Court Opinion

ID: 9625756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:50:33.743914+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:22.956815
License: Public Domain

Poff, J.,
dissenting.
Most respectfully, I dissent.
I agree with the principles of law the majority expound. I disagree with the majority’s application of those principles to the facts of this case. I would hold that Ordinance No. 1563, insofar as it affects residents of mobile homes located in mobile home parks such as Warwick Mobile Home Estates,1 fails the Virginia test of ordinance classification validity most recently reaffirmed in Kisley v. City of Falls Church, 212 Va. 693, 697, 187 S.E.2d 168, 172 (1972), that “ ‘the classification is natural and substantial and bears a reasonable relationship to the evil sought to be controlled, . . .’ [citation omitted].”
In National Linen Service Corp. v. City of Norfolk, 196 Va. 277, 281, 83 S.E.2d 401, 404 (1954), we said that “the authority conferred under a general or implied grant of power must be exercised reasonably, in good faith, and bear a real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare of the city’s inhabitants.” The power the City exercised here was not one expressly conferred by the Code or the City’s charter; it was one implied from its general police powers. Nor did the exercise of this implied power bear any “relation to the public health”; the testimony of the City’s own director of public works, who has general responsibility for garbage collection, shows that the garbage-related health problem in mobile home parks is no different than that elsewhere.
The City justifies the ordinance on the grounds that it bears “a real and substantial relation to the . . . general welfare of the city’s inhabi*293tants” because dumpmasters reduce municipal costs. The majority find that “[t]he use of these containers promotes the public welfare by reducing the cost of municipal garbage collection.” They declare the ordinance valid because it is “reasonably related to considerations of public welfare.” But, assuming that the designation of certain classes to bear the brunt of budgetary economies in the name of the “public welfare” is a legitimate exercise of the City’s police power, the issue here is not whether the ordinance, in light of the purpose it seeks to achieve, is reasonable. The issue is whether, in light of the purpose of the ordinance and its operative effect upon residents of mobile home parks, the classification of “[t]he rental of mobile home spaces” as a business is reasonable.
“The test of reasonableness of classification is said to be whether it embraces all of the classes to which it relates. The basis of the classification involved must have a direct relation to the purpose of the law, and must present a distinction which renders one class, in truth, distinct or different from another class.” City of Newport News v. Elizabeth City County, 189 Va. 825, 841, 55 S.E.2d 56, 65 (1949).
If dumpmasters located in mobile home parks would save money, dumpmasters located in other residential neighborhoods would save money. Indeed, the savings elsewhere would be greater; the City’s director of public works testified that individual hand-collection requires more time per resident in several conventional residential neighborhoods than in mobile home parks. When the City, in the name of “economy”, requires the use of dumpmasters where they achieve the smaller economy but not where they achieve the greater economy, thereby thrusting upon some a burden others similarly situated in relation to garbage collection economies are spared, the “implied grant of power” is not “exercised reasonably” within the language of National Linen Service Corp.
The City contends, and the majority agree, that the ordinance structures only two classes of users of the garbage collection service, viz., business users and non-business users, and that such a legislative classification, in other contexts, has routinely been upheld as reasonable. But in operative effect, the ordinance structures more than two classes. No matter what the language of the ordinance pretends to do, the evidence shows that the functional consequence would be to ere-*294ate four classes of users, viz., a business class, a residential class paying rent on lots to mobile home park owners, a residential class paying rent on detached dwellings and lots in a conventional neighborhood, and a residential class paying for title to detached dwellings and lots in a conventional neighborhood. The business class is altogether distinguishable from the three residential classes, and as between them, a legislative classification would be reasonable. But as between the mobile home residential class and the latter two residential classes, the only significant distinction is that the residents of the several classes pay different payees for the right to live in their homes. Insofar as garbage collection economies are concerned, such a distinction bears no “real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare of the city’s inhabitants.” Nor is the legislative classification upon which it is based “natural and substantial” within the test of Kisley. Nor does this distinction render one class “in truth, distinct or different from another class” within the test of Elizabeth City County.
Apparently recognizing the weakness of this distinction, the majority suggest supplemental differentiae. They say that population density is “characteristically . . . higher” in mobile home parks and that this justifies the greater burden the ordinance imposes upon residents there. But the evidence at trial indicated that there are conventional residential neighborhoods in the City where the population density is higher than that in Warwick Mobile Home Estates and where, presumably, the round trip to the dumpmaster would be shorter.
The majority seek further to embellish the distinction on the grounds that, unlike conventional residential communities, mobile home parks have a “centralized management” which makes collective purchases of dumpmasters and allocation of purchase costs feasible. But the record reflects that, in addition to mobile home parks, there are other large residential subdivisions in the City where residents rent from a common owner and where, presumably, the owner or property-management firm could arrange purchases and cost allocations as efficiently as owners of mobile home parks.
In suggesting “population density” and “centralized management” as distinctions justifying different residential classifications to promote garbage collection economies, the majority overlook the crescent phenomenon of the townhouse development. Such developments have high population densities and, typically, centralized managements which, allocate among townhouse owners the costs of exterior- main*295tenance of houses and lots. Yet, it does not appear that they would be required by Ordinance No. 1563 to use dumpmasters.
To be sure, municipal ordinances are presumptively valid, and when the question of reasonableness is fairly debatable, courts ought not substitute their judgments for those of legislative bodies. But as we said in National Linen Service Corp. v. City of Norfolk, supra, 196 Va. at 281, 83 S.E.2d at 404, “[wjhether a particular ordinance enacted pursuant to a general grant of power is arbitrary and unreasonable, and therefore void, is a question for the court, and there is no specific formula by which its reasonableness can be tested.”
When, for the sake of economy in the distribution of a city’s services, citizens similarly situated are segregated by ordinance into multiple classes, when the dissevered classes are subjected to different rules and burdens and accorded different rights and benefits, and when the segregation and different treatment are based on no factual distinction but that the citizens pay different persons for the right to live in their homes, I would hold that the legislative classification is so unreasonable as to be beyond the ambit of fair debate.
I believe the judgment should be reversed and, to the extent Ordinance No. 1563 affects residents of mobile home parks, the preliminary injunction granted by order entered January 26, 1972 should be made permanent.

A mobile home such as that described in the majority opinion is clearly distinguishable from a “trailer” which, for purposes of licensing the operation of trailer camps, trailer parks and trailer parking, is defined to be “any vehicle designed or used or maintained for use as a conveyance upon highways, so designed and so constructed as to permit occupancy thereof, as a temporary dwelling or sleeping place for one or more persons.” Code § 35-64.3 (Cum. Supp. 1973).