Home Builders Ass'n of Metropolitan Portland v. City of West Linn

131 P.3d 805, 204 Or. App. 655, 2006 Ore. App. LEXIS 422
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMarch 15, 2006
DocketCCV0207049; A123168
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 131 P.3d 805 (Home Builders Ass'n of Metropolitan Portland v. City of West Linn) 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
Home Builders Ass'n of Metropolitan Portland v. City of West Linn, 131 P.3d 805, 204 Or. App. 655, 2006 Ore. App. LEXIS 422 (Or. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

ROSENBLUM, J.

Petitioners in this writ of review action are developers and a developers’ association. They initiated this action after respondent, the City of West Linn, adopted a resolution that increased the system development charge (SDC) that the city imposes on new development to pay for parks and recreation facilities. Petitioners asserted, among other things, that the SDC does not conform to statutory and other legal requirements and is not supported by substantial evidence. The trial court ultimately rejected petitioners’ challenges. On appeal, petitioners renew a number of their challenges in six assignments of error. We affirm.

Before we recite the pertinent facts of this case, a brief explanation of some of the legal principles at issue is helpful. A system development charge is a one-time fee imposed by a governmental unit in response to the increased burden on public facilities created by new development. Oregon law authorizes governmental units to pass resolutions imposing SDCs to offset the cost of providing, among other things, parks and recreation facilities. ORS 223.297 - 223.314.1 SDCs may take one (or both) of two forms, depending on the capacity of existing facilities to satisfy present and future needs. If, for example, a local government concludes, as a matter of policy, that its parks and recreation system is more than adequate to meet the needs of the existing population — in other words, the system has excess capacity — the government may charge new residents a “reimbursement fee,” which essentially allows new users to buy into the existing system. ORS 223.299(3).

If, on the other hand, the local government concludes that the system is adequate only to meet the needs of the existing population — that is, it has no excess capacity — the government may charge new residents an “improvement fee,” essentially requiring new users to pay for increasing the capacity of the system to accommodate the new users. ORS 223.299(2). Improvement fees, in other words, are intended to stop the addition of new users from diluting the level of service enjoyed by the existing population. However, [658]*658improvement fees must be calculated so that new users bear only the burden of maintaining that level of service — that is, the costs attributable to development; they may not be calculated or used to increase the level of service for the existing population. ORS 223.304(2)(a).

Turning to the facts of this case, we review the record that was before the West Linn City Council, the body whose decision is the subject of this writ of review. Constant Velocity Corp. v. City of Aurora, 136 Or App 81, 85, 901 P2d 258 (1995). The material facts are largely procedural and, except as noted, are not in dispute. The City of West Linn has imposed a parks and recreation SDC since 1991. The city evaluates the level of service of its system in terms of the number of acres of parks and “open space” per 1,000 residents. It has determined, as a matter of policy, that its parks and recreation system offers an acceptable level of service if it has between 10.39 and 13.7 acres of park space and between 4 and 6 acres of open space per 1,000 residents.

In 2000, the city reevaluated its system to determine its adequacy with respect to projected population growth. It concluded that its current inventory of parks and open space had no excess capacity to accommodate growth. It also determined that, by the year 2015, the population would have grown from 22,835 to 31,626, an increase of 8,791 people. Pursuant to ORS 223.309, the city developed a capital improvement plan (CIP), a list of projects intended to increase the capacity of the system. Based on the CIP, the city determined that maintaining the level of service would require purchasing and developing 49.29 acres of park space and 43 acres of open space — a total of92.29 acres — at a cost of $1,540 for each new resident. The city therefore passed a resolution that required developers to pay an improvement fee SDC of $4,082 for each new single-family dwelling built and $2,886 for each unit in a new multi-family dwelling.2

In 2002, after reviewing the work of consultants and extensive written and oral testimony from members of the public, including petitioners, the city revised the CIP and [659]*659adopted a new resolution that increased the amount of the SDC. According to the city, the resolution increased the SDC to account for (1) an increase in the city’s projected population growth, (2) increases in the projected costs of various projects included on the 2000 CIP, and (3) costs that had not been included on the 2000 CIP because they were not known at the time. When the resolution was adopted, West Linn’s population had grown to 23,380 and was projected to reach 31,723 by 2015 — 97 more people than the earlier projection, but an increase of8,343 people over the 2002 population. The 2002 CIP called for the acquisition of86.07 acres of parks and 43.0 acres of open space.3 The resulting improvement fee SDC was $8,228 per single family dwelling and $5,817 per unit in multi-family dwellings.

In response to the increased SDC, petitioners initiated this writ of review action on July 1, 2002.4 Before the trial court, petitioners raised a number of objections to the substantive and procedural legality of the new SDC, some of which are pertinent to this appeal; we describe petitioners’ arguments in detail below. For the moment, it suffices to say that the trial court rejected all of petitioners’ objections except for one: petitioners asserted that the city is authorized to charge an SDC to pay for parks and recreation space, but not necessarily “open space.” The trial court could not discern from the record whether some or all of the open space that the city proposed to fund with the SDC qualified as parks or recreation space. It therefore entered a judgment remanding the case and directing the city to make findings determining whether all of the open spaces that it considered in calculating the SDC were assets or facilities used for parks and recreation. The judgment stated that the court would retain [660]*660jurisdiction over the matter to determine the legality of any modifications made by the city.

On remand, the city found that some, but not all, of the open space in its inventory qualified as parks or recreation space; it eliminated 22.8 acres that had previously been included. The adjustment meant that the level of service was lower than had previously been calculated, so the city concluded that, to maintain the level of service, it did not need to acquire as much open space as the 2002 CIP called for. Accordingly, it revised the CIP, reducing the open space figure from 43 acres to 32.6. On March 3, 2004, the city adopted a new resolution reducing the SDC by $199 for single family dwellings and $140 per unit for multi-family dwellings.

The trial court entered a supplemental judgment affirming the new resolution.

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Bluebook (online)
131 P.3d 805, 204 Or. App. 655, 2006 Ore. App. LEXIS 422, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/home-builders-assn-of-metropolitan-portland-v-city-of-west-linn-orctapp-2006.