BY ELAINE STIEB
Lake Orion Review Editor
A 2000 US Supreme Court ruling may help Lake Orion Village Council members make up their minds if they want to place a moratorium on development in certain parts of the village.
Some council members have said they would be interested in placing a moratorium on considering site plans for certain areas in the village where the new Master Plan has a different designation than the current zoning ordinance.
Although narrow in scope, the ruling involving long-time litigation in Lake Tahoe said moratoriums weren’t necessarily unconstitutional.
The specific question before the court was whether the imposition of a moratorium on a specific development in the Tahoe area was always and everywhere a ‘taking of property? (loss of use, even if temporary) requiring some type of compensation under the US Constitution.
Village attorney Gary Dovre told council members on Feb. 23 moratoriums aren’t generally favored by the courts, are subjected to close scrutiny and, at least based on published court decisions, have been rarely employed in Michigan.
‘I suggest you proceed cautiously. You have to have a specific purpose, it has to be fair and it has to be for a limited amount of time,? he said.
‘With the case by case analysis called for by the US Supreme Court decision, there is no way to guarantee that a moratorium will not be challenged or the results of such a challenge.
‘It seems to me we meet a lot of the criteria,? councilman Tom Albert said. ‘We’re concerned about over development on the lake. I think it’s fair (a moratorium). A lot of areas on the lake could be over developed.
‘We’re trying to control our destiny. This will give us some teeth.?
Although the village’s new Master Plan was adopted about a year ago, an updated zoning ordinance, to coordinate with the plan, has yet to be done by village planners.
The holdup has been that village officials have been considering changing planners. Council members recently interviewed three companies. One was McKenna & Associates, the village’s current planner.
McKenna has said it will take up to year to rewrite the zoning ordinance.
According to Dovre, a moratorium shouldn’t last longer than three to six months. ‘The longer you go, the shakier you get,? he added.
In order to try to keep within a shorter time-frame, Dovre suggested the village’s planner (whether the current one or a new one) try to cover just certain aspects of the zoning ordinance.
As an example, he mentioned mixed use zoning which has changed more than other zoning categories.
Councilman Ken Van Portfliet asked if the planning commission should give its input on a moratorium.
‘The planning commission’s position can’t hurt, but it’s not their call,? Dovre said. ‘It would create a public forum where the public could express their thoughts.
‘But if you do this, you might have a run on the village office with people trying to get plans in before the moratorium goes into effect.?
Council members decided to ask McKenna to provide them at the next meeting with a list of specific areas where the Master Plan differs from the current zoning ordinance.