News-Record.com

Greensboro City Councilman and attorney Don Vaughan this week pointed me to a state Court of Appeals decision he said might invalidate the city's decision to annex and zone an 8-mile stretch of the Urban Loop south of the city.

Vaughan voted for the annexation but against the zoning of the highway two weeks back after questioning whether the city had the legal authority to take in the ribbon of land without the permission of the state. Landowners along the loop suspected the move was designed to prevent billboards and other commercial buildings from being built along the road. The city zoned the highway "residential," and a lot of things like billboards or factories can't be within a certain distance from "residential" land, even though it's already a highway.

You can read the entire decision here. The court decides whether the Rocky Mount Board of Adjustment (set up by the city) has the authority to tell the Nash-Rocky Mount School System (schools are considered state property) whether it could use a plot of land for a bus parking lot.

The judges on the court say that while cities are allowed to control the use of land and buildings held privately, they are only given a say in where and how the state puts its buildings. The court says that cities zoning powers don't apply to state owned property unless the state is putting up a building. Under that reasoning, the city could do nothing to stop the state from using their land to build a parking lot, landfill, runway, or say an interstate highway loop.

The nut of this case for Greensboro is that the court says that the city can't zone a highway. Therefore, if a landowner feels injured by the city zoning the land, they might sue arguing the city exceeded its authority. Vaughan said he may raise the issue at the next council meeting.

Update: The legislature may have fixed this pickle when it changed the statute effective last October to give cities zoning powers over state buildings and land. The Rocky Mount case was decided based on the old language, so it's not clear whether the outcome would be different under the new law.