Hill v. City of Portland

428 P.3d 986, 293 Or. App. 283
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedAugust 8, 2018
DocketA167793
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 428 P.3d 986 (Hill v. City of Portland) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hill v. City of Portland, 428 P.3d 986, 293 Or. App. 283 (Or. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

LAGESEN, P. J.

Petitioner seeks judicial review of a final order of the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). In that order, LUBA affirmed the decision of a City of Portland hearings officer in which the hearings officer rejected petitioner's challenges to certain conditions that the city placed on its approval of petitioner's application to divide his 1.06 acre property into three separate parcels. In particular, the hearings officer determined that a condition requiring petitioner to dedicate a two- to seven-foot wide right-of-way along the site's frontage along SE 122nd Avenue to accommodate future street improvements was not an unconstitutional exaction of property in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution under Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n , 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard , 512 U.S. 374, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994). In addition, the hearings officer determined that the city permissibly conditioned its approval on the requirement that petitioner execute street and storm sewer waivers of remonstrance for future storm sewer and street improvements. Before us, petitioner contends that the hearings officer erred in both respects and that LUBA erred in concluding otherwise. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the hearings officer's and LUBA's rejections of petitioner's unconstitutional exaction claim were based on an erroneous understanding of Nollan and *988Dolan . We also conclude that LUBA erred in upholding the condition requiring that petitioner sign waivers of remonstrance on the basis that it did. We therefore reverse and remand.

BACKGROUND

To frame the discussion, we start with an overview of the constitutional limitations on governmental exactions of private property as conditions of land use approvals. Under Nollan and Dolan , the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments permit the government to exact a dedication of private property as a condition of approval of a land use permit if the government demonstrates (1) a nexus between a governmental interest that would furnish a valid ground for the denial of the permit and the exaction of property, and

(2) that the nature and extent of the exaction are roughly proportional to the effect of the proposed development. Brown v. City of Medford , 251 Or. App. 42, 47, 283 P.3d 367 (2012). For purposes of the first element, a governmental interest is one that allows the denial of a permit if the impacts of the project, alone or with other construction, would substantially impede that interest. Nollan , 483 U.S. at 835-36, 107 S.Ct. 3141. The purpose of the Nollan / Dolan framework is to "enable permitting authorities to insist that applicants bear the full costs of their proposals while still forbidding the government from engaging in 'out-and-out ... extortion' that would thwart the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation." Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management Dist. , 570 U.S. 595, 606, 133 S.Ct. 2586, 186 L.Ed.2d 697 (2013) (ellipsis in original).

In this case, petitioner applied to the city to divide his property into three separate parcels. Under petitioner's proposal, an existing residence would remain on one of the new parcels and two new single-family residences would be permitted to be constructed on the other two parcels. The property fronts on two streets, SE 122nd Drive and SE 124th Avenue. The widths of those streets do not meet current city standards. The streets also do not contain improvements meeting current city standards and are not wide enough to accommodate those improvements.

The city approved petitioner's application, but imposed several conditions of approval. First, the city required petitioner to dedicate additional rights-of-way along SE 122nd Drive and SE 124th Avenue so that those streets could be brought into compliance with city standards governing street width and improvements. It required those dedications to meet city standards even though it had found, when evaluating the transportation impacts of petitioner's proposed development, that "the transportation system is capable of safely supporting the proposed development in addition to the existing uses in the area for all travel modes" and that "[n]o mitigation is necessary for the transportation system to be capable of safely supporting the proposed development in addition to the existing uses in the area." The city also imposed a condition requiring that petitioner "complete

street and storm sewer waivers of remonstrance (for future street and storm sewer improvements) as required by the City Engineer."

Petitioner appealed the decision to a city hearings officer. He challenged the condition requiring that he dedicate additional rights-of-way along SE 122nd Drive and SE 124th Avenue, and also the condition requiring that he sign waivers of remonstrance. He argued that the right-of-way dedication requirements were unconstitutional because they were not supported by findings that the impacts of the proposed development were sufficient to justify the conditions under the analysis required by Nollan and Dolan , especially in view of the city's findings that the transportation impacts of the project were insufficient to require mitigation. He further contended that the requirement that he sign waivers of remonstrance violated Portland City Code (PCC) 33.800.070.

In response, the city abandoned the condition requiring that petitioner dedicate a right-of-way along SE 124th Avenue.

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Bluebook (online)
428 P.3d 986, 293 Or. App. 283, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hill-v-city-of-portland-orctapp-2018.