## Facts

- Gerald G. Wood and Debra L. Wood owned land in the Town of Burke, outside the City of Madison but within Madison’s three-mile extraterritorial plat-approval jurisdiction.
- The Woods submitted a preliminary plat proposing a residential subdivision.
- Madison had adopted a subdivision ordinance under Wis. Stat. ch. 236 applicable in its extraterritorial jurisdiction; the ordinance allowed plat review using standards that included the proposed use and consistency with adopted plans and surrounding development patterns.
- The Madison Common Council denied the preliminary plat, citing inconsistency with the City’s plans for future urban development and concerns about premature, scattered (“leap-frog”) development.
- The Woods sought certiorari review, arguing the City unlawfully used platting power as extraterritorial zoning and that the ordinance standards were vague and applied arbitrarily.

## Issues

1. Whether Wis. Stat. ch. 236 authorizes a municipality, exercising extraterritorial plat-approval authority, to reject a preliminary plat based on ordinance standards that consider the plat’s proposed use.
2. Whether precedent barring use-based considerations in extraterritorial plat review was correct.
3. Whether the City’s subdivision-ordinance standards were unconstitutionally vague or were applied in an arbitrary, unreasonable, or discriminatory manner.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the circuit court’s denial of certiorari and upheld the City’s denial of the preliminary plat.
- The court held that Wis. Stat. ch. 236 authorizes municipal rejection of a preliminary plat in extraterritorial jurisdiction based on a subdivision ordinance that considers proposed land use.
- The court overruled contrary precedent to the extent it prohibited use-based considerations in extraterritorial plat approval.
- The court held the ordinance standards were sufficiently definite and were not applied arbitrarily, unreasonably, or discriminatorily to the Woods’ plat.

## Legal Principles

- Under Wis. Stat. ch. 236, municipalities may enact and apply extraterritorial subdivision ordinances that are more restrictive than the chapter and may include proposed land use as a review factor.
- Considering proposed use in plat review does not, by itself, convert subdivision control into unlawful extraterritorial zoning; platting and zoning are distinct statutory mechanisms even if they affect land use.
- Subdivision-ordinance standards tied to adopted plans and recognized planning objectives may satisfy definiteness requirements and withstand vagueness challenges.
- On certiorari review, a municipal plat denial is sustained when grounded in applicable ordinance criteria and supported by rational planning-based reasons rather than arbitrary or discriminatory treatment.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Madison’s extraterritorial denial of the Woods’ preliminary plat, holding that ch. 236 permits use-based considerations in extraterritorial plat review under reasonably definite subdivision standards applied on a rational, planning-based record.


Wood v. City of Madison, 260 Wis. 2d 71, 659 N.W.2d 31 (Wis. 2003)