Clinton v. City of Portland

38 P. 407, 26 Or. 410, 1894 Ore. LEXIS 116
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 19, 1894
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 38 P. 407 (Clinton v. City of Portland) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Oregon Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clinton v. City of Portland, 38 P. 407, 26 Or. 410, 1894 Ore. LEXIS 116 (Or. 1894).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Moore.

1. It is contended that the common council failed to pass an ordinance declaring its intention to make the improvement, and that a resolution directing the city recorder to publish a notice thereof was not a sufficient compliance with the requirements of the charter. Section 2 of article VI of the charter of East Portland (Laws, 1885, p. 303,) provides that when any improvement of the streets is to be made the council shall cause the recorder to give notice of the same, etc. The charter does not require an ordinance in such cases, and where it commits the decision of a matter to the council, and is silent as to the mode, the decision may be evidenced by a resolution, and need not [413]*413necessarily be by an ordinance: 1 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (4th ed.), 307, and cases cited in note 1.

2. It is contended that the common council had no authority to adopt said resolution while proceedings were pending before it upon a remonstrance against the improvement, nor until the time had expired when it could have been commenced if no remonstrance had been filed. Sections 3 and 4 of said article VI, in substance, provide that within ten days from the final publication of a notice of the common council’s intention to improve a street, the owners of a majority of the property adjacent thereto may remonstrate against the proposed improvement, and thereupon the same shall not be made; but if no such remonstrance be filed, the council, at its earliest convenience, within six months from the final publication of said notice, may commence to make the proposed improvement. From these sections of the charter plaintiffs maintain that no improvement of the street could have been made until six months after the filing of the remonstrance. The record shows that the plaintiffs and others on August nineteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety, remonstrated against the improvement of said street, and that on the first of the next month they filed two petitions for its improvement from K to Ellsworth Street, excepting five hundred and twenty feet thereof lying between Adams and Jackson Streets, upon which excepted part plaintiffs’ lots abut; that several of the remonstrators on September fifteenth petitioned the common council to have their names stricken from plaintiffs’ remonstrance, which was done, and the common council adopted a resolution declaring all proceedings theretofore had for said improvement rescinded and set aside, and also directed the recorder to publish a notice of its intention to improve Fifth Street from K to Ellsworth Streets. Section 27 of said article VI authorizes the common council to improve a street without giving [414]*414notice of its intention to do so, when the owners of two thirds of the adjacent property petitioned therefor, and section 6 authorizes an improvement if no remonstrance by the owners of a majority of the property adjacent thereto be filed within ten days after the final publication of the council’s notice of intention to make the improvement, The charter thus provides two methods of acquiring jurisdiction to improve a street, but it is impossible from an inspection of the record to determine whether plaintiffs remonstrated against the common council’s attempt to obtain jurisdiction by petition or by the publication of a notice. In either case, however, there is nothing in the charter prohibiting it from setting aside all prior proceedings for the improvement of a street, and ordering the publication of a notice of its intention to make the proposed improvement: Barkley v. Oregon Oity, 24 Or. 515, 33 Pac. 978.

3. It is contended that the published notice of the council’s intention is defective because it fails to describe the kind of improvement proposed to be made. No notice having been published by the city recorder under the resolution of September fifteenth, the common council on February second, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, adopted another resolution directing said officer to give notice by publication in the Oregon Vindicator, a weekly newspaper printed and published in the City of East Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, that the common council of said city proposed to improve Fifth Street, in the City of East Portland, from K to Ellsworth Streets, in the manner described in said resolution; and in pursuance of this direction the recorder published a notice, which, after describing a part of said street, and the kind of improvement to be made, contained the following: “And by building an elevated roadway to the established grade thirty-six (36) feet wide, with elevated sidewalks on both sides of said [415]*415street twelve (12) feet wide, between the following points on said streets: Commencing at a point ten (10) feet north, of the center line of Adams Street, running thence to a point ten (10) feet north of the center line of Jackson Street. Said elevated roadway to be built according to plans and specifications now on file in the office of the city recorder and marked ‘ Plans and specifications for elevated roadway on Fifth Street.’ Said improvement to be made to the established grade, and at the expense of the abutting property.” This notice was published in the said Oregon Vindicator in its issues of February sixth and thirteenth, and on the twentieth of that month, the name of said paper having been changed to the East Portland Chronicle,- the said notice was published therein of that date, and also in its issue of the twenty-seventh of said month. The plaintiffs and others, on March second, and within ten days from the final publication of said notice, again remonstrated against the proposed improvement, but such remonstrance did not contain the names of the owners of a majority of the property adjacent to such street. If no reference had been made in the notice to the plans and specifications on file in the office of the city recorder, it is evident that the common council would have had no jurisdiction to order the improvement of that part of the street lying between Adams and Jackson Streets: Ladd v. Spencer, 23 Or. 193, 31 Pac. 474. But it is claimed that section 2, article VI of the city charter having provided that the notice must specify with convenient certainty the kind of improvement to be made, no reference could be had to any plans or specifications to aid such notice, and plaintiffs’ counsel in support thereof cite the case of the City of Sterling v. Galt, 117 Ill. 11, 7 N. E. 471, in which it was held that an ordinance referring for description of the improvement to the maps, plans, profiles, and specifications on file in the office of the city clerk was void under [416]*416a statute which provided that an ordinance for local improvement should specify therein the nature, character, locality, and description of such improvement, when any part of the cost thereof was to be made by special assessment. While there are some decisions affirming the doctrine announced in that case, we think the weight of authority is in favor of the maxim, 'id cerium, est quod certum reddi potest, and that where an ordinance or notice, after describing generally the kind of improvement proposed to be made, refers for a specific description to maps, plans, specifications, or other details of such improvement on file in a public office, and accessible to interested parties, they thereby become a part of such ordinance or notice, render the description complete, and comply with the statutory requirement: 2 Beach on Public Corporations, § 1182; Stone v. Cambridge, 6 Cush. 270; Ladd v. Spencer, 23 Or. 193, 31 Pac. 474; Becker v.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
38 P. 407, 26 Or. 410, 1894 Ore. LEXIS 116, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clinton-v-city-of-portland-or-1894.