Municipal Land Use Appeals – Ripe for Confusion?

For the past decade, Maine's Supreme Judicial Court has been struggling to find a way to reduce – and expedite – the number of land use appeals going through the courts. It took the opportunity to make a sweeping new rule in the case of Bryant v. Town of Camden, decided last year. In Bryant, an abutter appealed the decision of the Town of Camden's Zoning Board of Appeals to issue a special exception permit to a local inn that wished to expand. The Town's Zoning Ordinance gave jurisdiction to the Board of Appeals to decide such applications by reviewing certain criteria aimed at evaluating whether the development plan would cause undue burdens on the neighborhood. Since the ZBA issued the decision, it was appealed directly to Superior Court. The Superior Court upheld the ZBA's decision and the abutter appealed to the Law Court.

To the surprise of the parties, the Law Court ended up dismissing the appeal based upon issues that had not been raised by either party. The decision begins:

In an effort to reduce confusion, costs, and delay in municipal appeals, we today announce more clearly the need for finality in municipal decisions before a municipal entity’s action may be appealed to the courts. Specifically, we consider when a municipal agency’s decision constitutes a final action subject to immediate judicial review and when, instead, additional municipal decision making is necessary before an appeal is ripe for consideration by the courts.

The Court went on to find that because the inn would still need site plan approval from the Planning Board and Code Enforcement Officer before it could go through with the planned expansion, the appeal was not ripe for consideration by any court. The inn's owner would essentially have to get all of its permits and approvals before the abutter could appeal the issues from the first decision.

Municipal and land use attorneys across the state have been trying to determine the best way to respond to the Bryant decision. All are concerned about the amount of time and expense that might be spent on proceeding through a review process when the first step has already been challenged. I represented the Town of Camden in Bryant, and have been participating in a working group aimed at finding a legislative or procedural compromise to the concerns raised by the Court. The group has presented a proposed change to Rule 80B (which governs appeals of municipal decisions) to allow the Superior Court to decide whether it is appropriate to proceed with review despite any requirement for additional permits. The group is also working on proposed legislation to at least provide that a decision is final for appeal purposes once it has been before any board with jurisdiction over the development (as opposed to final building and occupancy permits issued by the Code Enforcement Officer or other officials).

Until there is some clarification regarding the reach of the Bryant decision, we are helping our clients implement ways to streamline or consolidate their review process on multi-stage approvals. There are a few simple strategies to do so that will reduce the burden on applicants, abutters and municipal officials alike. Please contact us if you would like more information.

*Please note that this post addresses Maine law only. To the best of our knowledge, no courts in New Hampshire or Massachusetts have applied the ripeness rule in this way.