City Corporation

“ The city does not deceive itself into supposing that that great building is a unit from which the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, and control by the authority of the city."
I liken that to our great modern industrial enterprises. A corporation is very like a large tenement house; it isn't the premises of a single commercial family; it is just as much a public affair as a tenement house is a network of public highways. ”

“ A city has many sources of revenue of its own. Public utilities which furnish such necessities as transportation, water, gas, and electric light, earn enormous profits. In some places some of these things are owned by the city and the revenues go to the city. In others, the right to build and operate such a public business is given to a private corporation through a franchise. It is evident that these franchise rights are extremely valuable and should not be given away without adequate compensation to the city, as well as the insuring of good service. ”

“ If the city became populous, the lots would be sold and built upon, and in the lapse of one or two generations, at most, the title of the original proprietors might well be presumed to be extinguished by sales or otherwise; so that the interest of themselves or their heirs in the streets and reservations would not be distinguishable from that of other citizens. They must also have contemplated that a municipal corporation must soon be created to manage the concerns, and police, and public interests of the city ”

“ Low is the ideal product of the New York theory that municipal government is business, not politics, and that a business man who would manage the city as he would a business corporation, would solve for us all our troubles. ”

“ It is a corporation duly formed and organized under the laws of the state of New York, and engaged in the operation of automobile stages upon routes extending along Fifth avenue and other streets in the city of New York, under and in pursuance of certain acts of the legislature of the state, having acquired, under various acts, all the property rights and franchises of the Fifth Avenue Transportation Company, Limited. ”

“ As a member of the corporation he took a leading part in many city improvements. He laid the foundation in 1813 of the debtors' prison in Whitecross Street, and he furthered the construction of the new London bridge and the new post office. His name was long preserved in the social life of the corporation through the fact that the city barge, built in September 1816, at a cost of 5,000l., was called the ‘Maria Wood’ after his daughter. ”

“ But I don't think we ought to delay improving the dwellings of the poor till this reform takes place; and I do not shrink at all from saying, that I think the proper course for the Government and Parliament to pursue is to invest the Metropolitan Board of Works, and the noble Corporation which presides over the City, with compulsory powers for this purpose, similar to those given to the Corporation of Glasgow. ”

“ It is one thing for a large city, with its concentration of business interests, to build, equip, and own a great railroad highway running from such center outward into other districts, rapid and easy communication with which advances its business interests; and it is a very different thing for a quasi municipal corporation, like a township, with its sparse population, and its lack of concentration of business interests, to construct a few miles of railroad through its territory. ”

“ The source from which the District obtains the means for maintaining public highways in the city is of no consequence so long as congress has made it, and permits it to remain, a mere municipal corporation, with such functions as pertain to municipal corporations proper. ”

“ There was nothing else of a public character worth noticing in which the Corporation had been engaged, excepting the erection of the Municipal buildings and the management of the city reserves.
These Municipal buildings were founded in 1874 and opened in 1875, at a cost of £22,000, the names of the mayors of both dates being inscribed on the portals. [As these and the other edifices of the city are particularly elsewhere herein described, further reference is unnecessary.]
The condition of the reserves is a public disgrace. ”

“ The city, among other things, reserved from the grant all the lots which it then occupied or had set apart for public squares, streets, and sites for schoolhouses, city hall, and other buildings belonging to the corporation; but what lots or parcels were thus occupied or set apart does not appear. ”

“ To such men an appeal would indeed be useless. But, to the Corporation of the City of London—whether as assembled in its entire Parliament, or as represented within the confines of this Court—to the Corporation which, on so many occasions, has attained patriotic ends by great expenditure and sacrifice ”

“ From the standpoint of the city, as a corporation, a serious effect of the outward movement of residence, business, and industry has been the depreciation in value of city-contained land and property available by taxation for the financial support of the city government and the various services it must supply to its residents. ”

“ One of the grants of power relied on is, that the city is made a corporation with power to contract and be contracted with, and generally with 'all the rights, franchises, capacities, and powers appertaining to municipal corporations.' In a community in which it is against public policy, as well as express law, for any person or body corporate to issue small bills to circulate as currency, it is certainly not one of the implied powers of a municipal corporation to issue such bills. ”

“ A very large sum is annually expended in street improvements, besides a contribution of nearly 12,000 pounds a year to a metropolitan fund for objects not comprised within the liberties of the City. The Corporation also pays 11,000 pounds per annum towards the maintenance of the police force, though in other metropolitan districts this proportion of the expenses is debited to the Consolidated Fund. ”

“ It is true that the cases to which we have referred involved in the main the construction of legislative enactments. But the principles they announce apply with full force to ordinances and contracts by municipal corporations in respect of matters that concern the public. The authorities are all agreed that a municipal corporation, when exerting its functions for the general mere implication. If, by contract or otherwise mere implication. ”

“ No county, city, town, village or school district shall give or loan any money or property to or in aid of any individual, or private corporation or association, or private undertaking, or become directly or indirectly the owner of stock in, or bonds of, any private corporation or association ”

“ They are swept daily, and scarcely a129 particle of dust is left in the streets or gutters the year round. But they are cleaned by private contract of the people residing upon them. What individual enterprise can do for whole squares, surely a corporation so lavish in money as New York ought to be able to do for the city at large.
The courts, alleys, cesspools, and privies can be cleansed and kept in good condition. ”

“ In every case where the financial condition of the municipality obliges it to rely at first upon private corporations for the construction and ownership of its public works, the franchise should expire at the end of a short term of years, and the city should then have the privilege of purchasing the works at their actual cost. ”

“ A municipality is a living center of economic activity—a genuine case of essentially local economic interests. To be sure, the greater part of the manufacturing or commercial business transacted in a city belongs undubitably to the national economic system; but there is a minor part which is exclusively local. Public service corporations which control franchises in cities do not enter into inter-state commerce at all—except in those unusual cases (as in New York) where certain parts of the economic municipal body are situated in another state. ”

“ As cities increased in importance it was found that this unlimited power over them could be made a valuable asset of the party machine in control of the state legislature. The city offered a rich and tempting field for exploitation. It had offices, a large revenue, spent vast sums in public improvements, let valuable contracts of various kinds and had certain needs, as for water, light, rapid transit, etc., which could be made the pretext for granting franchises and other privileges on such terms as would ensure large profits to the grantees at the expense of the general public. ”

“ There is nothing to stop highway traffic from coming onto the business block and upon arrival a traveler may make free use of the facilities available there. In short the town and its shopping district are accessible to and freely used by the public in general and there is nothing to distinguish them from any other town and shopping center except the fact that the title to the property belongs to a private corporation.' 326 U.S., at 502-503, 66 S.Ct. ”

“ All proper municipal functions should be exercised by the municipality itself, and not delegated to others. We favour municipal ownership and municipal control of all municipal franchises. We oppose the granting of any public franchise in perpetuity. We oppose the granting or extending of any such franchise, or the bestowal of any new privilege upon a corporation holding such franchise, without adequate compensation. ”

“ McClung is imbued with the idea that a municipal corporation is, in its last analysis, simply a business corporation in which each taxpayer is a stockholder, the aldermen its directors and the mayor its business manager. ”

“ But this capital will not be raised all at once, and here, far more than in London, the very same sovereigns would be employed in building many houses. For observe, money is not lost or consumed when it is spent. It merely changes hands. A workman of Garden City borrows £200 from a pro-municipal building society, and builds a house with it. ”

“ There is, therefore, no such careful attention to the business of the city, or independent action in office as could be secured by an independent commission devoting its whole time to the city business and carefully considering every proposition from the same standpoint of the best interests of the city as would be taken by the manager of a railroad, bank, or factory seeking to promote the interests of the stockholders. ”

“ But this overlooks the fact that the regulation of municipal corporations is a matter peculiarly within the domain of state control; that the state is not compelled by the federal constitution to grant to all its municipl corporations the same territorial extent, or the same duties and powers. A municipal corporation is, so far as its purely municipal relations are concerned, simply an agency of the state for conducting the affairs of government, and as such it is subject to the control of the legislature. ”

“ Special powers are given to such corporations to lay out, open, and repair streets as a trust to be held and exercised for the benefit of the public, from time to time, as occasion may require, and the general rule is, that those powers cannot be delegated to others, nor be effectually abridged by any act of the municipal corporation without the express authority of the legislature. ”

“ The previous decisions holding municipal corporations liable to private actions for defects in highways or bridges were placed upon the ground that 'the duty of keeping in repair streets, bridges, and other common ways of passage, and sewers, and a liability for a neglect to perform that duty, rests upon an express or implied acceptance of the power, and an agreement so to do. It is a duty with which the city is charged for its own corporate benefit, to be performed by its own agents, as its own corporate act.' 62 N. Y. 170, 20 Am. ”

“ There are lumber and flouring mills, foundries and machine shops, wood-turning plants, and manufactories of shirts, sewing machines, agricultural implements, toys, patent medicines, woolens, and paper and wood pulp. The government is vested in a mayor chosen every two years and a unicameral council, and in administrative officials nearly all of whom are appointed by the mayor. The city spends annually for maintenance and operation about $306,000. ”

“ No street franchise can be granted for a longer term than twenty-five years, and the right to regulate the exercise of each and every franchise is reserved to the mayor and council. A board of estimate, composed of the mayor, the city solicitor, the comptroller, the president of the second branch of the city council, and the president of the board of public improvements, has control over appropriations, the council having power to decrease the amount of any item but not to enlarge it. ”

“ Cotton spinning and power-loom weaving are the chief of numerous manufacturing industries, and there are large collieries in the vicinity. The principle of co-operation is strongly developed, and a large and handsome store contains among other departments a free library for members. The borough was incorporated in 1882, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 17 councillors. ”

“ With a growing intelligence and honesty in municipal enterprise, with greater freedom from the control of the Central Government, it may be found—especially on municipally-owned land—that the field of municipal activity may grow so as to embrace a very large area, and yet the municipality claim no rigid monopoly and the fullest rights of combination exist.
Bearing this in mind, the municipality of Garden City will, at the outset, exercise great caution, and not attempt too much. ”