City of Arlington v. CPSGMHB

Holdings:

  1. A jurisdiction may support its GMA decision on the basis of evidence submitted by an interested party, even if that evidence conflicts with the report produced by the jurisdiction’s own staff.
  2. A jurisdiction’s zoning decision is reviewed for supporting evidence. The GMA does not require a jurisdiction to reach the “best” conclusion from the evidence; merely an appropriate one.

Discussion:

This case is the most recent decision in a decade long zoning fight in Snohomish County. At issue are 110.5 acres of land near the intersection of I-5 and SR-530. The land is currently divided into 9 parcels (the largest is about 20 acres) and zoned for agricultural use. Agricultural zoning has previously been adjudicated and accepted as appropriate for the land. In this case, though, the county has rezoned the land as urban commercial and wants to bring the land within the nearby UGA of the City of Arlington.

While the land is currently in agricultural use and may be economically productive, urban services in the form of water and sewer skirt its edges. Proximity to the highway system has also increased the tax value of many of the parcels. The increase in tax value, though, is a burden unsupported by potential uses of the land under the current agricultural zoning.

The county’s staff report on use of the land for urban purposes included the following conclusion: “Higher uses than farming would be difficult to locate in the area because of the floodplain constraints.” One of the property owners, though, submitted a rival report from a consultancy. The rival report includes different information and supports the conclusion that the land has productive, commercial use.

In this situation the county was entitled to zone the land as either agricultural or commercial. Since the county chose to zone it as commercial, then the court may properly rely on the consultant’s report to find the choice was not clearly erroneous.

Sources:

- posted Mar 31, 09:55 PM in

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