ID: 9695540
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:22:05.925986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:13.962840
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court today affirms a determination that 16.5 acres of vacant land, not used for any particular purpose and expressly reserved by deed exclusively for open field or agricultural use, is “actually used exclusively for public religious worship” merely because it is part of a larger parcel upon which stand a church and certain structures ancillary to the church. With respect, I dissent.
Perceiving the need for a new church in the Hunt Valley area of Baltimore County, respondent purchased a 27-acre tract located in an R.C. 2 (agricultural) zone. The tract was *223improved by a two-story residence, a barn, a garage, and a tenant house but was otherwise open pasture land. A church use is permitted in an R.C. 2 zone only by special exception, which may be granted only upon the satisfaction of certain criteria set forth in the county zoning law. Among the showings that must be made in order to be granted a special exception are that the proposed use would not be detrimental to the general welfare of the locality and that it would not be inconsistent with the purposes of the property’s zoning classification or with the spirit of the zoning regulations. There was opposition to the application for special exception from some of the neighbors, who expressed concern about those and other matters.
The county zoning authorities approved respondent’s application for a special exception, and thus allowed the building of the church, upon certain representations made by respondent and subject to certain conditions and limitations. The order granting the special exception limited the actual building area for the church to less than one acre. It also limited the entire development area — including the existing improvements and a proposed 200 space parking lot — to a 7.5 acre envelope, and required respondent to enter into a legally enforceable agreement that would restrict the other 19.5-acres for open space and agricultural uses and prohibit the construction of any buildings on that open acreage for a period of 60 years. The only caveat to the restriction was the allowance of driveways, road improvement, storm water management, utilities, or similar kinds of improvements. Nothing was said about any walkways, trails, shrines, benches, or other structures being erected on the 19.5 acre tract. Nothing was said about parishioners or anyone else actively using the vacant land. It was intended to be a buffer, to shield the church and accessory buildings from neighboring property.
In support of its application for the special exception, respondent’s witnesses represented that there would be two Sunday services, one at 9:30 a.m. and a second at 11:30 a.m., that Saturday services would occur in the afternoon, and that weekday services would be at noon. There would be no *224activities or services during the morning or afternoon rush periods and no school or daycare facilities. It was represented that the 19.5 acres would remain in its existing condition with a permanent green cover and preserved as open space.1
In accordance with these restrictions, respondent constructed a church building on approximately one-third of an acre, converted the two existing houses to a caretaker’s residence and church offices, and completed a parking area, all within the 7.5 acres in the interior of the parcel allowed for development. In July, 1996, respondent applied to the Supervisor of Assessments for an exemption of the entire 27-acre tract from State and local property tax assessment, alleging that the property was being used for a parish church and offices. The Supervisor for Baltimore County determined that 6.5 acres within the 7.5 acre development envelope and three acres within the adjacent 19.5-acre open space area that were used for storm water management and septic system were eligible for the religious worship exemption, but that the one acre within the development envelope used for the caretaker’s residence and the remaining 16.5 acres of open space were not eligible for the exemption. The Property Tax Assessment Appeals Board, on respondent’s appeal, reversed the Supervisor and granted the exemption for the entire area, less the one acre on which the caretaker’s residence was situated, a decision affirmed, on the Supervisor’s appeal, by the Maryland Tax Court and then by the Circuit Court for Baltimore County.
This Court further affirms those rulings, upon its conclusion that the Supervisor of Assessments “has not shown ... that the 16.5 acres, whose use has been restricted to open space, are merely an appurtenance to the remainder of the tract, that *225any non-church use of these 16.5 acres has occurred, that being restricted to open space use has a subordinate position or is a use different from the rest of the property.” That is not, in my view, the proper test to apply. The Tax Court applied the wrong standard, the Circuit Court applied the wrong standard, and, in my humble judgment, this Court has applied the wrong standard.
Prior to 1972, Maryland law provided an exemption from property tax assessment for “[hjouses and buildings used exclusively for public worship, and the furniture contained therein, and any parsonage used in connection therewith, and the grounds appurtenant to such houses, buildings and parsonages and necessary for the respective uses thereof.” Maryland Code (1957, 1969 Repl.Vol.) Art. 81, § 9(4). Under that formulation, land appurtenant to church buildings enjoyed an exemption, regardless of its use, if it was “necessary” for the church use. By 1970, the General Assembly had become concerned that the existing set of tax exemptions was unfairly depriving the State of revenue and, pursuant to a Joint Resolution, undertook a study of the matter. See discussion in Supervisor v. Trustees Bosley Methodist Church, 293 Md. 208, 217, 443 A.2d 91, 96 (1982). The result was a rewriting of § 9 of Art. 81 in 1972 that, in the case of property used for religious purposes, significantly changed the criteria for exemption. Under the 1972 law, an exemption was allowed only for “property owned by a religious group or organization and actually used exclusively for public religious worship, including parsonages and convents ...” Maryland Code (1957, 1980 Repl.Vol.) Art. 81, § 9(c) (emphasis added). The 1972 amendment carried forth the admonition included in the earlier statute that the exemption “shall be strictly construed.” With but modest style changes made when § 9 of Article 81 was recodified as § 7-204 of the Tax Property Article in 1985, it is the 1972 version of the law that governs this case.
In Bosley, supra, 293 Md. 208, 218, 443 A.2d 91, 97, we observed that the “clear legislative design” behind the 1972 enactment was “to sweep away prior property tax exemption statutes and to restructure and broaden this State’s property *226tax base by narrowing the range of exempt property,” and we gave effect to that change. Bosley dealt with two different determinations. In one, involving the Bosley Methodist Church, the Supervisor of Assessments had exempted four- and-a-half acres of church property encompassing the church building and graveyard but disallowed an exemption for a one-acre lot across the road from the church and graveyard on which sat the caretaker’s residence. On evidence that the caretaker’s residence was provided free by the church in order to ensure that someone was present on the property to provide security and to clean and maintain the property, the Tax Court held that the one-acre lot and home were also exempt. In the second case, involving St. John’s United Church of Christ, the Supervisor took the same approach; an exemption was allowed for property containing the church, a parsonage, a meeting house, and various other buildings, but was denied for the caretaker’s residence and the one-acre lot on which it sat. As in the Bosley case, the Tax Court held that the caretaker’s property was also exempt, on the premise that the property was “necessary for” and “fairly incidental to” the main purpose of the church.
We reversed the Circuit Court’s affirmance of those rulings, noting that, by virtue of the 1972 change in the law, the “necessary property” test applied under the earlier statute was “obsolete and inappropriate,” and that the “plain statutory language ... exempts only church owned property that is ‘actually used exclusively for public religious worship.’ ” Bos-ley, supra, 293 Md. at 212, 443 A.2d at 93. We explained: “It is now established Maryland law, both by legislative enactment and by prior decisions of this Court, that taxation is the rule with exemption the exception, and that statutes providing for tax exemption are to be strictly construed in favor of the State.” Id. Under the 1972 law, we held, four requirements must be met: the property must be owned by a religious group or organization, it “must be used for ‘public religious worship,’ ” the exempt use must be “actual,” and that use must also be “exclusive.” Id. at 214, 443 A.2d at 95. In the particular cases, we observed, the record disclosed “no public *227religious worship was ever conducted on the two properties in question.” Instead, the tax court exempted them because “it found these appurtenant properties to be necessary for the support of the exempt realty,” which we concluded was error, for “the unambiguous language of [the statute], requiring that the property be ‘actually used exclusively’ for exempt purposes, does not authorize an exemption for such ancillary realty.” Id. at 215, 443 A.2d at 95.
The Court cites Bosley and seems to understand that, for property to be exempt under § 7-204, it must be actually and exclusively used for public religious worship and not be merely ancillary, or even necessary, to such a use by contiguous property, but, in my judgment, the Court has ignored the essential effect of that requirement. There was no evidence presented before the Tax Court that the 16.5 acres of buffer land is used for any religious purpose. Indeed, there was no evidence that it was being used for any purpose other than that required by the zoning decision — as an undeveloped open space buffer between the church building and the neighboring property. The only evidence presented in this regard was that of the pastor, Father Donellan, who stated that the vacant land would “enhance[ ] the worship of our people and would enhance the beauty of our building.” Father Donellan viewed the entire 27 acres as “just one fabric.”
Coupling that statement with one in the zoning opinion that looked at the property “as a whole,” the Court concludes that the Supervisor “has not shown ... that the 16.5 acres, whose use has been restricted to open space, are merely an appurtenance to the remainder of the tract, that any non-church use of these 16.5 acres has occurred, that being restricted to open space has a subordinate position or is a use different from the rest of the property. Nor has the [Supervisor] convinced us that the 16.5 acres at issue are somehow divisible from the remaining exempt acreage.” The import of the Court’s decision is that, so long as some part of the land is actually used for public religious worship and the buffer land is not actually used for any other purpose, the whole tract (except for the caretaker’s residence) is exempt. With respect, it seems to *228me that such a conclusion stands the statute on its head and does precisely what the General Assembly intended to abrogate in 1972.
It is not the Supervisor’s burden to convince us that the buffer land is being used for some other specific purpose. The burden is on the applicant for an exemption to prove his right to it, and, in this case, that requires an affirmative showing on respondent’s part that the property in question is actually and exclusively being used for public religious worship. That is what the law requires. That is the plain, unambiguous, unmodified holding in Bosley. No such showing — nothing approaching such a showing — has been made in this case. It is undisputed that the 16.5 acres is not being actually and exclusively used for public religious worship, and that alone suffices to require denial of the exemption. If there was any evidence that parishioners traversed the buffer open space and engaged in outdoor public religious worship on it, I would agree with the Tax Court’s ruling, but that is simply not the case. The fact that the buffer area enhances either the beauty of the church or the worshiping that occurs within it is irrelevant in this context. The law no longer exempts land because of its accessory or appurtenant use; if it is not itself actually used for public religious worship, it is not exempt.2 *229Nor, in light of the actual zoning decision, can the broadened exemption be based on the “one property” approach. The zoning authorities, though recognizing that there was but one tract, did not regard it as a unitary whole. They limited the church building to less than one acre and total development to seven-and-a-half acres and identified on the parcel where that development could occur. They thus identified as well the 16.5-acre part that was to remain open and vacant for a period of 60 years. More important, the acreage in question was specifically identified, and thus separated from the remainder, in a recorded plat accompanying the restrictive deed executed and recorded by petitioner.
It may feel good to grant this exemption; no one wants to be the Grinch. The law, however — at least in my opinion-does not allow it.
Judges HARRELL and RODOWSKY have authorized me to state that they join in this dissent.

. Although for purposes of determining zoning compliance, testimonial representations of an applicant for a special exception may not be binding on the applicant unless incorporated in the express grant of the special exception (see Cowles v. Montgomery County, 123 Md.App. 426, 718 A.2d 678 (1998)), there is no inhibition to our consideration of respondent’s representations regarding the use to be made of the property in the context of a tax assessment case.

. The Court cites several cases from other states that it regards as supportive of its position. A close reading of those cases reveals quite the opposite, however. In Assessors of Dover v. Dominican Fathers Province of St. Joseph, 334 Mass. 530, 137 N.E.2d 225, 231 (1956), an entire 78-acre tract was held exempt even though a small area of the tract was used for religious worship because the rest of the tract "which is wooded and pleasant, is used at times by members of the priory for walks during recreational periods." In Green Acre Baha’i Institute v. Eliot, 150 Me. 350, 110 A.2d 581, 584 (1954), there was evidence that members regularly used the two undeveloped areas "for walks, prayer, meditation, outdoor meetings and recreation.” In Pickens County Bd. of Tax Assessors v. Atlanta Baptist Assoc., 191 Ga.App. 260, 381 S.E.2d 419 (1989), 640 acres of land was held exempt as a place of worship where even the unimproved portion of the land was used for nature walks, outdoor Bible study, and meditation. See, in similar vein, People ex rel. v. Catholic Bishop, 311 Ill. 11, 142 N.E. 520 (1924); Columbus v. Outreach for Christ, Inc., 241 Ga. 2, 243 S.E.2d 42 (1978). Apart from the fact that the statutory language in these cases was not the same as *229facing us here, the evidence showed some actual exempt use of the open or wooded areas.