Court Opinion

ID: 9786317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:53:18.264982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:43:54.323549
License: Public Domain

Parraguirre, J.,
with whom Becker, J.,
agrees, dissenting:
Initially, I emphasize the importance of the initiative process and acknowledge the Douglas County electorate’s laudable efforts in using the democratic process to preserve the current state of their community. However, I cannot join the majority’s decision.
The Douglas County Master Plan, more than 400 pages long, was adopted in 1996 for one reason: to provide Douglas County with a comprehensive plan for future development and management of growth for the next twenty years. I recognize that limiting growth is an important concern of Douglas County residents; however, I fear the SGI’s enactment will render inoperable many of the Plan’s objectives and policies. As a result, I would affirm the district court order concluding the initiative is inconsistent with the Plan and thus void ab initio.
The majority concludes the SGI is consistent with the Plan because it attempts to slow growth, which is clearly a concern to county residents. In reaching this conclusion, however, the majority disregards that limiting growth is but one facet of a plan that was intended to be a comprehensive tool for growth development. After considering the Plan as a whole, I believe the SGI’s implementation will lead to many unintended consequences that are incompatible with numerous Plan objectives and policies.
First, the SGI directly conflicts with the Plan’s recommended growth rate. As the majority noted, the Plan recommends an annual growth rate ranging from 2 to 3.5 percent. In contrast, the SGI’s 280-unit cap represented only a 2 percent growth rate for 2000. Although this growth rate was within the Plan’s recommended lower range, this rate will drop below 2 percent in subsequent years because the cap is rigid. As time goes on, the *75SGI-imposed rate will fall further below the Plan’s recommended growth rate. Consequently, the SGI’s limit on growth — trumpeted by the majority as the primary reason for the SGI’s consistency with the Plan — actually highlights its glaring inconsistency.
Second, not only is the SGI’s growth rate inconsistent with the Plan, the SGI frustrates the Plan’s requirement that the County maintain and develop an adequate supply of affordable housing. The supply of affordable housing will decrease under the SGI because capping annual building permits at 280 will drastically decrease the number of available housing permits.1 Fundamental economic principles dictate that low housing supply — when coupled with the high housing demand in Douglas County — will increase prices.2 By reducing the supply and affordability of housing, the SGI harms both County residents wishing to move from temporary to permanent housing and residents outside the community wanting to purchase a home in the County. Because the SGI harms both present and future residents by hindering the County’s ability to maintain and develop an adequate supply of affordable housing, it conflicts with the Plan.
Third, in addition to frustrating the County’s ability to develop and maintain affordable housing, the SGI is inconsistent with the Plan’s requirement that housing for senior citizens and the disabled remain available. The Plan mandates that a certain percentage of building permits be set aside for senior and disabled housing. The SGI, however, makes no mention of how the 280 building permits will be allocated or whether senior citizens and the disabled will have access to that housing. Given the likely increase in housing prices and decrease in available developed parcels, the SGI may force senior and disabled populations to shoulder an inordinate burden.
Fourth, beyond overburdening seniors and the disabled, the SGI frustrates the Plan’s Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program.3 The TDR program preserves open space by allowing the County to restrict development in scenic and agricultural areas while simultaneously providing for development in more suitable densely populated areas. For example, the TDR program requires a developer seeking to develop a parcel to secure an interest in a second, equally large parcel zoned for agricultural, forest, or range *76use. The owner of the second parcel then loses the right to ever develop that parcel.
Because developers must have the right to develop parcels for a TDR program to function properly, the SGI — by providing no assurances that a developer will be able to timely develop a parcel-risks crippling the program, which will have disastrous effects on the County and directly conflicts with the Plan. Specifically, the SGI’s negative impact on the TDR program will severely undercut the Plan’s goals to prevent urban sprawl and preserve the County’s rural character.
Fifth, in addition to hampering the Plan’s efforts to contain sprawl, the SGI also violates the Plan’s procedure for enacting such a permit allocation system. The Plan mandates that, before enacting any permit allocation system, the County must adopt a Capital Improvements Plan (CIP). The County failed to adopt a CIP here. This key procedural step might have prevented some of the problems outlined above and further calls the SGI’s legitimacy into question.
The SGI’s potential problems are particularly troubling because an initiative cannot be amended within the first three years of its passage.4 Thus, the SGI cannot be amended to designate how the 280 building permits will be allocated, and the County will be unable to immediately rectify any unintended negative consequences of the SGI.
Because I believe the SGI is inconsistent with the County Master Plan, I need not decide whether the SGI can survive constitutional scrutiny. Notably, case law from other jurisdictions indicates that the initiative’s rigid 280-building-permit limit is of questionable constitutional validity when the cap was not based on scientific studies and contains no plan for variances or future increase.5
Certainly nothing prohibits the county’s residents from passing an initiative directing the Douglas County Planning Commission to perform studies in an effort to enact a growth cap that is consistent *77with all the policies and goals in the Master Plan. Although the initiative’s supporters are well intended and have exercised an important political right, I believe the SGI as currently written will have far-reaching consequences beyond those contemplated at the time of its passage. As a result, I must respectfully dissent.

For example, respondents assert that the average number of building permits issued annually by Douglas County since the 1996 adoption of the Plan is 523. Taking this figure as accurate, the 280-unit cap will reduce the number of available permits by almost 50 percent.

The district court heard anecdotal evidence that the SGI has already caused housing prices within Douglas County to rise dramatically.

The Plan encouraged adopting the TDR program; the County responded by incorporating the TDR program into the Douglas County Development Code. See Douglas County, Nev., Code ch. 20.500.

 Nev. Const. art. 19, § 2(3).

 Stoney-Brook Dev. Corp. v. Town of Fremont, 474 A.2d 561, 563-64 (N.H. 1984) (ordinance limiting annual building permits to 3 percent of total dwellings unconstitutional when percentage was an arbitrary figure intended to represent town’s normal growth rate); Beck v. Town of Raymond, 394 A.2d 847, 852 (N.H. 1978) (town’s slow-growth ordinance setting ceilings on the issuance of annual building permits invalid exercise of town’s police power when “not based on any study, and . . . not part of a comprehensive plan”); Inn. Motor Lodge v. City of New Smyrna Beach, 460 So. 2d 379, 380 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1984) (density cap arbitrary and unreasonable when it was not based on any studies and did not allow for variances in cases of unique hardship); City of Boca Raton v. Boca Villas Corp., 371 So. 2d 154, 155-57 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1979) (initiative capping dwelling units at 40,000 unconstitutional when only compelling reason for permanent cap was community *77choice); see also National Land and Investment Company v. Kohn, 215 A.2d 597, 612 (Pa. 1965); Zuckerman v. Town of Hadley, 813 N.E.2d 843, 849 (Mass. 2004); cf. City of Hollywood v. Hollywood, Inc., 432 So. 2d 1332, 1334-36 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1983) (city’s rezoning proposal was constitutional when proposal based on comprehensive plans, studies, and reports).