Correspondence - Item 20 (3) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Jennifer L. Hall June 17, 2025 Page 10 Lastly, the proposed section's attempt to say that the failure to timely renew a business license triggers a loss of nonconforming status is patently unlawful. As explained above, a vested right to a particular use can only be abandoned when the property owner intends to abandon such a use. The inadvertent failure to renew a business license absent more, is insufficient to demonstrate such intent. Furthermore,the existence of a business license or not,has nothing to do with the property owners' vested right to continue to lease and/or operate its property in a particular manner. 3. The Citv will Be Liable for Significant Inverse Condemnation/Takings Liability if it the Proposed Ordinance is Approved The United States and California Constitutions prohibit government actions resulting in the "taking"or"damaging" of private property without payment of just compensation to the property owner. (U.S. Const. amend.V&Cal. Const.,art.I, § 19.) Property is taken or damaged for inverse condemnation purposes even when the government action results in"an intangible intrusion onto the property has occurred which has caused no damage to the property but places a burden on the property that is direct, substantial, and peculiar to the property itself." (Oliver v. AT&T Wireless Services,76 Cal.App.4th 521 (1999).) As currently drafted,the City's Proposed Ordinance would render Ware's and other industrial property owners' legal, fully-vested uses moot simply because one of their tenants leaves their building, or because the City says so. The Proposed Ordinance also severely damages industrial property owners' interests in several respects, ultimately thwarting its investment-backed expectations, in which each property has vested rights. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, the Takings Clause embodied in the Fifth Amendment is designed to"bar[] Government from forcing some people alone to bear the public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." (Lingle v. Chevron Corp. (2005) 544 U.S. 528, 537 [quoting Armstrong v. United States (1960) 364 U.S. 40, 49].) By purporting to eviscerate the industrial property owners' vested rights to continue to operate in accordance with their existing entitlements and approvals, while not providing any of the necessary constitutional safeguards, the City has committed an uncompensated taking. At a minimum, if the Proposed Ordinance is adopted as is, the City will have destroyed their investment-backed expectations for their respective properties. Under Penn Central Transpiration Company v. New York City, "[t]he economic impact of the regulation on the claimant, and particularly, the extent to which the regulation has interfered with distinct investment-backed expectations" are relevant considerations and factors in determining whether inverse condemnation without just compensation has transpired. (Penn Cent. Transp. Co. v. New York City (1978) 438 U.S. 104; see also Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) 141 S. Ct. 2063, 2069 [stating that to determine whether a restriction is a taking, the Court has applied the flexible approach of considering factors such as the economic impact of the regulation and its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations]; Shaw v. County of Santa Cruz (2008) 170 Cal.