[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
We'll move on to our third case set for argument today, Collins versus County of Monterey, case number 23-16153.

[00:00:08] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, it's John Sosby on behalf of Mr. Collins.

[00:00:24] Speaker 04:
Oh, that's, okay, so you'll be.

[00:00:26] Speaker 03:
This is remote.

[00:00:27] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:00:29] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:00:30] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:00:32] Speaker 04:
We'll do.

[00:00:32] Speaker 04:
I'll let you know once we get set up here.

[00:00:56] Speaker 04:
Alright, Mr Sospi, you're ready.

[00:01:00] Speaker 04:
I am.

[00:01:01] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:01:03] Speaker 01:
May it please the court.

[00:01:05] Speaker 01:
Your honor, this is an appeal from a district court action where summary judgment was erroneously granted, foreclosing Mr. Collins' substantive due process, equal protection, and takings claims that arise from the county of Monterey treating his property dissimilarly without cause from all of his neighbors who have been allowed to build residences on their property.

[00:01:30] Speaker 01:
despite the county's planning staff at the time this decision was made finding compelling evidence that this was also supposed to be a developable property and despite the county having insisted that that planning staff representative go back and create reasons for the denial after having telegraphed at that hearing exactly that they were planning to deny the rezone with no reasons in front of them at the time they did so.

[00:01:57] Speaker 01:
This is the rackest of arbitrary and capricious decision making by the Board of Supervisors of Monterey County.

[00:02:07] Speaker 01:
The three claims that Mr. Collins has brought arising from the county's treatment of the property in this case are substantive due process, equal protection, and takings claims under both Lucas as a total takings as well as under Penn Central.

[00:02:22] Speaker 01:
weighing the factors that are cited in Penn Central.

[00:02:25] Speaker 04:
So can I focus, I had a couple questions on the two takings claims, the Lucas takings claim.

[00:02:33] Speaker 04:
Your argument is that you had an expert come in, as I understand it, and said that the costs in doing anything with the property now would exceed the revenues.

[00:02:47] Speaker 04:
But that doesn't address the retained value of the property.

[00:02:51] Speaker 04:
It still has some retained value, right?

[00:02:53] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, the expert witness did find that there was some retained value, although that value is value that is related to a non-economic use of the property.

[00:03:03] Speaker 01:
That's simply what could the property be sold for, undevelopable and unusable in its current

[00:03:09] Speaker 01:
naturally pristine state.

[00:03:12] Speaker 04:
And so that... But you think under Lucas we don't consider that because we only look at the economic uses and your argument is there's no economic use here.

[00:03:21] Speaker 04:
No viable economic use.

[00:03:23] Speaker 01:
That is correct.

[00:03:23] Speaker 01:
There's no viable economic use of this property.

[00:03:26] Speaker 01:
Mr. Collins is required to keep the property essentially in open space by the findings of the Board of Supervisors.

[00:03:34] Speaker 01:
The findings are in fact broad enough

[00:03:36] Speaker 01:
that not only is he not able to build a residence on the property, these findings are broad enough that they would prevent him from being able to build the allowable uses under the RCCC zoning.

[00:03:47] Speaker 04:
And wouldn't the expert rely on there?

[00:03:49] Speaker 04:
Because the district court did not accept that, right?

[00:03:52] Speaker 04:
The district court didn't find that the expert supported the no economic value position.

[00:03:58] Speaker 01:
The district court found the expert's opinions were conclusory, although I might use the word instead of conclusory, established.

[00:04:06] Speaker 01:
There was no alternative or no- Of course you'd use that term.

[00:04:09] Speaker 01:
How would you?

[00:04:11] Speaker 04:
That's how they talk about it there in Kentucky.

[00:04:14] Speaker 01:
There was no opposition that was shown, Your Honor, to the evidence that was brought by Dr. Froak, who had really almost a half century of experience in running Bible life facilities.

[00:04:27] Speaker 01:
He had worked with the Audubon Society.

[00:04:29] Speaker 04:
We're reviewing that.

[00:04:30] Speaker 04:
What's our review on that?

[00:04:31] Speaker 04:
Because obviously the legal issue we can review

[00:04:36] Speaker 04:
but where the district court basically said these expert reports don't support the position, do we owe deference to the district court on that issue?

[00:04:48] Speaker 01:
I don't believe you do in this case.

[00:04:49] Speaker 01:
This is not a Daubert decision.

[00:04:51] Speaker 01:
In fact, Dr. Froak was not sought to be excluded by the county at the time the court made the decision.

[00:04:58] Speaker 01:
This is not fact-finding by the court.

[00:05:00] Speaker 01:
I think it is also entitled to the de novo review

[00:05:04] Speaker 01:
given the fact that the court is making a decision that is not dogma related, effectively weighing in a summary judgment context improperly, the credibility and the reliability of the expert witness.

[00:05:22] Speaker 01:
In addition to Dr. Froak's opinion on the takings case, we also have the fact that sheer breadth of those six reasons that the County of Monterey

[00:05:32] Speaker 01:
adopted for the denial of the rezoning.

[00:05:34] Speaker 01:
In fact, of those six reasons, I think it's fair to characterize four of them as irrelevant to protection of the public health, safety, welfare, and morals, and the remaining two are just factually wrong and inconsistent with the findings of the county's own planning staff.

[00:05:52] Speaker 01:
The planning staff report that was created in this action found compelling evidence that the property should be developable and found that there were sites that were less than 30% slow.

[00:06:04] Speaker 01:
There were sites that were outside the view shed of Highway 1, both of which are relevant to the BSI development standards.

[00:06:11] Speaker 01:
And yet, when the county determined that it would deny the rezoning, it instructed Fiona Jensen, the planning staffer,

[00:06:19] Speaker 01:
to go and make sufficient reasons for the denial.

[00:06:23] Speaker 01:
And what did she do, not knowing what else to do, having from her deposition testimony, no guidance from the plan or from the County Board of Supervisors, she simply inverted what she had found in her report, which at the time of her deposition, she still believed to be true.

[00:06:40] Speaker 01:
Instead of there were places outside the 30% slope, she now found the entirety of the Collins property was in excess of 30% slope, which is what the county used to justify its rezoning denial.

[00:06:52] Speaker 01:
Likewise, the viewshed of Highway 1, where previously there was a finding that there were no, that not all of the property was visible from Highway 1.

[00:07:03] Speaker 01:
Fiona Jensen instead, in creating the reasons on which the Board of Supervisors justified the denial, found that the entirety of the property was visible from Highway 1, which is patently false.

[00:07:16] Speaker 01:
So those were the reasons that were cited by the County Board of Supervisors, which we have argued in our briefs, were merely pretextual as a way for the county to create

[00:07:29] Speaker 01:
without the expenditure of public funds to purchase this property and create it properly, a preserve in honor of a major deamoral who was unfortunately killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam.

[00:07:42] Speaker 01:
There was significant argument that this had been dedicated as a deamoral preserve.

[00:07:48] Speaker 01:
The county staff found that there was no compelling evidence to find that it was the deamoral preserve, but that was the motivation of at least one of the supervisors, Supervisor Adams,

[00:07:58] Speaker 01:
in taking this property or preventing this property from being developed, which constitutes a taking.

[00:08:06] Speaker 01:
And so her reasoning was that I think it's really a shame for the county to move backward with this application today.

[00:08:16] Speaker 01:
There's just too much in the stack report that's interpretation.

[00:08:19] Speaker 01:
And I just don't like it because this applicant has taken us to court.

[00:08:23] Speaker 01:
which certainly indicates a reason beyond the six reasons that were used as justification for this denial as a basis for saying, I don't like this.

[00:08:35] Speaker 01:
There was prior litigation, what we've referred to in the briefs as Collins 1, over the termination of a conservation easement.

[00:08:43] Speaker 01:
And the county insisted that that easement be terminated before it would even properly consider a rezoning application.

[00:08:50] Speaker 01:
They required that the district court enter an order on that.

[00:08:53] Speaker 01:
And so Mr. Collins, following that requirement, did take the county to court to have that easement set aside.

[00:08:59] Speaker 01:
The court did find that the conservation easement was terminated.

[00:09:03] Speaker 01:
And yet, what do we find in the six reasons that the Board of Supervisors used for denying the rezoning?

[00:09:10] Speaker 01:
One of them is that although the conservation easement has been terminated, resource conservation zoning

[00:09:16] Speaker 01:
is consistent with the original intent of the easement, which, of course, if it's been terminated, as the county required us to have found, why would that matter?

[00:09:24] Speaker 01:
Why would that be relevant to public health, safety, welfare, and morals?

[00:09:29] Speaker 01:
Why would it be relevant at all?

[00:09:32] Speaker 04:
Can I ask you about the Penn Central takings issue?

[00:09:37] Speaker 04:
That test relies on investment-backed expectations being interrupted.

[00:09:43] Speaker 04:
Isn't it true, though, that at the time of the purchase, the residential building was not even permitted here?

[00:09:51] Speaker 04:
You made an illusion.

[00:09:52] Speaker 04:
I think you said, what's the basis for his expectation that he would do?

[00:09:57] Speaker 01:
His expectation, Your Honor, is colored by the fact that all of the surrounding properties that have a desire to have a residence on them have it.

[00:10:06] Speaker 01:
Zoning is, of course, fluid, and there's an expectation that zoning may very well change.

[00:10:12] Speaker 04:
The fact that most of any case law that says that under Penn Central, it's reasonable to rely on a rezoning.

[00:10:20] Speaker 01:
Not reasonable to rely on a rezoning per se, although I will point the court to language from Palazolo versus Rhode Island, which says that.

[00:10:31] Speaker 01:
just as a prospective enactment such as a new zoning ordinance can limit the value of land without affecting a taking because it can be understood to be reasonable by all concerned, other enactments are unreasonable and do not become less so through the passage of time or time.

[00:10:46] Speaker 01:
Mr. Collins bought the property, he bought it with zoning that did not allow development of a residence on it at the time, but there's nothing to prevent him from being able to

[00:11:01] Speaker 01:
fairly be considered for a rezoning application and in fact the county's arguments in its brief suggests that Mr. Collins under Lucas continues to have economically viable uses because some speculator may come and change the zoning.

[00:11:17] Speaker 01:
Yet, they're also saying that it's speculative for Mr. Collins, and he never should have been able to consider he had investment-backed reasonable, investment-backed expectations, because he would have had to change zoning to be able to develop the property.

[00:11:30] Speaker 01:
It seems, in fairness, Your Honor, to be speaking from both sides of the county's mouth.

[00:11:35] Speaker 01:
And so consequently, yes, he did have knowledge that there was a process he would have to go through to have it rezoned, but nothing that indicates that that would be an issue.

[00:11:47] Speaker 01:
Nothing that indicates that this property is different from the others that have residences on.

[00:11:52] Speaker 01:
In fact, residences have been built on adjoining properties at higher elevation than Mr. Collins' property, the Fricky property mentioned in our brief.

[00:12:02] Speaker 01:
property only within weeks of Mr. Collins' purchase was in fact rezoned from RC to a different treatment that allowed for the development of a house.

[00:12:12] Speaker 01:
That was the Guerin property, both of which are pointed out in our briefs and which were properties that certainly would fit the problems that the county sees for Mr. Collins' property and yet both of those properties have homes developed on them.

[00:12:30] Speaker 04:
Do you want to reserve some time, unless there's questions?

[00:12:34] Speaker 04:
Do you want to reserve some time for rebuttal?

[00:12:36] Speaker 01:
I believe I would reserve the remaining time, unless anyone has any questions.

[00:12:41] Speaker 00:
No questions.

[00:12:42] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:12:44] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:12:57] Speaker 02:
May it please the court, Sam Beiderwald for the County of Monterey.

[00:13:01] Speaker 02:
I think that the appellant in this case would like to have the court to believe that this is a case about government overreach, our irrational behavior, depriving a private landowner of his property rights.

[00:13:15] Speaker 02:
That's really not the case.

[00:13:17] Speaker 02:
Now, this case is about a private landowner who made a speculative investment hoping to obtain a change in applicable regulations, which there's nothing wrong with, and people do all the time.

[00:13:29] Speaker 02:
And he failed to do so.

[00:13:32] Speaker 02:
And now he essentially wants the County of Moderate of Insurance investment by paying him the value of his property as if it was rezoned anyway.

[00:13:41] Speaker 02:
You know, this is not the law.

[00:13:43] Speaker 02:
I think if you go through each of his three claims, it's pretty clear why.

[00:13:48] Speaker 02:
The equal protection claim, while Mr. Sosby has referenced a couple of potential

[00:13:55] Speaker 04:
Comparable properties that are reviewed here for rational basis, right?

[00:13:59] Speaker 02:
Yes, this would be a class of one equal protection climate under all that

[00:14:05] Speaker 02:
And with those properties, so we need, under Olek and Gerhardt and that line of cases, we need to be able to identify direct comparators, like in the Arizona Dream Coalition cases between beneficiaries of the Dream Act versus other deferred action recipients or, you know, planners who've received a particular type of approach permit, I think, in one of the other cases.

[00:14:35] Speaker 02:
Here, no other properties were identified at all in the briefs.

[00:14:39] Speaker 02:
While they're mentioned in the reply brief, you know, the county would have addressed these issues in its, in our brief, except for they just weren't even identified in the appellant's brief.

[00:14:52] Speaker 02:
So to come here and do oral argument and claim that there are comparable properties, it seems like that issue has been waived.

[00:14:59] Speaker 02:
You know, under the takings clause,

[00:15:03] Speaker 02:
This really isn't a Lucas case.

[00:15:06] Speaker 02:
It's unclear what's been taken at all The property has the same zoning it has when it was purchased The case is going back to this to the complaint and it challenges the county's denial of a rezoning permit.

[00:15:23] Speaker 02:
It's we're well, you know Palazzo indicates that just a change in ownership doesn't and

[00:15:30] Speaker 02:
Eliminated takings claim that the counties of the Carmel area land use plan which established the current zoning was like 40 years ago It's so just dramatically outside of the statute of limitations for bringing

[00:15:41] Speaker 02:
the takings claim.

[00:15:44] Speaker 02:
But under Lucas, here there are multiple entitled uses.

[00:15:52] Speaker 04:
Mr. Collins is kind of... His argument seems to be... He agrees there's some residual value, they could resell the property, but that's only

[00:16:01] Speaker 04:
Guess 40% of what he paid for it.

[00:16:03] Speaker 02:
Is that that's that's the position of his expert He had a expert appraiser find some comparable properties and they came up with that value that and Do we look at the residual value for purposes of Lucas?

[00:16:20] Speaker 04:
takings analysis or do we only look at the economic value of

[00:16:25] Speaker 04:
what you can do with it.

[00:16:25] Speaker 04:
I know you sort of have a threshold question, which is we didn't do anything after you bought it.

[00:16:30] Speaker 04:
So you don't even get into Lucas.

[00:16:32] Speaker 02:
Sure.

[00:16:33] Speaker 02:
I think that we do look at the residual value and we also, there were entitled uses as well in this case.

[00:16:41] Speaker 02:
They may not be, you know, super duper duper valuable, but they're not zero.

[00:16:45] Speaker 02:
Lucas involved kind of a particular sort of situation where it was,

[00:16:50] Speaker 02:
not challenged, at least at the Supreme Court, that the property had zero value.

[00:16:56] Speaker 02:
Here, you know, there are entitled uses that Mr. Collins never tried to make use of.

[00:17:00] Speaker 02:
They may not be his preferred uses, but that doesn't mean that there were zero.

[00:17:06] Speaker 04:
What are those uses?

[00:17:08] Speaker 02:
They're all the types of uses that would be allowed would be some sort of science like small-scale like scientific research facility maybe like Watching, you know, there's watching.

[00:17:23] Speaker 02:
Yeah that that that type of thing.

[00:17:25] Speaker 02:
We're not saying that that there's robust, you know economic value in that but it's not zero and Beyond that, you know if you look at and I think that that

[00:17:37] Speaker 02:
The appellant in this case is really kind of misstating what economic value means.

[00:17:43] Speaker 02:
The Dr. Froak's report of the problem, I mean, setting aside what deference you owe the district court, the real issue with Dr. Froak's report is that he provides an irrelevant opinion, which is essentially that you couldn't make a profit running a nature center.

[00:17:58] Speaker 02:
on this property and you know first of all I don't know how many nature centers you know make a profit anyway but beyond that the you know the there's no right to make money with your property you know you can't just if I purchase like a single-family house that has rent control and you know I can't rent it for the cost of my mortgage that's not a taking

[00:18:29] Speaker 02:
So, and I guess going on to the Penn Central analysis, here, you know, there's negligible economic impact.

[00:18:37] Speaker 02:
The property was purchased for $129,000 even using the valuation provided by a pallet of $55,000.

[00:18:47] Speaker 02:
That's not really approaching the type of economic impact that we've seen in most, you know, cases finding a taking under Penn Central.

[00:18:57] Speaker 02:
Uh, as well, you know, again, there's a threshold issue of, you know, what did the county even do that, uh, what action was taken, but then looking at investment backed expectations.

[00:19:09] Speaker 02:
This case is pretty similar, I think, to the rent control cases, the MHC case, where, as I stated in my introduction, a parent was really betting on obtaining regulatory change.

[00:19:27] Speaker 02:
And that's, again, perfectly permissible.

[00:19:32] Speaker 02:
can be a very good investment strategy.

[00:19:34] Speaker 02:
It did not work in this case.

[00:19:37] Speaker 02:
And you don't have an investment-backed expectation in obtaining a change of law.

[00:19:44] Speaker 02:
I think the cases have been pretty clear on that.

[00:19:47] Speaker 03:
I didn't quite understand this.

[00:19:49] Speaker 03:
I thought he said he wanted to build a house for a residence for himself.

[00:19:54] Speaker 03:
Is that wrong?

[00:19:57] Speaker 02:
No, that's true.

[00:20:01] Speaker 02:
The property, there was findings that the district court made in the Collins One case that the property was purchased under values.

[00:20:11] Speaker 03:
It was betting on getting a good deal by... Yeah, and I gather from this, but from the briefs, that this is in a fairly scenic area and there are residential homes around it and there was probably a view

[00:20:30] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I mean, certainly I can understand why Mr. Collins is interested in this property.

[00:20:36] Speaker 02:
It's beautiful land in the Carmel Highlands.

[00:20:39] Speaker 02:
There are ocean views from certain parts of that property, I believe, that all large parcels.

[00:20:46] Speaker 02:
I probably have a reasonable view of Brad Pitt's house in the Carmel Highlands from there.

[00:20:53] Speaker 02:
But yeah, beautiful, beautiful property.

[00:20:56] Speaker 00:
Council Judge Gould if I could ask you a question.

[00:21:00] Speaker 00:
Yes your honor.

[00:21:02] Speaker 00:
What is the standard of review for us on the various claims and are there different standards for some of them de novo and some with deference?

[00:21:14] Speaker 02:
I don't think so.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
I think that all are de novo review of the grant of the motion for summary judgment.

[00:21:24] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:21:27] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:21:29] Speaker 03:
There are different requirements for the various types of cases.

[00:21:31] Speaker 02:
Yes, that's right.

[00:21:32] Speaker 02:
Yeah.

[00:21:32] Speaker 02:
Now, each claim has a separate legal standard, but the court, I believe, will apply the same standard review and looking at the district court's findings.

[00:21:43] Speaker 02:
And so I guess the last prong of the analysis under Penn Central is really the least important, just the character of the

[00:21:54] Speaker 02:
government action, but again, in this case, I think it favors the county's position because there's no physical invasion of the property.

[00:22:01] Speaker 02:
This is more of a regulatory decision affecting the various benefits of land ownership, but not the type of character that has been found to support a Penn Central taking.

[00:22:21] Speaker 02:
and then last I suppose is the is really a lot of the Appellant's brief is devoted to a substantive due process claim and You know again, there's a very high standard for stating a substantive due process claim or there's in no fundamental right that issue it's it's a

[00:22:44] Speaker 02:
whether it's really like arbitrary and gracious essentially.

[00:22:48] Speaker 02:
And so we have a lot of argument over whether the county's decision was right or not.

[00:22:54] Speaker 02:
And I don't really have an opinion on that.

[00:22:57] Speaker 02:
I think this is part of the, I think the county's decision was permissible.

[00:23:03] Speaker 02:
There's certainly county staff, there's no ignoring that did recommend that a change in zoning could be proper in this instance.

[00:23:18] Speaker 02:
But again, it's not a violation of your constitutional rights to have

[00:23:23] Speaker 02:
You know elected officials and disagree with their staff members that that's particularly in the context of like the county or those staff members are not appointed by by the supervisors and

[00:23:38] Speaker 02:
And some of the, you know, the idea of like the planners are, you know, making up reasons and this and that.

[00:23:46] Speaker 02:
And really that's just a product of California's Brown Act which makes decision making somewhat cumbersome.

[00:23:54] Speaker 02:
You know, there's no way to not violate.

[00:23:57] Speaker 02:
You can't have the members of the board, a quorum of the members of the board of supervisors meet outside

[00:24:05] Speaker 02:
you know, a public forum without violating the Brown Act.

[00:24:08] Speaker 02:
So, and you can't even have, you know, email chains saying they said this, they said that.

[00:24:15] Speaker 02:
You know, everything has to be done in public.

[00:24:17] Speaker 02:
So when the board, you know, makes their statements in public and the staff is asked to prepare an order for the board, they go back and, yeah, they do kind of try to guess at what the supervisors want.

[00:24:28] Speaker 02:
But the supervisors are then,

[00:24:30] Speaker 02:
Empowered as they know that's not what we meant.

[00:24:33] Speaker 02:
We can come back with a new order saying this and they in this case they signed off on the the final order without Any further revision and there's there's nothing about that.

[00:24:44] Speaker 02:
That's unusual or improper All right, I think we understand.

[00:24:49] Speaker 04:
Yeah We have your argument.

[00:24:52] Speaker 04:
All right.

[00:24:52] Speaker 04:
Thank you honor.

[00:24:53] Speaker 04:
Hey, thank you.

[00:24:54] Speaker 04:
I will give you time for rebuttal I

[00:24:59] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:25:01] Speaker 01:
I guess I will begin with about where opposing counsel left off, which is that the change from the Board of Supervisors decision from what the Planning Commission had recommended, opposing counsel would suggest that that probably doesn't

[00:25:18] Speaker 01:
have any relevance, although I would point the court to Avenue 60 Investments LLC versus City of Yuma is a case out of the Ninth Circuit in 2015.

[00:25:30] Speaker 01:
And in that case, the city's decision to disregard the zoning advice of its own experts can provide evidence of discriminatory intent, particularly when as here the recommendation

[00:25:41] Speaker 01:
is consonant with the municipality's general zoning requirements and plans proper additional evidence of animus.

[00:25:47] Speaker 01:
That is the case here where the additional evidence of animus from Supervisor Adams' comments about Hesutus and this should be the D'Amiral preserve are in place alongside the fact that the county planning staff found that a recommendation to rezone was in conformity with the zoning ordinances at the time

[00:26:09] Speaker 01:
And the action that they have taken is in fact not in conformance with the Carmel area land use plan.

[00:26:17] Speaker 03:
I didn't understand this to be a discrimination case.

[00:26:21] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry?

[00:26:22] Speaker 03:
I didn't understand this was a discrimination case.

[00:26:25] Speaker 01:
A substantive due process case, Your Honor, class of one, substantive due process.

[00:26:30] Speaker 03:
Oh, that's what we're talking about?

[00:26:31] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:26:32] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:26:33] Speaker 01:
And so in the sense that the substantive due process is raised, that is the concern there.

[00:26:40] Speaker 01:
I will mention also in responding to the previous statements, all of the uses the court asked early on in the county's oral argument, what were the uses that were permitted?

[00:26:55] Speaker 01:
And I can tell you precisely, resource dependent educational and scientific research facilities uses and low intensity day use recreation such as trails, picnic areas, and boardwalks

[00:27:08] Speaker 01:
restoration and management programs for fish, wildlife, or other physical resources.

[00:27:13] Speaker 01:
Those are the allowed uses.

[00:27:16] Speaker 01:
And so I would respectfully submit these are all at least quasi-public or public uses.

[00:27:22] Speaker 01:
Opposing counsel suggested that, for example, a nature center typically doesn't turn a profit.

[00:27:29] Speaker 01:
But I guess I'd ask the court, what else can economically viable mean

[00:27:34] Speaker 01:
Is it economically viable to have a use that does not generate any profit in excess of costs for someone who is a private owner?

[00:27:42] Speaker 01:
Keep in mind, there are only seven privately owned RCCZ properties in Monterey County.

[00:27:48] Speaker 01:
There are other RCCZ-owned properties, but they're in the public park system, or they're privately owned and used for preserve-type uses.

[00:27:58] Speaker 03:
Are you arguing that the city, that this county can't zone any property in that manner?

[00:28:03] Speaker 01:
No, I'm not arguing that they can't zone it in that manner, only that they have to have a reasonable basis for doing so.

[00:28:10] Speaker 01:
Mr. Collins' property is not dissimilar from the other properties.

[00:28:13] Speaker 01:
In fact, Dr. Froak, who was not challenged on this point at all, found that biologically and geographically, the Collins property is no different from any of the other properties surrounding it.

[00:28:26] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:28:27] Speaker 04:
Judge Gould, do you have any questions?

[00:28:29] Speaker 00:
No questions.

[00:28:30] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:28:31] Speaker 04:
Council, thank you.

[00:28:31] Speaker 04:
Thank you to both Council for your arguments.

[00:28:33] Speaker 04:
We'll submit the case and we'll move on to our... Yeah.

[00:28:40] Speaker 00:
Judge Nelson, could we please take a 10-minute break?

[00:28:44] Speaker 04:
Absolutely.

[00:28:45] Speaker 04:
We'll take a brief break while other parties get set up.