A City of Los Angeles home occupation permit fee has survived a legal challenge from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that the Jarvis lawsuit was filed too late, that the organization failed to follow administrative procedures for refunds and that a later repeal of the fee made claims for injunctive and declaratory relief moot. The court said a lawsuit challenging such fees must be brought within 90 days of their enactment so municipalities can have fi...

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered preparation of an environmental study on an already-completed freeway interchange in Washington state. On a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel said that the project was not exempt under the National Environmental Policy Act. "While we decline to order the interchange torn down, we direct the district court to order the requisite environmental review …" the court concluded. In 1985, the City of DuPont, between Seattle and Tacoma, identified t...

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a takings case involving a San Francisco housing law, but Associate Justice Antonin Scalia issued a scathing dissent in which he equated San Francisco's law with extortion and questioned a state appellate court's willingness to follow "takings" precedents. Ten years ago, San Francisco rejected the application of Claude and Micheline Lambert, who asked to convert 24 units of their Cornell Hotel from residential to tourist use. San Francisco's hotel c...

Property rights advocates suffered a second setback when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a takings case from Florida. A man and his mother had purchased 40 acres, including 32 acres of swampland, in 1973 and began attempting to develop a housing tract and marina in 1980. They received state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permits in the early 1980s, but one state agency asked Monroe County to reconsider the project. The landowners sued and won, and the county again granted approvals...

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand another 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, thus one striking down a zoning ordinance aimed at adult businesses. The 11th Circuit said the City of Jacksonville, Florida, impinged on businesses' free speech by requiring so-called lingerie shops — actually nightclubs with nude dancers — to get a special exemption before they could open in any but two locations in the city. The 11th Circuit said Jacksonville's zoning law gave city officials too much discreti...

Two events will shape Stanislaus County planning and development issues this year: a proposed ballot initiative to rein in urban sprawl, and a plan to encourage business development in an unincorporated community north of Modesto. Proponents of the farmland-protection initiative have until May 11 to gather signatures to place it on the November ballot after the county Board of Supervisors refused to do so. Sponsored by the group GOAL (Growth: Orderly, Affordable, and Livable), the measur...

Few other land uses inspire ambivalence like the highway, and rightly so. Like the twin Hindu deities, Brahman and Vishnu, the highway is both creator and destroyer, giving life to cities and then making them uninhabitable. Serving the role played by the railroad and the river in earlier times, the highway is the city's lifeline to the larger world. And just as the river and the railroad each gave the city a new kind of settlement, the highway has given rise to its own type of urbanism: the strip....

George B. Brewster has served as executive director of the California Center for Land Recycling since its founding in 1996. The nonprofit organization advocates sustainable community development and provides programs to facilitate redevelopment of brownfields, which are abandoned or underutilized sites hampered by real or perceived contamination. Brewster has an extensive background in real estate development, asset management and finance, and he serves on the Urban Land Institute's Infill Dev...

Voters in Culver City rejected an initiative that would have blocked a downtown redevelopment project, while voters in Benicia overwhelmingly approved an open space protection measure during April 11 special elections. The split decisions on growth follow March 7 balloting, when three-quarters of slow-growth measures failed. In Culver City, which lies a few miles north of Los Angeles International Airport, Measure M received only 32.8% of the vote. The complex Save Our Schools Initiative would ...

The Governor's Office of Planning and Research is insisting that cities and counties file annual general plan progress and implementation reports, but many local planners are questioning the mandate. Some planning directors do not want such reports to become political fodder because they have the potential to reflect badly on a local jurisdiction. Others say preparing an annual report is a bureaucratic exercise that takes time away from more worthwhile planning. The California County Planning Di...

There is no doubt that the Sacramento metropolitan area is awash in retail shopping development, but whether or not the region is facing an excess of retail stores is subject to debate. The question arises while a 1.1-million-square-foot regional mall prepares to open in Roseville this summer, and regional malls of similar size are proposed in Folsom and Elk Grove. Plus, the City of Sacramento continues to consider large-scale downtown retail development. In three recent studies performed fo...

A garbage company does not have legal standing to file a lawsuit regarding the environmental review of a competing company's landfill plans, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled. The three-judge panel unanimously voted to dismiss a suit filed by Waste Management of Alameda County. Waste Management argued that Alameda County should have required environmental impact report before allowing Browning-Ferris Industries to accept "designated wastes" because the county required Waste Manageme...

The Department of Fish & Game's flat fees for reviewing documents under the California Environmental Quality Act do not constitute taxes even though the fees do not reflect the exact cost of the CEQA review in every case, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled. In rejecting a Shasta County landowner's argument to the contrary, the Third District reaffirmed a longstanding principle of "takings" law that property-rights advocates have unsuccessfully sought to overturn: the courts should no...

The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear its first California Environmental Quality Act case in three years. The state's high court also agreed to review a significant brownfields case, and to let stand a controversial CEQA ruling involving water and local general plans. The court accepted for review Friends of Sierra Madre v. City of Sierra Madre, No. S085088, in which the Second District Court of Appeal invalidated an election because the city violated CEQA. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, Janua...