Via a comment on WUWM, the Utah State Supreme Court ruled that the citizens of Sandy fully complied with the law and should get a referrendum about a zoning change:
The court ruled this zoning issue is subject to a referendum, the group got enough signatures, and it ordered Sandy to put the issue on the ballot, meaning voters will decide if this old gravel pit can become home to big-box retailers Walmart and Lowes.More here, with a map of the proposed site:
The state's high court said Friday that Save Our Communities, a group of Sandy residents who have fought big box development, had enough signatures to force a referendum on a zoning change that would allow development on a 107-acre former gravel pit at 1000 East and 9400 South....I'm sorry I missed this when it was announced two weeks ago. As surprising as this may seem, I support this ruling (see caveat below), since the law is the law, and should be followed and enforced. Given the increasing powers weilded by zoning boards, they must be subject to and constrained by the people. However, for the consumers of Sandy, I hope the referrendum fails...At issue was the percentage of signatures needed for referendum petitions. The court clarified that zoning changes are not land-use laws, which require referendum petitions to have signatures of 20 percent of residents who voted in the last gubernatorial election. After this decision, zoning law referenda need signatures from 10 percent of voters.
The full opinion of the court can be found here (in PDF).
UPDATE: I've read the opinion, and have a few comments. I concur that since Sandy has a Mayor-Council form of government, and that the council is the legislature, and that all legislative acts are referrable, that the referrendum is allowed under law.
But the court provides ZERO reasoning or evidence as to why this zoning change is not a detailed "land-use law" subject to a signature requirement of 20% of the previous gubenatorial voters, instead of the more lenient 10%. (The referrendum gatherers got 16.2% of the voters). It seems pretty sloppy and subjective to me:
The salient features shared by the three examples listed in the statute is comprehensive scope and general applicability. All three of the examples listed by the legislature relate to situations in which a municipality hasI disagree that "general applicability" is a salient feature of all three examples, since an "annexation ordinance" (one of the three specified classes of "land-use laws", is not of general applicability. Is 2/3's enough to create generality? Beats me, and the court doesn't argue. The law is unclear here, and it seems to me that the court used its judgment while pretending not to do so.
completed a highly involved undertaking, be it the development of a comprehensive zoning scheme or the annexation of property, and is attempting to finalize that process through a legislative act. Although even a text amendment to a zoning category can be a complicated and involved process, we are persuaded that such an amendment is not of the same character as the comprehensive acts
listed in the statute.
Posted by Kevin on July, 13 2005 at 10:31 AM
