Court Opinion

ID: 9542829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:39:14.989443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:04.161673
License: Public Domain

NOYES, Judge,
Dissenting.
¶ 45 In Arizona, the State has, by statute, preempted the field of zoning legislation. See Levitz v. State, 126 Ariz. 203, 205, 613 P.2d 1259, 1261 (1980). These procedural requirements are jurisdictional in nature. See Hart v. Bayless Inv. & Trading Co., 86 Ariz. 379, 388, 346 P.2d 1101, 1108 (1959) (reviewing statutory notice for zoning action). “Such a rule is no mere ‘legal technicality’; rather it is a fundamental safeguard assuring each citizen that he will be afforded due process of law.” Id. Municipalities must follow the procedures set out in the State statutes. See id. The statutory procedures *122must be strictly followed, and an ordinance that does not comply with the statutory procedures is void. See Levitz, 126 Ariz. at 205, 613 P.2d at 1261; Committee for Neighborhood Preservation v. Graham, 14 Ariz.App. 457, 458, 484 P.2d 226, 227 (1971); Manning v. Reilly, 2 Ariz.App. 310, 313, 408 P.2d 414, 417 (1965).
¶ 46 In this case, the City Council adopted an ordinance annexing the property on November 4, 1997. Under State law, this annexation was not effective for thirty days, until after December 4, 1997. See A.R.S. § 9-471(D). Even though the property was not yet within the city limits of Show Low, during the months of October and November 1997, the City undertook actions purporting to rezone the subject property from agricultural to general commercial. These actions included the October 24th posting and publication of notice that the Show Low Planning and Zoning Commission would hold a hearing on the issue. This was forty-one days prior to the annexation of the property. On November 12, 1997, twenty-two days prior to the annexation of the property, the City Planning and Zoning Commission held a hearing and voted to recommend the rezoning of the property. On November 18, 1997, sixteen.days prior to the annexation of the property, the Show Low City Council held a hearing on the zoning change. Then, on December 1, 1997, three days prior to the City obtaining jurisdiction over the property, the City Council voted to rezone the property from agricultural to general commercial.
¶ 47 Arizona’s zoning and planning laws set up a measured, two-tiered process for annexation and rezoning so as to permit effective public input into these decisions. See A.R.S. § 9-462.04 (setting forth public notice and hearing provisions for rezoning). Local residents cannot have meaningful input into such decisions if they do not have time to hear about a proposed decision, gather the facts about it, and then mobilize others to appeal to elected officials or the courts. See A.R.S. § 9-462.04(H) (rezoning cannot be made effective until at least thirty days after approval). The City’s actions here to rush a rezoning application through the process unlawfully impinged on the public’s right to participate.
¶48 A statute such as A.R.S. section 9-471(L), which requires a city to apply equal or more restrictive zoning to a newly annexed parcel, is written to protect neighboring property owners, not the owners of the property being annexed, and certainly not for the procedural convenience of the municipal government. This statute allows- time for the public to become educated on the issues and to formulate opinions and allow those opinions to be heard regarding any subsequent rezoning of the property. It prevents a city government from entangling the issues of relaxation of the allowed land use with the issues of annexation, thereby masking the former from public attention. It prevents a city government from hastily relaxing the land use regulations on a parcel of property that, at all times prior, and in this case even at the time of the city’s actions, had been outside its jurisdiction. The Legislature has mandated that any such relaxation in zoning restrictions not be done as part of the transition of jurisdiction from one governmental subdivision to another, but instead that it be, as that statute plainly states, subsequent to the jurisdictional change and in accordance with existing procedures. See A.R.S. § 9-471 (L). In this case the City ignored this requirement; it relaxed the zoning requirement prior to obtaining jurisdiction over the property.
¶ 49 The only way that the City of Show Low could have had jurisdiction to pass an ordinance relaxing the zoning on the Wal-Mart parcel at the time it did — prior to the effective date of the annexation — would have been if it had complied with A.R.S. section 9-462.07 regarding extraterritorial jurisdiction. Under the general municipal zoning enabling statute, A.R.S. section 9-462.01(B), a city may only zone territory within its boundaries. The extraterritorial jurisdiction statute, A.R.S. section 9-462.07, provides the exclusive procedural vehicle by which a municipality may reach beyond its borders and extend its zoning authority into unincorporated areas of the county. The City did not comply with that statute.
*123¶ 50 I respectfully dissent from the decision to affirm this jurisdictionally defective rezoning decision.