Inland Oversight Com. v. City of Ontario
Annotate this CaseIn 2013, defendant-respondent, City of Ontario, with the consent of defendant-respondent, City of Rancho Cucamonga, established the Greater Ontario Tourism Marketing District (the GOTMD). The GOTMD was comprised of all lodging businesses operating in the two cities, and its mandate was to market and promote the businesses as "tourist, meeting and event destinations" with assessments imposed on the businesses based on their room rates and rental volumes. Plaintiff-appellant, The Inland Oversight Committee (IOC), sued the cities to invalidate the assessments on the ground they were a "tax" that was not approved by a majority or supermajority of the cities' voters as article XIII C of the California Constitution required. IOC claimed the assessments were either a general tax requiring majority voter approval or a special tax requiring supermajority voter approval. The trial court sustained demurrers, without leave to amend, on the ground that neither IOC nor any of its members had standing to challenge the validity of the assessments. IOC appealed. The cities filed a motion to dismiss the appeal along with their respondent's brief, claiming that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to consider the merits of IOC's appeal because IOC's notice of appeal was filed more than 30 days after the judgment was entered. The Court of Appeal agreed that IOC's notice of appeal was untimely filed, and it accordingly lacked jurisdiction to consider the merits of the appeal.
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