Court Opinion

ID: 9591092
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:02:08.672084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:24.296789
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, G. BARRY, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
I join in the majority opinion with respect to the conclusion that a conflict exists between the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance adopted by the City of Mendota Heights and I also join in the remand to the district court requiring the issuance of a writ of mandamus directing the city to reconcile the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance provisions with respect to Mendota Golfs property as required by Minn.Stat. § 73.858, subd. 1 (2004).
I dissent, however, from that portion of the majority opinion that holds that the City of Mendota Heights had a “rational basis” for the city’s denial of Mendota Golfs application for an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan.
I dissent for two reasons.
First, having concluded that a declaratory judgment action is the better vehicle for addressing the dispute between the City of Mendota Heights and Mendota Golf, I believe it is premature for this court to find a rational basis in the action taken by the City of Mendota Heights. An advantage of declaratory judgment proceedings are discovery procedures that may result in a better record than we have before this court today. Further, as a matter of judicial restraint in not deciding cases before those cases are ripe for decision, I believe the better course is to allow the City of Mendota Heights to address the conflict between the ordinance provisions because it is at least possible that the conflict will be addressed in a manner that resolves the dispute between the parties without further litigation. Further, we routinely defer to the exercise of municipal legislative authority and I see no good reason to rush in now and answer a question that may or may not be present after the ordinance conflict is resolved.
But second, I dissent from this portion of the majority opinion for substantive reasons as well.
One practical problem with the emphasis on “open space” as the basis for the city council’s decision to deny the amendment request is that, as the court of appeals noted, the comprehensive plan uses separate designations for “golf course” and “open space.” Indeed, preservation of “open space” is not mentioned in the city council resolution denying Mendota Golfs application for a change in the comprehensive plan.
I find the argument that the City had “several public hearings” in connection with reviewing its comprehensive plan to *184be unpersuasive. I have little doubt that residents of the community were indeed interested in maintaining “recreation” opportunities and “open space,” albeit at the expense of others, but the fact remains that the subject property was zoned as “golf course” both before and after those “several public hearings” and there was no reason for Mendota Golf to participate in the process absent an alternative use for the property.
In short, it is not at all clear that there is, in fact, a rational basis for the city council’s decision.
In addition to these practical difficulties complicating the majority opinion’s rational basis argument, there are troubling, and important, implications to the city council’s decision endorsed today by the majority opinion.
While the majority opinion eloquently supports communal open space as a worthy municipal goal, entirely absent from the opinion is a discussion of the severe restrictions on the rights of the property owner as a result of the present form of the City’s comprehensive plan. Put most bluntly, under the majority reading of the comprehensive plan, the owners of the subject property are required, now and in the future, to operate a golf course because it preserves “open space” and recreational opportunities for residents of the community. I do not share the confidence of the majority that we have addressed only a “narrow” question of whether the City had a rational basis to deny the request for an amendment to the City’s comprehensive plan. The effect of our decision is to tell Mendota Golf, and the owner of any other similar property, that the mere assertion by neighbors that they enjoy a property owner’s “open space” is sufficient to prohibit any (i.e., non-golf course) use of the property as long as that preference appears somewhere in the municipal zoning ordinances.
While I acknowledge that Mendota Golf has not asserted a regulatory taking in this proceeding, municipalities cannot ignore that both the federal and Minnesota constitutions provide protection for private property rights, prohibiting the taking of public property for public use without just compensation. U.S. Const. Amend. V; Minn. Const. Art. 1, section 13. While regulatory takings are difficult to establish, Minnesota does recognize that property owners deprived of economic benefit as a result of zoning regulations are entitled, under some circumstances, to compensation for a regulatory taking. See McShane v. City of Faribault, 292 N.W.2d 253 (1980) (holding that airport zoning ordinance restricting use of property adjacent to the airport to agricultural use when the highest and best use had over time become commercial use constituted a taking, despite the fact that the existing use of the property was agricultural).
Perhaps, as the majority suggests, I have an “overly broad” interpretation of the effect of the opinion we issue today. Perhaps I am premature in suggesting that there might be regulatory taking implications in the actions taken by the City. But given that property rights are implicated in this dispute centering around a conflict between municipal ordinances and given that we are also now instructing litigants to use declaratory judgment procedures rather than an extraordinary writ — a fairly dramatic change from past practice — and finally given that it is wholly unnecessary to resolve the issue of whether there is a rational basis for the City’s actions, I would remand this matter to the City of Mendota Heights to resolve the ordinance conflict and to allow the property owner, if desired, to commence the ap*185propriate action to properly frame the issues for decision.