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of Mounds View Staff Item No: 6A Meeting Date: October 6, 2010 Type of Business: Discussion To: Planning Commission From: Ken Roberts, Community Development Director Item Title/Subject: Changes to Granting Variances Introduction: On July 21, 2010, the Minnesota Supreme Court published their findings in the case Krummenachervs. City of Minnetonka. This ruling has changed the long-standing analysis that cities have been using when deciding whether to approve variances. I am attaching to this report information on the new standards that cities in Minnesota should now consider with the new interpretation of the variance standard. I also am including materials and information from the League of Minnesota Cities (LMC) about variances and a short analysis done by the LMC's general counsel. Based on this recent court case and the other materials I have included, the Planning Commission needs to review and consider possible changes to how the City approves variances in Mounds View. Discussion: Since 1989, cities in Minnesota have been deciding variances based on the findings from a Court of Appeals decision (Rowell v. Board of Adjustment of Moorhead) that required the applicant to show he or she would like to use the property "in a reasonable manner that is prohibited by the ordinance." In other words, the use in question was to be reasonable under the circumstances, assuming there was some type of hardship unique to the property. The recent ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court, however, has interpreted State Statute differently. The Krummenacher vs. City of Minnetonka case dealt with the expansion of a non -conformity. The resident wanted to build a second story onto a detached garage that was already too close to the side property line but it was a legal non -conforming use. The City granted the requested variance saying that the proposed use was reasonable. The neighbor (Krummenacher) sued in district court, challenging the City's determination of undue hardship. The District Court and the Court of Appeals upheld the City's decision to allow the owner's requested variance to expand the non -conforming garage. Krummenacher appealed the lower court decisions all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court. In what some have described as a landmark decision, the Supreme Court overruled the Court of Appeals and rejected a 1989 Court of Appeals' decision by holding that a city does not have the authority to grant a variance unless the applicant can show that the property cannot be put to a reasonable use without the variance. Specifically, one can find the most important point of the case at the bottom of page 20 of the decision itself. It states: