Home/District Court of Appeal of Florida/Carter v. City of North Miami

Carter v. City of North Miami

247 So. 2d 498, 1971 Fla. App. LEXIS 6694
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedApril 20, 1971
DocketNo. 70-875
StatusPublished

This text of 247 So. 2d 498 (Carter v. City of North Miami) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carter v. City of North Miami, 247 So. 2d 498, 1971 Fla. App. LEXIS 6694 (Fla. Ct. App. 1971).

Opinion

CHARLES CARROLL, Judge.

This is an appeal by the owner of a lot located in the City of North Miami, from an order of the circuit court dismissing his petition for review of a ruling of the city council which had rejected his application thereto for adjustment of a sewer project assessment on his lot, having an irregular shape and shallow depth, following assessment of abutting properties which had been made on a frontage basis.

Incident to a Sanitary Sewer Project in a certain section of the appellee City of North Miami, the city imposed an assessment upon the abutting properties. In so doing the city proceeded on statutory authority. Relating to such projects, § 184.-05(7) Fla.Stat., F.S.A. provides that upon completion of the work an assessment roll shall be prepared which shall contain certain information including description or designation of the abutting lots or parcels, and a statement of the total cost of the improvements. Subparagraph (c) of § 184.05(7) provides:

“An apportionment as between the municipality and property of the cost of each improvement, including incidental expense, to be computed as follows:
* * * * * *
“2. To abutting property shall be apportioned, all or any part of the cost of the sewer improvement as may be fixed by resolution ordering the sewer improvement, not including therein, however, the cost of laterals, ¡pumping station or outlet, such assessment to be made according to frontage or such other method which the governing body of the mu[500]*500nicipality shall deem equitable under the circumstances, and
“3. To the municipality shall be apportioned the remaining cost of the sewer improvement, unless the municipality by resolution has apportioned all of the cost of such sewer improvement to the abutting property as provided in subsection (2); provided, however, that in the case of lots or parcels which abut on more than one street or which have irregular shapes or unusual depths or which are served or are to be served by such sewer improvement although not abutting upon either side of the street in which such sewer improvement is constructed, the apportionment shall be made under such rules and regulations as the council shall deem to be fair and equitable[Emphasis added.]

Initially the assessments on the abutting' properties were made on a square foot basis. In a class suit brought on behalf of the owners of some forty-odd parcels which were affected, two of which were owned by the appellant Ralph B. Carter, Jr., the trial court rejected a challenge of the assessments. On appeal by the plaintiff this court reversed. See Whitman v. City of North Miami, Fla.App.1969, 223 So.2d 105. Therein we held the square foot method of determining the amounts of assessments on abutting properties was improper under the circumstances, and that the assessments should be made on a frontage basis; and also held that the cost to be apportioned to abutting properties should be reduced by excluding therefrom the cost of the pumping station (which item had been included by the city contrary, to a provision of the statute quoted above). The cause was remanded with direction to the trial court “to require the municipality to reassess the abutting property owners for their proportionate share of the sewerage project, first adjusting the cost basis by deducting the cost of the pumping station from the total price, and then apportioning the remaining cost to the property owners on the basis of their front footage which abuts the project.” Pursuant thereto the trial court made an appropriate order following remand. Therein, after providing for the assessments on a front footage basis, the order stated: “Any individual person affected by this is not precluded from appearing before the council and objecting to it, if so desired.”

The appellant Carter was not one of the “name” plaintiffs in the class suit, but he was one of the members of the class for whose benefit the suit was brought. The two lots owned by him fronted on and were situated on opposite sides of 135th Street, one of the streets affected. One of the Carter lots was rectangular in shape. The other Carter lot was in the form of a triangle, lying lengthwise of the street. Due principally to reduction of the cost apportioned to abutting properties which resulted from exclusion of the cost of the pumping station, the assessments on the abutting properties on a frontage basis proved to be substantially less than the earlier square foot assessments. Such reduction was proportionately reflected in the new assessment of the rectangular lot owned by Carter. However, the reassessment on a frontage basis, when applied to Carter’s triangular lot, resulted in a charge against that lot of $6,520.50, as compared to the $2,337.09 assessment which had been assigned thereto on the previously used square foot basis.

The Carter lot in question has a frontage of 797.66 feet on 135th Street. Its depth at one end is 127 feet. From that end the depth tapers to zero at the other end of the lot. The irregular shape of the lot, and the lack of any substantial depth behind a large portion of its frontage is disclosed by the following outline of the lot as it appears on a survey in the record.

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Related

City of Fort Myers v. State of Florida
117 So. 97 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1928)
Utley v. City of St. Petersburg
144 So. 58 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1932)
City of Fort Myers v. State
95 Fla. 704 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1928)
Whitman v. City of North Miami
223 So. 2d 105 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1969)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
247 So. 2d 498, 1971 Fla. App. LEXIS 6694, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carter-v-city-of-north-miami-fladistctapp-1971.