Court Opinion

ID: 9615804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:40:52.255365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:52.303333
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
My views as expressed in my July 16, 1985 opinion * remain unchanged, and what I wrote then equally fits the same shoe, albeit on a different footing). According*25ly, I do not withdraw that opinion, but stand on it, and in doing so believe that the views therein expressed have been fortified by the additional insight gained on the rehearing—some of which is incorporated into the majority’s new opinion which it substitutes for its July 1985 opinion.1 For instance, the Court as a whole now recognizes that in circumstances such as those here present there are benefits which are general and there are benefits which are special. Part II.B. of the majority opinion. In mentioning the Meyer case, p. 203, the majority speaks of a general enhancement to the “locality.” The “locality” here, in the majority view, is that encompassed by the three zones which have been assessed. I do not agree, but see instead that the entire environs encompassed in the Moscow city limits are the generally benefited “locality.” Anyone living in Moscow can point with pride to a revamped downtown district. Special benefits undoubtedly do accrue to those properties which are within the spruced-up area, and those properties should be assessed for those special benefits—but only after all the property within the city has made a proper contribution for the general benefit. This philosophy of fairness is in line with the majority’s preamble to Part II.B.: “It is fundamental to assessment law that in order to validly assess costs of improvement to affected property, the property must receive a special benefit, one that is more intense than that received by the rest of the municipality.”

 Ed. note: see opinion; infra.

. The withdrawing of opinions, a practice or procedure comparatively new with this Court in the past fifteen to eighteen years, does not generally seem either economically or judicially sound. Those who years later turn to this Court’s opinion for guidance and enlightenment, as we ourselves now turn back, can obtain a better flavor of the Court's ultimate ratio decidendi by knowing the whole process of metamorphosis, or evolution, as the case may be.