Were Boise homeowners illegally taxed? Idaho Supreme Court to weigh in
The curtains are closing on a long-running legal battle over Boise's Harris Ranch neighborhood.
Since 2021, residents have gathered and fought the area's Boise-based developer and the city of Boise over a special taxing district they say is unlawful and unfair. Both sides presented oral arguments June 9 to the Idaho Supreme Court and now await a decision that could come in weeks. Or, more likely, months.
The homeowners say the special taxing district, called a community infrastructure district, forced them to unfairly foot the bill for $22 million in payments to the developer of Harris Ranch in October 2021.
Barber Valley Development, which is building the Boise neighborhood on behalf of the Harris Family Limited Partnership, rejected the claims that the payments were illegal and argued that they have followed the rules outlined by the Idaho Legislature.
The Legislature permitted community infrastructure districts in 2008 with the hope that they could help make growth pay for itself. In such a district, homeowners pay extra taxes for local public improvements like roads and roundabouts. In theory, this means that a resident of the Boise Bench or North End wouldn't be forced to pay higher taxes for things they wouldn't need or use such as sewer lines.
Led by residents Larry Crowley and Bill Doyle, the homeowners with the Harris Ranch CID Taxpayers Association say the district made them pay up to 40% higher taxes than those outside the district — including homes across their street that were intentionally cut out of the district boundaries.
An Ada County judge threw out all 16 of the homeowners' arguments in April 2023. The homeowners appealed to the state's highest court almost five months later.
'It's been a lengthy effort,' Crowley said by phone after Monday's oral arguments. 'We've done our part, now it's in their court.'
Crowley said that they were hopeful that there could be some relief coming for homeowners, but that he was proud of the work the community had done.
'It's been in many ways a very humbling experience,' Crowley said. 'We're just really thankful for the opportunity to get to this point.'
Doug Fowler, the president of Barber Valley Development, said that he was looking forward to putting the legal issues behind him and continuing to build out the neighborhood, some of which has been paused amid the court battle.
After chiding both sides for using confidential information from an accidental email in their arguments, the Supreme Court justices grilled lawyers representing the homeowners, the city and Barber Valley Development. They poked holes in arguments, seemed to cast doubt on both sides and tested the boundaries of an issue that has never been litigated before.
Though the lawyers and justices touched on several topics on the sprawling lawsuit's one-hour oral argument, possibly the most poignant was whether the district was formed correctly in 2010 and whether that issue could be used in arguments.
Nicholas Warden, the attorney for the neighbors, argued that the district was created by the vote of a single resident on land outside the district who would never need to pay the extra taxes. No one who would eventually pay the taxes took part in the vote.
This, Warden said, should invalidate the $22 million payment in 2021 because the creation of the bonds required approval by a supermajority of residents.
'Our position is that an assent of a supermajority requires at least one person, in other words more than none, of the people who are going to pay the tax to vote on it,' Warden said. 'That could easily have occurred in this place.'
Justice Greg Moeller said there are plenty of cases where people may buy a house, move in and need to pay into something like a school bond or mosquito abatement district even if they hadn't voted for it. The homeowners, he said, bought their homes knowing of the district.
'I understand why they're unhappy with this,' Moeller said. 'But it's not unusual for people to buy land in a district with restrictions that they're helpless to change by the time they move in.'
Melodie McQuade, an attorney with Boise's Givens Pursley law firm representing the infrastructure district, said there was no evidence that the vote was illegal, and the creation of the district wasn't up for debate in the case.
'The plaintiffs want to challenge the formation of the district and then multiple decisions that have been made over the past several years,' McQuade said. 'You can't reach back that far.'
A key moment came when Moeller asked McQuade if the infrastructure district could be considered a legal form of taxation without representation — an argument that Crowley and Doyle have made since they first sued.
'I don't believe so,' McQuade said. 'I believe this is a mechanism for infrastructure to be paid for in perhaps a slightly different way than if the developer baked it into the lot costs.'
Moeller said that it seemed as if it could be a way to hide who voted for tax increases and would prevent them from being able to hold anybody accountable.
'My best answer to that, conceptually, is that it shouldn't be disqualifying that a small group of people would vote to create the district,' McQuade said. 'It's not surprising that these big pieces of land would have very few voters, because they're all owned by maybe even one family.'
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