Correspondence - Item 20 (3) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Jennifer L. Hall June 17, 2025 Page 7 required use permit, the County did not have to assess the environmental impacts resulting from the removal of gravel from the river. The City of Ukiah challenged this determination, arguing that the company did not have a vested right to extract gravel from the river, and that a "use permit" was therefore required under the County's new zoning code. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument. As relevant to these proceedings,the court specifically found that the property owner could not be required to obtain a use permit to continue operating pursuant to a prior approval through the adoption of new laws. (Id. at 56.) As such, the court found that no additional use permit was required because the company had been lawfully operating prior to the adoption of the use permit requirement. Case law has repeatedly confirmed that local agencies cannot restrict prior lawful uses through the addition of future regulatory requirements. (See McCaslin v. City of Monterey Park(1958) 163 Cal.App.2d 339, 348; Hill v. City of Manhattan Beach (1971) 6 Cal.3d 279, 285 ["Although a reasonable nonconforming use of property of substandard size which creates no public nuisance forecloses the application of a subsequently enacted zoning ordinance which increases the minimum lot size, `land which has not been used for building purposes would not create a nonconforming use.' A nonconforming use is a lawful use existing on the effective date of the zoning restriction and continuing since that time in nonconformance to the ordinance."]; see also Halaco Engineering Co. v. South Central Coast Regional Com. (1986) 42 Cal.3d 52 [no Regional Board permit requirement when vested right existed];Hansen Brothers Enterprises, Inc. v. Board of Supervisors (1996) 12 CalAth 533, 552 ["Nonuse is not a nonconforming use, however, and reuse may be prohibited if a nonconforming use has been voluntarily abandoned."].) As in all of these cases, Ware and the other industrial property owners have maintained their rights to operate their properties pursuant to the uses that were authorized under the City's prior code. In light of the foregoing,it is clear that each such member has a vested right to continue to use their property in accordance with those provisions,provided future tenants continue comply with the use restrictions that were previously approved. The fact that the City has attempted to circumvent these constitutional mandates does not alter this analysis. The City's Proposed Ordinance runs afoul of these constitutional safeguards by requiring all industrial operations within the TZC Zone to implement and comply with new operational requirements that did not previously apply to industrial users. (See, e.g., Proposed Ordinance § 41-2002(a)(5)(a)(2)(C) and subsection (a)(5)(a)(3)(C) [stating that nonconforming status lost if there are three violations of Proposed Ordinance Section 41-2009; see also Proposed Ordinance Section 41-2009 [imposing new operational restrictions].) This attempts to impose new operational restrictions on uses that were previously approved,and not subject to those restrictions. As explained above, that is improper.