US Supreme Court unanimously rules excessive county building fees may be unconstitutional

SC Maintenance said:
I liked this one. Score a win for the little guy. In a rare 9-0 decision - the United States Supreme court ruled that builders and owners may challenge counties in court for excessive permits and fees to use your own land.

In a nutshell - they ruled that the county fee must be based on some cost - either to the county or publics loss of use, etc. Not some number designed to either deter development or stop people from using their own land, or simply collect income for the county.

Stems from a case where they county tried to charge a man $23K to put a mobile home on his own lot.

"Holding building permits hostage in exchange for excessive development fees is obviously extortion,” said attorney Paul Beard, who represented the El Dorado County homeowner. "

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-04-12/supreme-court-developer-fees

Steve Lehto weighs in (for those here that like him)

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Ya. The reality though is that little changes.
 
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skyactiv said:
Regarding property rights, I'm not pointing at anyone.

Most all of us here are two faced. You can say your for property rights, but I bet you wouldn't want to live on the outskirts of town next to a farm that was sold to make way for a mobile/manufactured home park next to you.
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Are you saying humans are hypocritical? I'm shocked. Just shocked <sarc>
 
SC Maintenance said:
Your example is a perfect one for what the supremes were saying would justify large fees - namely if the builder put MFH, it would incur a huge cost to both the county in schools, emergency services, etc, along with the entire community in more traffic, etc. So in that example the county could charge $X per unit based on all those costs.

Its the exact problem here - those costs are never counted, so everyone's fees and taxes keep going up.
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What I am saying the system is ripe and rampant with bribery.
 
Who then will be stuck with inproving the roads, schools, fire stations ,water and sewer services etc?
 
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