Erda Cmty. Ass'n v. Grantsville City

1

2024 UT App 126

ERDA COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION INC., RYAN SORENSEN, KALEM SESSIONS, AND DENISE MOODY-MARTIN, Appellants, v. GRANTSVILLE CITY, Appellee.

No. 20220760-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah

September 12, 2024

Third District Court, Tooele Department The Honorable Teresa Welch No. 200301207

Janet M. Conway, Attorney for Appellants

Robert C. Keller, Dani N. Cepernich, Nathanael J. Mitchell, and Brett M. Coombs, Attorneys for Appellee

Judge Ryan M. Harris authored this Opinion, in which Judges Michele M. Christiansen Forster and Ryan D. Tenney concurred.

OPINION

HARRIS, JUDGE

¶1 At issue in this case is whether Grantsville City (Grantsville) lawfully annexed 550 acres of land (the Property) into its boundaries in August 2020. Both Grantsville and the owner of the Property were in favor of the annexation. But the Property was located, at the time inside the boundaries of a proposed new city: Erda. Vehemently opposed to the annexation stood certain members of the community who supported Erda's ongoing and then-incomplete incorporation process, including appellants Ryan Sorensen, Kalem Sessions, and Denise Moody-Martin (collectively, Sponsors)-three of the sponsors of the Erda incorporation petition-and including other community members who had formed appellant Erda Community Association Inc. (the Association).

¶2 Just a few weeks after Grantsville finalized the annexation Sponsors and the Association (collectively, Appellants) filed a petition in district court challenging it. Eventually, however, the court dismissed the petition on summary judgment, concluding (among other things) that Appellants lacked statutory standing to challenge Grantsville's annexation of the Property. Appellants contest that dismissal order and point out that they brought both statutory and constitutional challenges to Grantsville's annexation. We agree with the district court, and with Grantsville, on the question of whether Appellants have statutory standing to bring statutory challenges to the annexation: they do not. But the district court did not assess whether Appellants have traditional standing to bring constitutional challenges to the annexation, and we therefore remand the case to the district court for that assessment to occur in the first instance.

BACKGROUND^[1]

Incorporation of the New City of Erda

¶3 Appellants describe Erda as "a rural, agriculture-based area" situated in Tooele County between the cities of Grantsville and Tooele. In 2018, Erda was a town located within unincorporated Tooele County, see Tooele County v. Erda Cmty. Ass'n, 2022 UT App 123, ¶ 1 n.1, 521 P.3d 872, and some of its residents were "concerned about their area being developed into a higher density residential area" and wanted more flexibility to be able "to protect open space and their rural, agricultural community." To this end, Sponsors initiated the process of incorporating a new city, known as Erda, and in October 2018 they asked the lieutenant governor's office to conduct a study aimed at ascertaining whether incorporation of the new city would be feasible. See generally Utah Code §§ 10-2a-101 to -510 (2018) (the Incorporation Code).^[2] With the request, Sponsors submitted proposed municipal boundaries for the new city, and the study-which was conducted over the next year or so-used the proposed boundaries as parameters for measuring feasibility.

¶4 The feasibility study was completed in February 2020, and it concluded that incorporation of the new city was "feasible and would not place an additional tax burden on property owners in the proposed incorporation area." Thereafter, two public hearings were held, one on March 23 and the other on March 30, where the results of the study were presented to members of the public. After that, Sponsors set about gathering the requisite number of signatures from property owners inside the proposed incorporation area. See id. § 10-2a-202(2)(a). Finally, on June 2, 2020, after they had gathered enough signatures, Sponsors officially submitted to the lieutenant governor a petition (Incorporation Petition) "to place Erda's incorporation measure on the ballot." Shortly thereafter, the lieutenant governor's office certified the Incorporation Petition as valid and complete, and it placed the matter on the ballot for the November 2020 general election. In that election, the voters inside the proposed incorporation area voted in favor of incorporation, and Erda officially became a city in January 2022.

Grantsville's Annexation of the Property

¶5 While most landowners inside the proposed incorporation area were-as shown by the results of the election-in favor of forming a new city, one particular corporate landowner (Landowner) was not. In the spring of 2020, right after the feasibility study was completed, Landowner-who owned the Property-began to take steps to have the Property annexed into neighboring Grantsville and thereby excluded from the boundaries of the proposed new city of Erda. The Property is rectangular in shape, and it is located mostly well inside the boundaries of the proposed city of Erda, as those boundaries were depicted in the feasibility study. However, for a short distance, the southwest corner of the Property touches Grantsville's eastern boundary.^[3] In March 2020, Landowner submitted a petition (Annexation Petition) to Grantsville asking it to annex the Property into Grantsville. See generally id. §§ 10-2-401 to -429 (2020) (the Annexation Code).^[4] ¶6 After learning of the Annexation Petition, Sponsors (through counsel) contacted Grantsville and urged Grantsville to reject the Annexation Petition on the grounds that it did not contain certain items and information required by the Annexation Code. For instance, and among other asserted deficiencies, Sponsors pointed out that the Annexation Petition did not contain "an accurate and recordable map, prepared by a licensed surveyor, of the area proposed for annexation." See id. § 10-2-403(3)(c). After hearing from Sponsors, Grantsville informed Landowner that its Annexation Petition was indeed incomplete and that it must submit additional information-including a final plat map-required by the Annexation Code before its petition could move forward. Landowner submitted an updated Annexation Petition, including the previously missing map, on May 28, 2020, five days before Sponsors submitted their Incorporation Petition to the lieutenant governor's office.

¶7 Grantsville then certified the Annexation Petition and scheduled a public hearing of its city council, to be held on August 5, at which the Annexation Petition could be discussed. See id. § 10-2-418(5)-(6). On July 31, a member of the Association submitted a written protest of the Annexation Petition, but this protest misidentified the proposed annexed area. And on August 5, at some point prior to the hearing, Sponsors submitted a letter to Grantsville opposing the annexation, outlining what they believed to be legal grounds to deny the Annexation Petition and asserting that Grantsville's annexation of the Property would have a deleterious effect on their pending Incorporation Petition.

¶8 On August 5, the public hearing went forward as scheduled. At the hearing, Grantsville's mayor read aloud the Association member's protest as well as the letter Grantsville had received from Sponsors. The mayor then "asked if there were any other comments" relevant to the Annexation Petition, and when none were offered, he "closed the public hearing." Later, during the private portion of the hearing, the Grantsville City Council voted to approve the annexation and to adopt "Ordinance 2020-23," thereby annexing the Property into Grantsville.

The Litigation

¶9 On September 2, 2020, Appellants initiated this action by filing, in the district court, a "Petition for Judicial Review of Land Use Decision and Declaratory Relief." In their petition, Appellants named Grantsville as respondent,^[5] and they set forth two "counts." In their first count, they sought "judicial review" of a "land-use decision" that they considered "illegal," invoking Utah's Municipal Land Use Development, and Management Act (MLUDMA). See id. §§ 10-9a-101 to -1005. This claim is entirely statutory: in essence, Appellants assert that Grantsville's annexation of the Property violated various provisions of the Annexation Code. In their second count, Appellants made constitutional claims, asserting that Grantsville's annexation of the Property had violated their due process rights under both the United States Constitution and the Utah Constitution. In their prayer for relief, Appellants asked for a declaration-having earlier invoked Utah's Declaratory Judgment Act, see id. §§ 78B-6-401 to -412-that the annexation was "without authority, contrary to law, in violation of [Appellants'] constitutional rights, and void." They also asked for "[e]xtraordinary relief in the form of an order requiring" Grantsville to repeal the annexation ordinance, and for attorney fees.

¶10 In the months following the filing of the petition, the district court denied both Appellants' motion for a preliminary injunction and Grantsville's motion to dismiss, and the case moved through the discovery phase. After completion of discovery, Grantsville and Sponsors filed dueling motions for summary judgment.^[6]

¶11 In its motion, Grantsville requested that the petition be dismissed in its entirety. In particular, Grantsville argued that Appellants lacked standing to assert their MLUDMA claim because "they are not within the zone of interests protected by the relevant statutes" and because "they failed to exhaust their administrative remedies." What's more, Grantsville reasserted its position that even if Appellants could establish that they had...