Gorin v. Board of County Commissioners

OppBnhBimer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Board of County Commissioners for Anne Arundel County (the Board) denied the appellants’ requests to rezone their property, consisting of about 600 acres, to various classifications; the appellants filed a bill for mandatory injunction in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County to set aside the Board’s adverse decisions; 1 the court upheld the Board’s refusal to grant the applications, and this appeal resulted. The County Commissioners, in a comprehensive zoning plan for the entire county adopted in 1952, had originally zoned all of the tract “agriculture.” Under that classification, in addition to farming, one and two-family dwellings are permitted on one acre lots. Anne Arundel County Code (1957) Sec. 35-38, Sec. 35-40.

The requested reclassifications for various parcels within the tract ranged from heavy and light commercial to general and garden apartments and cottage and manor-type establishments. The appellant, Gorin, a land developer, acquired the tract in 1955. The tract, located not far from the Severn River, is bounded on the west by Maryland Route 3 and on the east by the Chartwell development, within the general Greater Severna Park area. When Gorin acquired the tract, most of it was still zoned agriculture, although 107 acres had been zoned as cottage residential.

After his acquisition, Gorin obtained rezoning for an additional 20 acres as cottage residential and for 100 acres as a cemetery. No part of the cemetery has been developed. In 1964, Gorin filed six applications with the Planning and Zoning Commission to rezone approximately 637 acres of the tract for the various usages to which reference has been made. A joint hearing was held before the Zoning and Planning Commission and the Board upon the six applications, which ¹⁰⁹ were consolidated as one petition.

Thereafter, the Commission recommended favorably as to all of the rezonings but the Board, by a vote of four-to-four, failed to grant any of the applications. The failure of the Board, by an evenly split vote, to grant the applications is legally equivalent to a denial. Stocksdale v. Barnard, 239 Md. 541, 548 , 212 A. 2d 282 (1965). The case was argued below on the record made during the proceedings before the Board; no additional testimony was presented.

Judge Childs found that the proposed uses to which the tract involved would be put under the proposed reclassifications would be the highest and best use therefor but that the record was devoid of any evidence to show a mistake in the original zoning or a substantial change in conditions. Almost all of the evidence offered before the Board by the appellants went to the advantages of the proposed development of the tract and to show that the proposed land uses would be the best to which the land could be put. There was voluminous and plausible testimony as to the attractive nature of the plans for the area involved but, as we held in MacDonald v. Board of County Comm’rs, 238 Md. 549, 555 , 210 A. 2d 325, 328 (1965) : “[I]t is not the proposed treatment of a particular tract within the broad territory encompassed by the original zoning plan which governs; the impingement of the proposed rezoning upon the general plan is the criterion. See Hewitt v. Baltimore County, 220 Md. 48, 57-60 , 151 A. 2d 144 (1959).” Nor does the approval of the reclassifications by the Planning and Zoning Commission supplant the Board’s responsibility to make its own decisions.

Board of County Comm’rs v. Edmonds, 240 Md. 680, 685, 687 , 215 A. 2d 209 (1965) and cases therein cited. The Anne Arundel County Code expressly provides that “the county commissioners are alone empowered to promulgate or to amend zoning areas, zoning boundaries or zoning regulations.” Sec. 24-9. The record is devoid of any evidence of mistake in the original comprehensive zoning. The only evidence of substantial change in the conditions since the adoption of the original comprehensive zoning is contained in two plats introduced through Mr. Weinhold, an engineer called before the Board by the appellants.

One of these plats showed plans for the proposed re ¹¹⁰ location of Benfield Road, intended to serve the development, and the other, Mr. Weinhold testified, was prepared by him from the official records of the Planning and Zoning Commission, to depict the existing and proposed zoning. No testimony was offered by the appellants other than these plats as to what rezoning had taken place since the adoption of the comprehensive zoning map and Judge Childs, in his opinion, found that these exhibits standing alone did not amount to testimony in support of the contention as to the change in conditions. We find it unnecessary to pass upon the sufficiency of the two plats to show any evidence of change in conditions. In civil litigation, an interpretation of what official records show, with certain exceptions not