Spring Lake Hotel and Guest House Ass'n v. Borough of Spring Lake

• Decision Date: 05 March 1985
• Citation: 199 N.J.Super. 201,488 A.2d 1076
• Parties: SPRING LAKE HOTEL AND GUEST HOUSE ASSOCIATION, Nelson A. Camp, Alice Bramhall, Ralph Davino, Michael Ingino, and Paul Sciurba, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOROUGH OF SPRING LAKE, Mayor and Council of Borough of Spring Lake, Defendants-Respondents.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 201

199 N.J.Super. 201

488 A.2d 1076

SPRING LAKE HOTEL AND GUEST HOUSE ASSOCIATION, Nelson A Camp, Alice Bramhall, Ralph Davino, Michael Ingino, and Paul Sciurba, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOROUGH OF SPRING LAKE, Mayor and Council of Borough of Spring Lake, Defendants-Respondents.

Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division.

Argued Dec. 3, 1984.

Decided March 5, 1985.

Charles R. Parker, Freehold, for plaintiffs-appellants (Sonnenblick, Parker & Selvers, attorneys; Charles R. Parker and Raymond A. Hayser, Freehold, on the brief).

Frank E. Heine, Spring Lake, for defendants-respondents (Heine & Murray, Spring Lake, attorneys).

Before Judges KING, DEIGHAN and BILDER.

The opinion of the court was delivered

KING, P.J.A.D.

The plaintiffs are an association representing 28 hotel and guest-house keepers of the Borough of Spring Lake and six individual residents and tax paying members of the association. In this law suit they attack a Borough Ordinance dating from 1948 which prohibits all on-street parking, with a few exceptions, between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. They also contend that even if the ordinance is a valid exercise of the police power, the Borough's past course of conduct should estop enforcement of the ordinance against guests of local hoteliers who park on the street overnight. We conclude that the adoption of the ordinance was a valid exercise of the police power and that the enforcement of the ordinance is not estopped by the Borough's pattern of extending courtesy against enforcement in the past to the hoteliers' guests. We affirm the judgment in favor of the defendant Borough and Council, substantially for the reasons expressed in the able opinion of Judge Milberg given orally on August 7, 1984. We also dissolve the pending stay against enforcement of the ordinance.

The Borough of Spring Lake was described by the judge as "an upper-middle-class suburban residential community of approximately 2.1 miles, consisting of 27 blocks, north to south, and 1.5 miles, consisting of six blocks, east to west." Spring Lake is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the New York and Long Branch Railroad on the west, the Boroughs of Belmar and South Belmar on the north, and the Borough of Sea Girt on the south. The permanent population is about 4,200; the summer population is about 7,500. The land use distribution is

46% --single-family detached residential

27.6%--public, quasi-public and lakes

20% --street network

2% --commercial

3% --hotels and guest houses

1.4% --vacant land.

The 35 hotels and guest houses in Spring Lake are pre-existing nonconforming uses not permitted by the current zoning ordinance. About half of these 35 establishments are open all year; the rest are open only during the summer season, Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Spring Lake has had the ban on overnight parking on the books since 1949. The Borough had enforced the ordinance against violators but also maintained a courtesy system which allowed hotel managers to call the police with the license numbers of guests' cars which could not be accommodated on the hotel premises. These cars were not ticketed. The courtesy system developed over the years because there were more cars than could be accommodated by the off-street parking facilities of some hotels and guest houses. The courtesy system was abolished in July 1983. This law suit ensued.

The original 1949 ordinance prohibited parking overnight (from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.) everywhere in town except for one block on Morris Street and an area next to the railroad station. Additional on-street over-night parking was provided by Ordinance 10 of 1978 which permitted parking for up to 72 hours, from June 15 through September 15, on a substantial portion of Ocean Avenue. Still more seasonal parking from June through September was provided by Ordinances 6 and 12 of 1984. These spaces were on the east side of Ocean Avenue and along the "Triangle" across from the Shoreham, one of the biggest hotels (108 rooms). These two amendments provided 716 additional on-street overnight parking spaces.

The courtesy system ended following notice on the July 4th weekend of 1984 when about 100 tickets were issued. The record suggests that borough residents complained of lack of enforcement. The judge found that

The number of cars belonging to the guests of the hotel and guest houses increased to sufficient magnitude that complaints were lodged by Borough residents with the police, seeking enforcement of the parking restrictions.

An acute exacerbating factor was the increase in the number of cars using the courtesy system by about 60 per night when the Shoreham Hotel lost the access to the church parking lot which it had enjoyed in the past. Council President Taylor testified

Now, what compounded that problem was that the Shoreham lost their parking lot that they were using which forced in anywhere from on a peak 50 to 60 cars more on the street. Well, the police cannot get a list of two or three hundred or a hundred even cars and license plates and go up to every car in town and say well now, is this one on the list or is it not. It just was physically impossible for the police to do it. We also didn't feel that it was fair to the rest of the citizens of the town. If I'm forced to move my cars in and out of my garage and the guy next door to me or down the street because it's a guest house is parking wherever he wants, we didn't feel that that was serving the town in any way and upsetting the citizens so we just felt that there was no easy way to handle it and that we granted relief by opening up the triangle to all-night parking, seven days a week, and we opened up the rest of the beachfront [Ocean Avenue] to take care of the overflow that the hotels or guest houses might have. But our hand was really forced by the numbers.

Paul Pozienza, supervisor of the Public Works Department, and Lieutenant Hurden of the Police Department, supervisor of the traffic safety bureau, both testified in favor of the overnight parking ban. Pozienza said the ordinance helped his department in snow plowing, street sweeping, painting traffic lines, cleaning up storm debris, leaf removal, and access to underground utilities near the curbs. Some of these activities could be started early in the morning if there are no cars in the way rather than awaiting their removal by 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. The Lieutenant said that the ban helped his department detect "undesirable sleepers," people sleeping in their cars who frequently picked that part of Spring Lake nearest to adjoining Belmar to get a night's rest during the summer season. He said that since the streets were laid out in a gridlike rectilinear fashion an officer on patrol could see "great distances" at night when the streets were clear. He also said that the ordinances discouraged "overly romantic conduct" in parked cars. He observed that the ban helped to reduce vandalism, and that stolen vehicles had been picked up quickly between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. when left by thieves. The ordinance also deterred leaving junked or disabled cars, long-term parking, and made identification of abandoned cars easier. The Spring Lake planner, Richard Coppola, claimed that the ordinance was necessary and important so that the streets did not become "parking lots" given the "residential complex of the Borough."

The planner for the hoteliers claimed that the Borough could accomplish its desired objectives in other ways. He said the overnight ban would hurt the innkeepers by forcing them to "stack" ¹ cars on their properties, to rent fewer rooms, or to require their guests to walk several blocks from their parked cars. The hoteliers generally admitted that they were managing to cope with the parking problem. They also admitted knowing about the ordinance when they started their businesses but claimed legitimate reliance on the continued existence of the courtesy system. Concededly, the hoteliers could not reasonably be expected to buy the small amount of expensive vacant land left in town and try to obtain variances for parking lots, thus expanding their already nonconforming use. Council President Taylor said in contradiction to the alleged hardship of the hoteliers that in the last eight days preceding the July 27 trial the "triangle," which holds 65 cars, was never full in the morning; it had an average of 30 cars with a peak of 55 on Sunday morning. His survey did not reveal parking problems at any particular hotel but did reveal plenty of available overnight spaces on Ocean Avenue.

While there was some dispute in the testimony, the record is far from convincing that the ordinance was "an unreasonable exercise of police power in furtherance of an improper purpose," presumably to drive the public lodgings operated as nonconforming uses by the plaintiffs and the members of the plaintiff association out of town.

Under the broad "police power" municipalities may pass local laws "necessary and proper for the ... order and protection of persons and property and for the preservation of the public health, safety and welfare." N.J.S.A. 40:48-2. Under N.J.S.A. 39:4-8(c)(1) and (3) municipalities may "prohibit general parking" and "designate time limit parking." Our State Constitution states that any law concerning municipal corporations formed for local government "shall be liberally construed in their favor." It also states that the powers of municipalities include not only those expressly granted but "also those of necessary or fair implication, or incident to powers expressly conferred." N.J. Const. (1947), Art. IV, § VII, par. 11. In a decision upholding municipal regulation of off-street parking of trucks our Supreme Court stated the applicable general principles.

Ordinances, as well as statutes, are accorded a presumption of validity. Hutton Park Gardens v. West Orange Town Council, 68 N.J. 543, 564 (1975); Collingswood v. Ringgold, 66 N.J. 350, 358 (1975). The presumption is...