Roseville Patch online reporting is here and here. Judge bio, here. Text of the ordinance, and order-opinion from the court are not conveniently online [only a Flash opinion copy is posted]. I have emailed the reporter, Scott Carlson, seeking a pdf courtesy copy.
Development impact fees can curb crabgrass proliferation, or at the least make development pay its way for its negative impacts on a community.
To many, that would be a good thing to keep profit and risk, benefit and cost, internal to developer dreams and schemes.
For now the market is helpful in curbing developer excess and Crabgrass proliferation, but only sound town ordinances can assure that all negative impacts are compensated to taxpayers. I wonder about the rationale of a Pawlenty judge not wanting to see costs of development kept internal to the project instead of internalizing the profits but socializing costs to disadvantage a town's taxpayers. It seems to cut against some propaganda-rhetoric of the right, and hence against how Pawlenty judges may be expected to think and rule.
Privatize the benefit -but- socialize the cost to taxpayers, is an approach that will always bias a market, and biasing markets cuts against the fabric of market-based economics, something that has to be known to those giving lip service to embracing market dynamics as the way capitalism should run itself.
The talk and the walk should not diverge.
_____________UPDATE____________
Hat tip to Scott Carlson, (the Patch reporter on this Roseville-developer litigation issue), for emailing a courtesy copy of the Judge's opinion.
Questions of a city's power to impose "impact fees" go back to a Minnesota Supreme Court case from 1997, Country Joe, Inc. v. City of Eagan, with some questions decided and others expressly withheld from decision then, with regard to Minnesota law governing statutory cities.
Ramsey has a Charter, you can read it online at the City website, and Courts and the legislature treat statutory and charter cities differently in some ways.
I expect Ramsey's Charter commission may want to consider this impact fee question in consultation with City Attorney Goodrich, and in light of any help League of Minnesota Cities might easily provide. The charter commission is where city deliberation should begin, if anywhere, and looking at this or not would be a discretionary charter commission decision, (unless the council would for some reason instruct the charter commission to deliberate the matter).
