City of Jacksonville Beach v. Albury

291 So. 2d 82
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedNovember 8, 1973
DocketS-448
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 291 So. 2d 82 (City of Jacksonville Beach v. Albury) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Jacksonville Beach v. Albury, 291 So. 2d 82 (Fla. Ct. App. 1973).

Opinion

291 So.2d 82 (1973)

CITY OF JACKSONVILLE BEACH et al., Appellants,
v.
H.S. ALBURY, As Tax Collector of City of Jacksonville, and City of Jacksonville, a Consolidated Municipality of the State of Florida, Appellees.

No. S-448.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

November 8, 1973.

*83 Stephen Stratford, Oliver C. Ball, Joseph M. Glickstein, Jr., and M.S. Dunay, Jacksonville, for appellants.

T. Edward Austin, Jr., Jacksonville, for appellees.

WIGGINTON, Judge.

Plaintiffs have appealed an adverse declaratory judgment rendered in a suit brought by them against the City of Jacksonville, a municipal corporation. The judgment sought to be reviewed interprets the constitutionally authorized charter act which created the City of Jacksonville as a consolidated government whose territorial limits and jurisdiction embrace the entire former County of Duval including all municipal corporations located therein.

Appellants, plaintiffs in the trial court, formerly constituted four of the five incorporated municipalities situated in Duval County, the fifth municipality being the former core City of Jacksonville. The two primary issues raised by the pleadings filed in the cause require a determination of whether appellants are lawfully empowered to levy and collect occupational license taxes from those engaged in businesses and professions within their territorial limits, and whether as corporate legal entities they are entitled to receive and use revenues allocable from state and federal sources to the various incorporated municipalities of this state. The answer to these questions depends upon a determination of whether appellants retain and continue to possess essentially the same corporate structures, powers, privileges, obligations, and immunities under the charter act creating the consolidated government of the City of Jacksonville as they possessed prior to consolidation. It is appellants' position that although the charter act creating the City of Jacksonville has the legal effect of abolishing them as municipal corporations in the traditional and accepted meaning of that term, nevertheless they continue to exist as corporate governmental entities lawfully authorized to exercise the identical municipal powers, privileges, obligations, and immunities conferred upon them under the legislative acts by which they were created and are therefore empowered to exercise and enjoy the same rights, powers, and privileges which they exercised as duly constituted municipal corporations prior to consolidation. On the contrary, appellees, defendants in the trial court, contend that the charter act creating the consolidated City of Jacksonville converted each of appellant-municipal corporations to subordinate administrative entities with strictly limited powers and completely subservient to the governing body of the City of Jacksonville.

*84 In 1933 the Legislature of Florida adopted a joint resolution proposing an amendment to Article VIII, Section 9, F.S.A., of the constitution of this state, the effect of which was to authorize the Legislature to establish a municipal corporation to be known as the City of Jacksonville. The foregoing resolution was consistent with Article VIII, Section 8, F.S.A., of the constitution, which empowers the Legislature to establish and to abolish municipalities and to provide for their government, to prescribe their jurisdiction and powers, and to alter or amend the same at any time.

The constitutional amendment adopted pursuant to the 1933 joint resolution of the Legislature provides in amended Article VIII, Section 9, F.S.A., as follows:

"Section 9... . The Legislature shall have power to establish, alter or abolish, a municipal corporation to be known as the City of Jacksonville, extending territorially throughout the present limits of Duval County, in the place of any or all county, district, municipal and local governments, boards, bodies and officers, constitutional or statutory, legislative, executive, judicial or administrative, and shall prescribe the jurisdiction, powers, duties and functions of such municipal corporation, its legislative, executive, judicial and administrative departments and its boards, bodies and officers; to divide the territory included in such municipality into subordinate districts, and to prescribe a just and reasonable system of taxation for such municipality and districts; and to fix the liability of such municipality and districts... . Such municipality may exercise all the powers of a municipal corporation and shall also be recognized as one of the legal political divisions of the State with the duties and obligations of a county and shall be entitled to all the powers, rights and privileges, including representation in the State Legislature, which would accrue to it if it were a county... ."

The foregoing amendment was approved in the general election held in 1934.

Prior to 1967 each of the appellants herein was created by special acts adopted by the Legislature in accordance with the constitution as it then existed.

As a result of a plan for the establishment of a consolidated government to consist of the governments of Duval County and all corporate municipalities located therein, the 1967 session of the State Legislature adopted a charter act creating the present City of Jacksonville by the enactment of Chapter 67-1320, Laws of Florida, 1967. Within four days after this act cleared and received the approval of both houses of the Legislature, another statute was introduced in the Legislature which amended in a number of material respects the original charter act which had just received legislative approval. The amendatory act was also approved by the Legislature and is designated as Chapter 67-1535, Laws of Florida, 1967. Both the original and the amendatory acts, which together comprised the charter of the City of Jacksonville, were subject to a referendum election held in Duval County and were approved on August 8, 1967.

In order to arrive at the legislative intent manifest in the two separate acts comprising the charter of the City of Jacksonville, the relevant provisions of each act must be examined. The original act designated as Chapter 67-1320 contains the following pertinent provisions, to wit:

"ARTICLE 1
"ONE GOVERNMENT
"Section 1.01. Creation of a Single Government. The county government of Duval County, the city of Jacksonville, the city of Jacksonville Beach, the city of Atlantic Beach, the city of Neptune Beach and the town of Baldwin, ... (all of which are herein called the `former governments'), ... are *85 hereby consolidated into a single body politic and corporate pursuant to the power granted by section 9 of article VIII of the Constitution of the state of Florida. The name of the new consolidated government shall be the city of Jacksonville (herein called the `consolidated government'). The consolidated government shall, without other transfer, succeed to and possess all the properties (of whatever nature), rights, capacities, privileges, powers, franchises and immunities, and be subject to all of the liabilities, obligations and duties of the former governments from and after the effective date of this charter... .
"Section 1.02. Territory of Consolidated Government. The consolidated government shall have jurisdiction, and extend territorially throughout the present limits of Duval County.
"ARTICLE 2
"General And Urban Service Districts

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Bluebook (online)
291 So. 2d 82, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-jacksonville-beach-v-albury-fladistctapp-1973.