All Tenants in Common Must Sign to Count Acreage Toward a K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1) Zoning Protest Petition

1. Introduction

Prairiewood Holdings, LLC v. Board of Riley County Commissioners (Kan. June 5, 2026) arises from a dispute over a vineyard’s effort to expand through an amended planned unit development (Amended PUD) in Riley County. Neighboring landowners opposed the expansion and filed a protest petition. The core legal issues were:

  1. Applicability: Whether an Amended PUD—though not a traditional “rezoning”—was nonetheless subject to the protest-petition mechanism of K.S.A. 12-757 because the County’s local land development regulation required the “same public hearing process as the original rezoning.”
  2. Counting acreage for the 20% threshold: How to count land owned by tenants in common when only some co-owners sign the protest petition.

The dispute mattered because under K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1), a valid protest petition forces the governing body to adopt the zoning amendment only by a three-fourths vote. The protest petition narrowly missed 20% as calculated by the Commission—but would have cleared 20% if the entirety of one co-owned neighbor parcel (the Mosier property) were counted.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Kansas Supreme Court made two principal holdings:

  • Local incorporation of K.S.A. 12-757: The County’s regulation requiring the “same public hearing process as the original rezoning to Planned Unit Development” incorporates the full rezoning process, including the protest petition component. The Court rejected the Commission’s attempt to separate “public hearing” from “protest petition” as distinct procedures.
  • New rule on tenants in common: To count the acreage in a unit of real property held by tenants in common towards a zoning protest petition under K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1), all tenants in common must sign the petition. If all co-owners do not sign, that parcel’s acreage is excluded entirely (not counted proportionally).

Practically, the Mosier property should not have been “halved” and partially counted. It should have been excluded altogether because only some owners of record signed. The Court therefore affirmed the Court of Appeals as “right for the wrong reason” on the acreage-counting result, while replacing the Court of Appeals’ proportionality rationale with a unanimity-of-cotenants rule.

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited (and How They Drove the Outcome)

A. Incorporation of K.S.A. 12-757 into local PUD amendment procedures

  • Austin Properties v. City of Shawnee, 320 Kan. 226, 564 P.3d 1262 (2025)
    • Used for standard of review (pure question of law; de novo) and, more importantly, for the interpretive point that when a municipal code requires following the “same procedures” as the Kansas zoning amendment statute, that incorporation is holistic. The Court quoted Austin’s observation that the code requires following “the same procedures ... as the Kansas statute requires for any zoning amendment.”
    • Austin provided the structural template to reject Riley County’s attempt to import notice/hearing requirements while excluding the protest mechanism.
  • Prairiewood Holdings v. Board of Riley County Comm'rs, 65 Kan. App. 2d 792, 573 P.3d 688 (2025)
    • The Supreme Court relied on the Court of Appeals’ textual observation that LDR 4.19.F does not say “same process, except protest petitions.” That omission supported full incorporation.

B. Resolving ambiguity in K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1) regarding co-owned property

  • In re Wrongful Conviction of Warsame, 320 Kan. 92, 563 P.3d 1281 (2025)
    • Cited for the uncontroversial but pivotal methodological move: once the Court found the statute ambiguous, it properly “resort[ed] to tools of statutory construction.”
  • Koppel v. City of Fairway, 189 Kan. 710, 371 P.2d 113 (1962)
    • Supplied the decisive Kansas canon: zoning restrictions, being in derogation of private property rights, are construed in the property owner’s favor.
    • The Court used Koppel to justify choosing the interpretation that least empowers protest petitions to restrict a landowner’s desired use.
  • M & I Marshall & Ilsley Bank v. Higdon, 319 Kan. 572, 556 P.3d 498 (2024)
    • Provided a modern Kansas definition of tenancy in common—undivided shares with equal right to possess the whole—framing why the statute’s “owners of record” language becomes difficult to apply when ownership is divided but possession is not.
  • Sprayberry v. Board of Comm'rs of Putnam County, 366 Ga. App. 810, 884 S.E.2d 429 (2023); Senter v. Kosciusko Cnty. Bd. of Zoning, 251 N.E.3d 584 (Ind. App. 2025); Dirt Road Development v. Hirschman, 316 Neb. 757, 7 N.W.3d 438 (2024)
    • Cited to show the canon favoring free use of land is not uniquely Kansan; it reflects a widespread judicial posture in land-use interpretation.
    • These cases functioned as persuasive authority reinforcing Koppel’s interpretive direction rather than supplying a rule about cotenants specifically.
  • 2 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 2 (1768)
    • Used rhetorically to emphasize the deep property-law tradition protecting dominion and use, helping justify a narrow construction of protest-petition power.

C. Out-of-state approaches to cotenant signatures (comparative law)

  • Bonner v. City of Imperial, 149 Neb. 721, 32 N.W.2d 267 (1948)
    • Illustrated an alternative approach: one joint tenant’s objection may presumptively represent the whole property absent contrary evidence—an approach the Kansas Supreme Court acknowledged but did not adopt.
  • Los Angeles Lighting Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 106 Cal. 156, 39 P. 535 (1895)
    • Offered the classic policy argument for proportionality (a cotenant could be “powerless” if a co-owner is absent, an infant, etc.). The Kansas Supreme Court called proportionality “practically seduc[ing]” but ultimately rejected it as insufficient to overcome Kansas interpretive rules and statutory text.
  • High Ridge Real Estate Owner, LLC v. Board of Representatives of City of Stamford, 342 Conn. 423, 270 A.3d 76 (2022)
    • Supplied the model the Court adopted: for a parcel to count, all property owners of that parcel must sign. The Kansas court deemed this the most faithful fit for Kansas’ “owners of record” phrasing.

D. Kansas cases rejected as inapplicable and the “right for the wrong reason” doctrine

  • Pfannenstiel v. Central Kansas Power Co., 186 Kan. 628, 352 P.2d 51 (1960); Horner v. Ellis, 75 Kan. 675, 90 P. 275 (1907)
    • Prairiewood cited these to argue for broader cotenant power. The Court found them “unilluminating” because they concern tort recovery and title superiority, not statutory petition-signature requirements.
  • Nicholson v. Mercer, 319 Kan. 712, 559 P.3d 350 (2024)
    • Supported affirmance of the Court of Appeals “as right for the wrong reason,” preserving the result while replacing the Court of Appeals’ proportional-share rule with the unanimity rule.

3.2. Legal Reasoning

A. The protest petition process was incorporated by local regulation

Riley County LDR 4.19.F required an Amended PUD to follow “the same public hearing process as the original rezoning.” The Commission attempted to treat the “public hearing” steps (notice, hearing) as severable from the protest petition mechanism. The Supreme Court rejected that attempt on a functional reading: K.S.A. 12-757’s protest petition is part of the overall public hearing process governing zoning amendments. Textually, the regulation did not carve protest petitions out, and structurally, the statute’s hearing and protest provisions operate together to define how contested zoning amendments are processed and voted upon.

B. K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1) is ambiguous on cotenant signatures

The Court identified three plausible readings: (1) all owners of record for each counted parcel must sign; (2) any one owner of record may sign for the parcel; (3) a signing cotenant counts only a proportionate share. Because the text supports more than one reasonable meaning, the Court declared ambiguity and turned to interpretive canons.

C. Ambiguity is resolved in favor of free use of property (and against protest power)

Having found ambiguity, the Court applied the long-standing Kansas rule that zoning restrictions are construed in favor of the property owner’s use and narrowly against restrictions. In this context, a protest petition is not merely procedural; it is a device that can raise the voting threshold and thereby make it harder for the owner seeking the zoning relief to succeed. Narrow construction therefore meant selecting the interpretation that makes protest petitions harder—not easier—to perfect against the proposed land use.

D. “Owners of record” means all cotenants must sign for the parcel to count

The Court focused on the statutory phrase “owners of record of 20% or more of the total real property.” For a tenancy-in-common parcel, there are typically multiple “owners of record.” Allowing less than all to commit the parcel’s acreage would treat a subset as though it were the entire class of “owners of record.” The Court concluded that the cleanest way to honor the plural “owners of record” while applying the pro-property canon is: no unanimity, no acreage.

E. Why the Court rejected proportionality

The Court of Appeals had leaned on a proportionality concept partly by analogy to K.S.A. 13-1376 (public parking benefit districts), which expressly treats cotenants as landowners “to the extent of” their undivided interests. The Supreme Court declined to create a comparable proportional rule for zoning protests by analogy. It accepted the dissent’s point: the Legislature demonstrated in K.S.A. 13-1376 that it can write proportionality when it wants. The absence of similar language in K.S.A. 12-757 weighed against judicially importing proportional counting.

3.3. Impact

A. Bright-line rule for Kansas protest petitions involving co-owned parcels

The decision establishes a clear Kansas rule: for tenancy-in-common property to count toward the 20% threshold, all tenants in common must sign. This reduces factual disputes and administrative guesswork (e.g., calculating fractions, confirming ownership percentages, and deciding whether one signature implies agency).

B. Protest petitions become harder to perfect where ownership is fractured

In areas with family co-ownership, inherited parcels, trust co-ownership, or investment co-tenancies, opponents of zoning changes may find it more difficult to reach 20%. A single non-signing cotenant can remove an entire parcel from the numerator.

C. Developers and applicants gain predictability

Applicants seeking zoning changes or PUD amendments gain a stronger ability to assess protest risk: unless petition organizers obtain signatures from all cotenants for a parcel, that parcel cannot be used to elevate the voting threshold.

D. Local governments must treat “same process” incorporations as comprehensive

For Kansas counties and cities, the decision underscores that drafting matters: if a local code requires the “same process” as a rezoning, courts may treat that as incorporating the full statutory package, including protest-petition consequences, unless the ordinance expressly excludes them.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Planned Unit Development (PUD) / Amended PUD: A zoning tool allowing flexible, negotiated development standards through an approved development plan. An “Amended PUD” changes that plan beyond minor tolerances.
  • Protest petition (K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1)): A statutory mechanism letting nearby owners force a higher voting threshold (¾) for adopting a zoning amendment if enough qualifying property owners sign within the deadline.
  • Tenants in common: Two or more people own undivided shares of the same parcel; each has a right to possess the whole, but ownership percentages can be unequal and there is no survivorship.
  • “Owners of record”: Those listed in the official land records as owners. For a co-owned parcel, there are multiple owners of record.
  • De novo review: The appellate court gives no deference to the lower court on the legal question; it decides the issue anew.
  • Ambiguity & canons of construction: If statutory text reasonably supports multiple meanings, courts apply interpretive rules—here, construing zoning restrictions narrowly and in favor of property use.

5. Conclusion

Prairiewood Holdings, LLC v. Board of Riley County Commissioners announces a significant, administrable rule for Kansas land-use practice: co-owned tenancy-in-common property counts toward a K.S.A. 12-757(f)(1) protest petition only if all tenants in common sign. The Court reached that rule by (1) recognizing statutory ambiguity; (2) applying Kansas’ longstanding canon that zoning restraints are construed in favor of free property use; and (3) reading “owners of record” to require unanimity among cotenants for a parcel to be counted at all.

The opinion also cautions local governments that when their regulations require the “same” rezoning process, courts may treat that incorporation as including the protest petition mechanism unless clearly excluded. Together, these holdings reshape the tactical landscape of zoning disputes in Kansas by tightening protest-petition qualification rules and reinforcing a property-rights-centered approach to land-use statutory interpretation.