Court Opinion

ID: 9477304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:19:48.540709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:48.404035
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, Jr., Circuit Judge,
concurring specially.
The issue which divides this panel is a close one: whether the city council, by en*1274acting city ordinance sections 921.03 and 923.10, delegated authority over extra-territorial expansion of water and sewer lines to the administrative branch of the city’s government. Although I join Judge Well-ford in concluding that such legislative authority was not delegated here, I do not disagree with Judge Merritt’s analysis. Rather, my vote is motivated by my belief in the political process.
Wooster, Ohio, like many small cities, faced a dilemma. The city had to decide whether to accommodate commercial development or retain its semi-rural, small-town character. Frequently, a city’s inhabitants disagree about which direction their community should go. To ensure that the path preferred by a majority of the citizens is taken, policy decisions regarding such development should be made by the branch of government most responsive to the electorate, the legislative branch. Moreover, the legislative branch must be free to reverse the development policies of prior administrations, so long as such reversals do not cause the city to breach its legal obligations to outside parties.
Here, Robert Sproul, a real estate developer, relied on representations made in a private meeting by Wooster Mayor Margaret Demorest. Mayor Demorest allegedly told Sproul that it was the city’s policy to extend water and sewer services if an annexation petition were filed and not withdrawn before the petition became irrevocable. Because this procedure had been followed on three previous occasions, it apparently was the development policy of Mayor Demorest’s administration.
Unfortunately, before Sproul’s annexation petition was formally approved, but after he had spent several thousand dollars in reliance on Mayor Demorest’s representations, the city’s development policy changed. After the Wayne County Commission denied Sproul’s petition, Wooster’s new mayor, Clyde Breneman, told Sproul that the Director of Administration of the City of Wooster was not authorized to extend water and sewer services beyond the city limits without the approval of City Council. Such approval was unlikely in Sproul’s case, apparently because the newly-constituted council no longer favored commercial development.
Sproul’s breach of contract claim, therefore, hinges on whether Mayor Demorest and the Director of Administration had the legal authority to obligate the city to extend sewer and water services to non-residents. Their authority to bind the city depends on how city ordinance sections 921.03 and 923.10 are construed. Because control over a city’s development policy should be reposed in the most politically-responsive branch of city government, I believe these ambiguous sections should not be read as delegating such authority to the administrative branch.
In sum, we cannot know whether Mayor Demorest’s policy of extending sewer and water services beyond the city limits was a factor in her defeat at the polls. Nonetheless, I feel that the newly-elected council should be free to implement a different development policy, one that these officials believe will comport with the will of the electorate.