This case takes us back a decade to a town’s decision to convert a
class-four road into a trail. There’s
surely a poorly conceived it-could’ve-been-a-tree-lined-trail-if-not-for-this-case
joke to be had here. But I digress.
A dozen years ago, the town’s selectboard decided that a portion
of a town highway should be reclassified as a legal trail. The town complied with the statutory
procedures for doing so, “except that it failed to formally record the
reclassification order in the land records.”
A year later, the selectboard adopted an ordinance regarding the
newly created (alleged) trail. The
ordinance contemplated that the trail would be used for recreation. The town stopped maintaining the
Trail-Formerly-Known-as-Road (or as I like to refer to it, the unpronounceable symbol,
Á). (By the way, the albums Á put out after the
reclassification were not as well-received as the Road’s albums before the
reclassification).
Without regular maintenance, the “trail” section of the road
deteriorated significantly. Eventually
(about eight years after the initial “reclassification”), nearby beaver ponds expanded
and washed it out. Now, one might think
that the town would send a cease-and-desist letter to the abutting landowners and
one of the landowners would send a great response about “dam
beavers” and the “dam letter”—such as what happened here.
No such hilarity ensued.
Instead, petitioners filed suit against the town claiming that the
reclassification attempt was ineffective and the town had an obligation to
maintain the segment. Towns are not
required to maintain trails, but are required to maintain roads. The SCOV refers to this as a “maintenance
case.”
The town defended that action, but also started a new
reclassification process in light of the legal challenge to the initial
reclassification process. The town made
various findings and gave several reasons for its decision, eventually issuing
an order of reclassification.
Petitioners appealed that order.
Their argument was, more or less, that the trial court had to appoint
three commissioners as set forth by statute because the town’s order
“altered” the highway. The parties initially
agreed that the way to the courthouse was by another provision in the Vermont statutes that allows an interested
party to appeal an order when a highway is “altered.” The trial court was skeptical about the
parties’ construct of “altered” but went along for the ride.
Here it starts to get a little complicated. Petitioners requested the trial court stay proceedings
in the reclassification case pending resolution of the maintenance case. The reasoning was that petitioner’s success
in the maintenance case would restore the trail to a road, and undercut the
reasoning in support of the current reclassification. The trial court reasoned that each case
presented distinct and separate issues, and denied the motion for a stay.
But while the reclassification case was pending, the trial court
ruled that the initial reclassification was no
bueno, because of the town’s failure to record the order in the land
records. The court then stayed the
maintenance case pending resolution of the reclassification case.
And while all this was progressing, the SCOV handed down the Road
Worrier case. In that case, the SCOV reasoned that
reclassification ain’t “alteration” under the statutory provisions that provide
for appointment of commissioners and such.
That changed the whole game.
Because a reclassification isn’t an alteration, the route to the
courthouse and the trial court’s scope of review just got a whole lot
narrower. Accordingly, the trial court
conducted an on-the-record review, did not appoint any commissioners, and concluded
that the town’s (second) reclassification decision was adequately supported by
the evidence. Petitioners
appealed.
Everything that rises must converge, and here are the arguments on
appeal: (1) trial court erred in treating this as an on-the-record-review
situation as opposed to a de novo review; (2) trial court should’ve stayed the
reclassification proceeding as requested; and (3) the town made the mess that
justified its later reclassification decision and so the record evidence didn’t
really support its decision.
First, the SCOV looks at the
we-should’ve-got-a-de-novo-review-even-though-y’all-rejected-that-approach-while-this-case-was-pending
claim. Without getting into excruciating
detail, the SCOV (more or less) says: “Perhaps you didn’t hear us the first
time: reclassification is not alteration.
You’re not getting commissioners and de novo review because the statue
doesn’t apply.” Despite petitioners’
valiant footnote-based attempts to distinguish Road
Worrier the SCOV is firm.
The SCOV next considers petitioners’ reclassification-case-should’ve-been-stayed-while-the-maintenance-case-got-resolved
argument. The SCOV notes that the trial
court found no legal requirement that the town restore the road to its prior
state. Towns have wide discretion in
maintaining class-four roads. Along that
line, there was no evidence that the town acted arbitrarily. The reason the initial reclassification
failed was because the order wasn’t recorded in the land records. Otherwise, this was simply a discretionary road-maintenance-budget
decision. Overall, it’s an interesting
discussion, but the SCOV ultimately concludes that there was “no abuse of
discretion in the court’s denial of petitioners’ request for a stay.”
Finally, the SCOV turns to the petitioners’ arguments on the
merits. The basic thrust is that the
town created the very problems (by its initial faulty reclassification) that
justified its second reclassification—that the road would cost a lot to
maintain and restore, etcetera.
Though it’s an interesting argument, the SCOV doesn’t appear to
think much of it. The trial court could
find no case law in support and the SCOV can’t either. Or maybe it doesn’t want to. The SCOV discusses the various points raised
by petitioners reasoning that on each point, the trial court found adequate
support for the town’s decision.
The SCOV then turns to petitioners’ lack-of-evidentiary-support
claims. On this tack, the SCOV notes
that review is limited to “whether there is any competent evidence to justify
the adjudication.” This does not bode
well for petitioners.
And indeed, the SCOV finds some support in the form of “any
competent evidence” for all parts of the town’s decision to reclassify the
road: (1) it would cost a lot; (2) there
was plenty of support for the conservation- and-recreation-purposed goal of the
reclassification; (3) the area had returned to being a wetland and winter
habitat and motor-vehicle use would be detrimental to wildlife; (4) the trail
was not important as a through road; (5) abutting landowners would still have
access to their parcels. In short, the
SCOV concludes that there was ample evidence and reasoning to support the
town’s reclassification decision.
Petitioners’ final argument is that the reclassification order
repeatedly refers to a decision to maintain the section-in-controversy as a
class-four road as an “upgrade” when it was
a class-four road and the town was seeking to downgrade it. The SCOV finds
this semantic anomaly unpersuasive. As
the SCOV sees it, everybody kind of thought it was a trail at that point, so no
matter what the selectboard called it, the decision was adequately
supported.
So it would seem that towns are pretty safe from heavy scrutiny so
long as they do a reasonable job of explaining a reclassification
decision. This is the second time in as
many years that the SCOV has considered this discrete issue. Who, besides Paul Gillies, knew Vermont
road-reclassification law was such a hot topic?
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