Court Opinion

ID: 9632092
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:02:49.512832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:08.618592
License: Public Domain

Fontron, J.,
dissenting: For reasons briefly hereafter set out, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion which rejects what to me appears the more logical and better reasoned rule followed in a majority of jurisdictions.
The general rule which I believe applies to the factual situation presented in this case is found in 63 C. J. S. Municipal Corporations, § 1372, pp. 1131, 1132:
“In order to render property liable for special assessments for local improvements, it must be capable of actual enhancement in value in consequence of the improvement, and it must be possible to measure the extent of the benefit with reasonable accuracy.
“Land, the use of which is restricted by statute or grant to a particular purpose, and which is in fact so used, must be assessed not on the basis of enhancement of market value, or with reference to uses for which it is reasonably adapted, but only on the basis of increased value, if any, to the land for the use to which it is put. . . .”
In my view, the stipulated facts bring this case squarely within the scope of this rule. The land in question has long been used for public purposes, being occupied for many years by the Kansas Vocational School (Topeka) the name of which was changed, in 1951, *738to the Kansas Technical Institute (Topeka). Ever since the Kansas State Reception and Diagnostic Center was established by act of the legislature in 1961, the Center has occupied the buildings and grounds of the former institute along with other state agencies mentioned in the Court’s opinion.
As shown on page 3 of the Court’s opinion, the parties stipulated that the park will not make the state’s land, within the park district, any better for any of the uses to which it is now being devoted, or for any use to which in all probability it will be devoted in the foreseeable future; and that there is no indication that the land might, in the foreseeable future, be disposed of or utilized for any purpose different in nature from the present uses. The prophetic accuracy of the stipulation is borne out and given emphasis by legislative action taken at the 1966 budget session authorizing expansion of the facilities of the Reception and Diagnostic Center and by plans of the state architect to construct laboratory facilities for the state board of health on the land.
In the face of the stipulation entered into by the parties, and in view of the well known disposition of government to expand rather than contract its operations, a fact of which judicial notice might well be taken under K. S. A. 60-409(a), how can it be said that the state’s land is benefited by this park, which we were informed by counsel for the city is some three or four blocks away.
The majority opinion speaks of the modem philosophy that our citizens need additional recreational facilities to absorb their ever expanding leisure time. But the creation of a park for recreational or even social purposes does not enhance the value of the state’s land as it is used now and will be used in the foreseeable future. The prisoners confined in the Reception and Diagnostic Center, which is a maximum security penal facility, will hardly be spending their leisure hours among the beauties which the park may provide. Nor is it likely that the park will be an appropriate area in which to carry on supplemental warehousing, storage and other state operations.
As I see it, the only possible way for the state’s land to be helped by this park would be through an enhanced market value for private residential or industrial purposes. But the stipulation rules that sort of a benefit out, for the foreseeable future. That this state land, used as it is for multiple public purposes, and with permanent structures, will ever be disposed of so that it can revert to private *739use, is speculation of the purest kind. The observation of the Maryland Supreme Court in M. & P. R. Co. v. Nice, 185 Md. 429, 45 A. 2d 109, where special assessments had been levied against a railroad right of way, is germane at this point:
“. . . the possibility that a railroad right of way might be abandoned at some future time and the land thereafter put to some different use, for which the paving might enhance its value, is too remote and conjectural to be considered as a basis upon which to predicate an assessment against the land.” (p.436.)
Great reliance is placed by the Court on State Highway Commission v. City of Topeka, 193 Kan. 335, 393 P. 2d 1008, but that case is readily distinguishable. The Highway Commission case involved assessments levied for a storm sewer against the Highway Commission’s land used for Division Headquarters and Shops. An improvement of that character would benefit the land, itself, by way of drainage. As this court said in the opinion, it cannot be doubted that the benefits flowing from a system of drainage would reasonably be incident to the Commission’s use of the property in its operation of the state highway system.
Thus the Highway Commission case furnishes no precedent for the Court’s present decision. It is not possible, in my judgment, to equate the benefits resulting to land from the construction of a storm sewer with those flowing from a park three or four blocks distant. In all sincerity, I have grave doubts that a park can be said to benefit the land, as land itself, even though it may enhance the desirability of a community as a place in which to live.
The majority opinion also cites our recent decision in Mullins v. City of El Dorado, 200 Kan. 336, 436 P. 2d 837. That case also involved assessments for the construction of a sewer, a sanitary sewer, and hence the factual situation was entirely different from that now before us. Moreover, the land assessed in that case was owned privately and was in an area where residences and small businesses were located. Market value could be of definite importance,to the landowners affected there, for the sale of the lots involved could be envisioned as a distinct possibility in the foreseeable future.
I would reverse this case with instructions to enter judgment for the plaintiff.