I have an unusual predicament. The parcel is the SW 1/4 of the SW 1/4 of Section 24. The north half of the parcel is within the County of S.L.O. and the South portion is within the City of S.L.O. Over the years, the County issued numerous development permits calling out ONLY the portion of the parcel within the County jurisdiction. So, under SMA 66499.35(c) we applied for a certificate of compliance through the County and they issued the certificate for only the north portion in 2025.
The City is now refusing to issue a cert. on the remaining portion of the property, since they never issued permits for the portion within the City. So, how only half the parent parcel is a legal lot.
What is the remedy?
1) Conditional cert. within the city?
2) Parcel map with just one parcel within the City's jurisdiction?
3) Parcel map with two parcels processed through both agencies?
thanks
City - County dispute
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mbstanton
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City - County dispute
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hellsangle
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Re: City - County dispute
I would suggest a chain of title back to Day One on that portion below the C/C. (assuming that has not already been done.)
If a Certificate of Compliance (C/C) was issued - that means the County gave their 'blessing' that it is a legal and separate parcel, (assuming the C/C description does not include the southerly portion that is within the city).
I don't understand why one would need a Certificate of Compliance for the southerly portion. If the northerly portion is legal & separate - its legal and separate! If a transfer of ownership were to occur on the parcel issued the Certificate of Compliance, wouldn't there be remaining parcel in the city? If not - isn't that a "taking" by the city?
Crazy Phil's worthless two cents
If a Certificate of Compliance (C/C) was issued - that means the County gave their 'blessing' that it is a legal and separate parcel, (assuming the C/C description does not include the southerly portion that is within the city).
I don't understand why one would need a Certificate of Compliance for the southerly portion. If the northerly portion is legal & separate - its legal and separate! If a transfer of ownership were to occur on the parcel issued the Certificate of Compliance, wouldn't there be remaining parcel in the city? If not - isn't that a "taking" by the city?
Crazy Phil's worthless two cents
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jamesh1467
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Re: City - County dispute
I’m guessing you know that option 3 is the way to go and you just want confirmation? If everyone signs off on the new line no one can complain in the future. But yes, that is more of a bureaucratic headache.
You're in grey territory. Its all about what you can convince people to do to move forward. You realistically have two parcels on the county line already. Yes in title you don’t have that, but in practice you do. Hard to pull permits on one side for the other side, etc.
The first question is whether the property owner wants to keep the lot and give up their right to potentially put in a large improvement that crosses the city line without annexing into the city. Now that’s going to be decently hard with zoning uses and everything to actually get permits under the law for that. You need your uses to line up with existing zoning on the parcel and the general plan on both sides of the line so that you can't get tied up in zoning issues, etc. But say for tax reasons they want to put a golf course over this land and the taxes are less in the county once its improved into the golf course. Then push for keeping it one parcel so the taxes are less on half of it. Etc. You put most of your clubhouse and everything over on the county side then you put a couple of holes on the city side. Claim the improved portion of your assessed land in the city is way lower than the county side. All the proshop sales happen for sales tax in the county not the city. Etc. The city and county would likely eventually fight about the tax assessment. But still. Thats not really your fight as much as it is theirs and how much of your money they split from you between themselves. There's a shopping mall that straddles the New Hampshire Massachusetts line for a reason
Or there are even alternatives where you can pull permits on the county side showing the full improvements, even on the city side, and as long as the county approves the permits, it gets pretty grey on whether anyone can stop those permits to build the golf course on the city side until you go to court and solve it. You would have approved permits to build on that parcel. Also its been a while since I did this, but I thought your taxes got reassessed when you do the split. So, unless they are improving/selling the next 5 years, where you know you are not going to care that much about the tax reassessment you might want to hold off on this. Or make sure you know how the taxes are going to work out by doing the split. Not exactly sure how it would be taxed right now and I haven’t done a map myself in awhile but if memory serves the split likely triggers a reassessment. So make sure you fully vet that.
There are reasons to push and keep this one parcel, and you should be able to push to keep the parcels the same if you really want to. Title rights for private property owners and jurisdictional governance rights are separate and will be treated separately under most interpretations. If you have a reason to keep the parcels one parcel so your improvements can cross the city line, you can push for it and then option 1 is the way to go.
The property owner gives up rights that could be beneficial to them by doing a map. But I can only think of a few uses that would actually be beneficial for a future project like a golf course, once you throw in the ability to actually use the land now with current zoning codes. But assuming you want to split the parcels to make the permitting easier, the second and more important question becomes who signs it. You know the answer to that to make sure you don’t have problems in the future. If everyone signs off on the lot split, no one can complain about it later.
The second question really is: Does to county actually need to sign it for a parcel in the city if you don’t want the county to sign it? Its really more the property owners choice than anyone elses because they own the underlying title right's that should control and I would say no if you really want to do it. There are a lot of cases that say private title lines are not the same as governance lines.
Virginia v. Tennessee (1893) 148 U.S. 503
Nebraska v. Iowa (1892) 143 U.S. 359
City of Los Angeles v. City of San Fernando (1975) 14 Cal.3d 199
People v. County of Marin (1894) 103 Cal. 223
Again most of this is related to taxes. But there does seem to be a lot of precedent that says the county couldn’t ever exert jurisdiction past the city limit line. So as long as the parcel map calls the city line as the edge of the new parcel, you should be able to get away without having the county sign it.
There is also a claim that the county made a de facto subdivision anyways by issuing a certificate of compliance for ONLY their portion, as Hellsangle mentioned. So you should be pretty supported in doing this with the actual actions the county has taken over the years. I don’t think there's a “right” answer until you go to court. But I would think it’s a pretty safe bet you could get away without having the county sign it.
Also, there are other agreements, obviously, that could solve this beyond the 3 options mentioned. You can change the line between the city or the county. Etc. Go through all the LAFCO stuff. There's also a chance you could do a quiet title to get the county certificate of compliance to apply it to the city side and have the court say so. Especially if your parcel’s chain of title in its current configuration predated the city-county line. Because your original jurisdiction that governed your parcel before the line was established issued a certificate of compliance. You have a certificate of compliance on the parcel from the original jurisdiction that governed your parcel and made it legal. You can try to claim your legal parcel claim from the county predates any rights the city has to issue a certificate of compliance on the parcel as a whole, because your title rights predate the city-county line that created the rights the city got for the city to exert its jurisdiction on your parcel anyway. Try and claim the city doesn't even hold the right to issue a certificate of compliance. Want to make some landmark case law in the SMA? Give that one a shot.
I don’t think these are good solutions. I think you are debating the good ones. Just wanted to throw them out there.
So in summary
1) do you actually want to split the parcel?
No, push for option 1. Or push the county to allow you to do whatever you want to do on your parcel. The county already did a certificate of compliance. So its definitely possible and follows the way the parcel has been treated. Is it legally correct? Only a judge is going to tell you anyway, so if you can convince people to do it, just do it and get it done.
2)If you want to clean up the parcels for development and are willing to split the lot, the question becomes how “nice” the county will be in cleaning all this up?
If they are going to be friendly, go for option 3 so its clean for everyone. Everyone moves on, and there are nice, clean lines along the jurisdictional boundaries for everyone to understand in the future. If they are not, you should be able to push for option 2 if you really want it. But I would imagine a county would be more willing to help on a map/easier to work with for something like this than a city.
Goodluck.
You're in grey territory. Its all about what you can convince people to do to move forward. You realistically have two parcels on the county line already. Yes in title you don’t have that, but in practice you do. Hard to pull permits on one side for the other side, etc.
The first question is whether the property owner wants to keep the lot and give up their right to potentially put in a large improvement that crosses the city line without annexing into the city. Now that’s going to be decently hard with zoning uses and everything to actually get permits under the law for that. You need your uses to line up with existing zoning on the parcel and the general plan on both sides of the line so that you can't get tied up in zoning issues, etc. But say for tax reasons they want to put a golf course over this land and the taxes are less in the county once its improved into the golf course. Then push for keeping it one parcel so the taxes are less on half of it. Etc. You put most of your clubhouse and everything over on the county side then you put a couple of holes on the city side. Claim the improved portion of your assessed land in the city is way lower than the county side. All the proshop sales happen for sales tax in the county not the city. Etc. The city and county would likely eventually fight about the tax assessment. But still. Thats not really your fight as much as it is theirs and how much of your money they split from you between themselves. There's a shopping mall that straddles the New Hampshire Massachusetts line for a reason
Or there are even alternatives where you can pull permits on the county side showing the full improvements, even on the city side, and as long as the county approves the permits, it gets pretty grey on whether anyone can stop those permits to build the golf course on the city side until you go to court and solve it. You would have approved permits to build on that parcel. Also its been a while since I did this, but I thought your taxes got reassessed when you do the split. So, unless they are improving/selling the next 5 years, where you know you are not going to care that much about the tax reassessment you might want to hold off on this. Or make sure you know how the taxes are going to work out by doing the split. Not exactly sure how it would be taxed right now and I haven’t done a map myself in awhile but if memory serves the split likely triggers a reassessment. So make sure you fully vet that.
There are reasons to push and keep this one parcel, and you should be able to push to keep the parcels the same if you really want to. Title rights for private property owners and jurisdictional governance rights are separate and will be treated separately under most interpretations. If you have a reason to keep the parcels one parcel so your improvements can cross the city line, you can push for it and then option 1 is the way to go.
The property owner gives up rights that could be beneficial to them by doing a map. But I can only think of a few uses that would actually be beneficial for a future project like a golf course, once you throw in the ability to actually use the land now with current zoning codes. But assuming you want to split the parcels to make the permitting easier, the second and more important question becomes who signs it. You know the answer to that to make sure you don’t have problems in the future. If everyone signs off on the lot split, no one can complain about it later.
The second question really is: Does to county actually need to sign it for a parcel in the city if you don’t want the county to sign it? Its really more the property owners choice than anyone elses because they own the underlying title right's that should control and I would say no if you really want to do it. There are a lot of cases that say private title lines are not the same as governance lines.
Virginia v. Tennessee (1893) 148 U.S. 503
Nebraska v. Iowa (1892) 143 U.S. 359
City of Los Angeles v. City of San Fernando (1975) 14 Cal.3d 199
People v. County of Marin (1894) 103 Cal. 223
Again most of this is related to taxes. But there does seem to be a lot of precedent that says the county couldn’t ever exert jurisdiction past the city limit line. So as long as the parcel map calls the city line as the edge of the new parcel, you should be able to get away without having the county sign it.
There is also a claim that the county made a de facto subdivision anyways by issuing a certificate of compliance for ONLY their portion, as Hellsangle mentioned. So you should be pretty supported in doing this with the actual actions the county has taken over the years. I don’t think there's a “right” answer until you go to court. But I would think it’s a pretty safe bet you could get away without having the county sign it.
Also, there are other agreements, obviously, that could solve this beyond the 3 options mentioned. You can change the line between the city or the county. Etc. Go through all the LAFCO stuff. There's also a chance you could do a quiet title to get the county certificate of compliance to apply it to the city side and have the court say so. Especially if your parcel’s chain of title in its current configuration predated the city-county line. Because your original jurisdiction that governed your parcel before the line was established issued a certificate of compliance. You have a certificate of compliance on the parcel from the original jurisdiction that governed your parcel and made it legal. You can try to claim your legal parcel claim from the county predates any rights the city has to issue a certificate of compliance on the parcel as a whole, because your title rights predate the city-county line that created the rights the city got for the city to exert its jurisdiction on your parcel anyway. Try and claim the city doesn't even hold the right to issue a certificate of compliance. Want to make some landmark case law in the SMA? Give that one a shot.
I don’t think these are good solutions. I think you are debating the good ones. Just wanted to throw them out there.
So in summary
1) do you actually want to split the parcel?
No, push for option 1. Or push the county to allow you to do whatever you want to do on your parcel. The county already did a certificate of compliance. So its definitely possible and follows the way the parcel has been treated. Is it legally correct? Only a judge is going to tell you anyway, so if you can convince people to do it, just do it and get it done.
2)If you want to clean up the parcels for development and are willing to split the lot, the question becomes how “nice” the county will be in cleaning all this up?
If they are going to be friendly, go for option 3 so its clean for everyone. Everyone moves on, and there are nice, clean lines along the jurisdictional boundaries for everyone to understand in the future. If they are not, you should be able to push for option 2 if you really want it. But I would imagine a county would be more willing to help on a map/easier to work with for something like this than a city.
Goodluck.