Court Opinion

ID: 9568395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:03:10.439647+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:42.387077
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice,
concurring:
I concur in the opinion of Chief Justice Howe. However, I would add a comment on the challengeability of the action of the city council that is under attack, since this matter seems likely to reappear in the courts.
The action challenged is an extension of an earlier ordinance that changed the zoning of a large parcel of land conditioned upon a certain developer’s meeting certain conditions by a certain date. Unless those conditions were satisfied by the certain date, the zoning would revert to its previous status. The ordinance before us extended the time for compliance'With those conditions.
The city contends that the ordinance is not challengeable by referendum because it is a simple extension of time and the substantive rezoning was accomplished by the earlier ordinance. Therefore, even if the changes in zoning are significant enough to satisfy our ease of Citizen’s Aivareness Now v. Marakis, 873 P.2d 1117 (Utah 1994), only the earlier, original ordinance was challengeable by a referendum petition. I cannot agree. The zoning in question was not permanently changed by the earlier ordinance. It was changed only upon the occurrence of certain conditions, and one of those conditions was that certain events had to happen before a specified date. Unless they occurred, the zoning reverted automatically. Therefore, the extension operates to change the zoning from arid after the expiration date set in the earlier ordinance. This means that the extension ordinance has the same operative effect as the earlier ordinance. Therefore, I would hold that the extension ordinance is challengeable by referendum if the original ordinance was so challengeable.
To hold otherwise would be to permit a clever local government unit to evade our decision in Citizen’s Aivareness Noiv. In that decision, we clarified what constitutes a zoning change and held that the cumulative effect of a series of zoning decisions may constitute a single change subject to referendum. 873 P.2d at 1126. If we hold that the extension ordinance is not challengeable, we would thereby create a simple mechanism for local governments to avoid the effect of our ruling in Citizen’s Aivareness Now. That is, by passing a series , of rezoning ordinances, each with a different expiration date, and by extending those expiration dates such as in the instant case, a municipality could avoid a voter referendum on any of those changes, whether individually or cumulatively. This would not be a desirable result.
In addition, I would also address the separate question of whether a city, recorder has the authority to decline to issue a referendum petition on the grounds that the subject is not one suitable for a referendum. Section 20A-7-604 states that the “local clerk shall *376furnish to the sponsors” five copies of the referendum petition and five signature sheets. In this case, however, the clerk did not immediately issue the referendum petition to the sponsors and instead consulted the city attorney to obtain an opinion as to whether this was a suitable matter for a referendum. Seven days later, the city attorney wrote a letter to the city recorder saying it was his opinion that the referendum petitions should not be issued. In my view, the statute makes issuance of a referendum petition an entirely ministerial act, and nothing in the statute authorizes the recorder to make an independent determination of whether that petition should be issued based on whether the subject is suitable for a referendum. Any such determination is inappropriate until after the referendum petition has been completed and returned. As noted in the majority opinion, it is already difficult to succeed in the use of the referendum process due to the shortness of the statutory timetable. We should not allow unauthorized delays by city administrators, those most likely to hope a referendum will fail, to make this process even more difficult.1

. Although no other member of the court has joined this opinion, I note with optimism that the majority specifically declines to address these two issues and leaves both of these questions open for another day. This should be sufficient to alert members of the bar as to their importance in the next case.