Residents of Galloway Village are celebrating, and a multipurpose development is back on hold.
A three-member panel of judges issued a ruling in appellate court that favors the Galloway Village Neighborhood Association’s effort to stop a multipurpose development’s construction on South Lone Pine Avenue.
The issue centered on zoning decisions. The appellate court ruled that the public can appeal a zoning decision through a petition and a public vote in a municipal election. The ruling also decided that the circuit court judge should not have stopped such an election from occurring in the case of a development proposal in southeast Springfield.
“The Springfield City Charter reserves to the people of Springfield the rights of initiative, referendum and recall,” the opinion reads, in part. “No language in the charter expressly exempts zoning matters from these rights.”
What's the background?
In 2018, about four years after Galloway Village was declared a blighted area by the Springfield City Council, Elevation Enterprises introduced a plan to develop a 100-unit apartment complex with offices and retail developments on the west side of Lone Pine Avenue near Sequiota Park.
The Galloway Village Neighborhood Association tried to stop the development from happening. Their concerns include increased traffic volume, stormwater runoff, and the potential for the neighborhood to lose its identity.
Judge Mary W. Sheffield, Chief Judge Gary W. Lynch and Judge Jennifer R. Growcock made up the three-member panel that heard oral arguments in the case on March 22. The ruling in favor of the residents of Galloway Village came down June 8.
That's bad news for Elevation, as it already owns the property.
“Simply said, Elevation does not want its success in obtaining a change in zoning from the City Council to be subject to the vote of the people,” Growcock, the opinion author wrote in the appeals court opinion. “Elevation purchased the property when it was not zoned for Elevation’s intended development. A change in zoning was required, subject to referendum from the beginning of the rezoning process, before development could begin.”
As it stands, the rezoning ordinance for the Elevation Enterprises property would be subject to a referendum election before any development may occur on the land across Lone Pine from Sequiota Park.
Judge calls city ‘disingenuous and duplicitous’
In 2018, the neighboring property owners of Galloway Village banded together to collect signatures for a petition calling for a special election with the chance to overturn the property zoning from residential, retail and limited business to a planned mixed-use development.
The neighborhood association opposed further commercial development of property in Galloway Village near a bicycle shop and nearby restaurants. Elevation Enterprises filed suit, which prevented the referendum election from occurring.
On May 24, 2021, Greene County Circuit Judge David Jones issued a ruling that stopped the plans for an election to decide the zoning case.
In his ruling, Jones found that the zoning referendum petition process found in the Springfield City Charter conflicted with state law. The lawsuit stopped the zoning case from going to voters, in spite of the neighboring property owners believing that they had the rights under the Springfield City Charter to petition for a referendum election.
Bryan Wade, the attorney for the Galloway Village Neighborhood Association, argued that Judge Jones seemed swayed late in the trial by an argument from Springfield City Attorney Rhonda Lewsader, who asserted that the property at Galloway had its planned mixed-use development zoning status the moment that the City Council approved its rezoning.
“The judge found there was no procedural defect in the referendum petition. I think we're done at that point, the election should proceed,” Wade said. “The city attorney, Ms. Lewsader, stood up and I remember it, and said, ‘But wait, there is a procedural issue here because the ordinance changing the zoning took effect immediately upon the ordinance passage and that conflicts with 89.”
In a statement issued May 24, 2021, Lewsader said the decision confirmed the city’s position that a contradiction exists in the Springfield City Charter. The contradiction, she said, is between the charter section outlining the process for referendums and the charter section detailing zoning procedures. She also pointed to a chapter in the Missouri Revised Statutes that she said dictates procedures for zoning property that conflict with the charter’s referendum procedure.
“City Council did what they felt was best in the difficult situation of receiving a zoning referendum when charter provisions conflict and conflict with state law. This decision makes clear that repealing rezoning through a general election would conflict with state law,” Lewsader said.
In the trial court ruling, Judge Jones ruled that an attempt to use the referendum petition process in the city charter in a rezoning case “would conflict with state statute,” as reported by the Springfield News-Leader on May 24, 2021.
In a concurring opinion filed alongside Growcock's principal opinion June 8, Judge Lynch called the City of Springfield's legal argument against the Galloway Village neighbors, “a disingenuous and duplicitous attempt to seek from the courts an end run around the referendum requirements in its own charter.”
Developer’s failed arguments
Elevation Enterprises argued two key points to the appeals court: that the referendum petition had errors, and that the referendum petition process spelled out in the Springfield City Charter conflicted with state law, specifically Chapter 89 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, which governs laws for planning and zoning in cities, towns and villages.
In the original trial, Springfield City Clerk Anita Cotter testified that the petitioners obtained sufficient signatures and that the Galloway Village Neighborhood Association submitted a petition that could be placed on the ballot in the August election.
“I believe that if the court found procedural defects, in other words, if Elvis Presley signed the petition 50 times, or there was some other issue there, that he might issue preliminary injunctive relief stopping the ballot, because the city of Springfield had announced to the court that this election would proceed in August, and we were pushing that deadline to get this on the ballot,” Wade said.
Wade, representing the Galloway Village neighbors, told the appellate court judges there is nothing illegal about the referendum process that has been part of Springfield’s charter since 1978.
“My clients followed that process. They got 2,000 people to sign it within 30 days. They wanted to be heard. They wanted to have a voice. The city charter says they have a voice,” Wade said.
Attorney Derek Ankrom represents Elevation Enterprises and argued on the developer’s behalf. Judge Growcock questioned Ankrom about the timing of the rezoning going into effect and the petition for a referendum election. The judge asked whether or not the pending election should have put a temporary hold on the rezoning for the Elevation Enterprises development.
Ankrom said that evidence presented at trial showed that the zoning change was immediate, as reflected on zoning maps belonging to the City of Springfield. This argument was denied outright in the appellate ruling.
1997 case with Springfield ties used in 2022
Precendence was in favor of the Galloway Village neighbors.
Wade, the attorney representing the Galloway residents, referenced Trotter vs. Cirtin, a 1997 Missouri Supreme Court case in which the court reviewed a dispute involving an initiative petition.
In that case, the Springfield City Council denied a zoning request for 37 acres of land near the intersection of Battlefield Road and U.S. Highway 65. The City Council also passed a bill calling for an election that would amend the city charter “to provide that the zoning of property shall not be subject to the initiative referendum process.”
On April 5, 1994, more than 75 percent of the Springfield voters who took part in municipal elections turned down that ballot proposal, as is documented in the Trotter case.
Flash forward to 2018, when residents of the Galloway neighborhood banded together to collect signatures for an election to overturn a zoning decision. Elevation Enterprises sued the city in an effort to stop the referendum election from happening.
“I think what the city was faced with was an ordinance that conflicted with state statute,” Ankrom said. “The city, quite frankly, didn’t know how to resolve its own ordinance, which it couldn’t get amended.”
The laws found within Chapter 89 of the Missouri Revised Statutes were passed by the Missouri General Assembly in 1939. The Springfield City Charter, Wade argued, was adopted in 1978.
Wade read a passage from Article 2, Clause 12 of the Springfield City Charter.
“It seems pretty clear to me, and it's been there since 1978,” Wade said. “In 1994, the city of Springfield put to vote whether they could exempt zoning ordinances from the referendum process. They let the people vote, and it was overwhelmingly rejected.”
