Mairie

“ This municipal assembly shall be the Council of Administration, which shall establish for the entire extent of its jurisdiction the rules of the common regime, and shall decide on all that concerns the municipal police, its internal security, sanitary policy, the management and use of municipal revenues, local expenditures, and generally all that is within the jurisdiction of the municipalities.
Art. 43. The active power shall be entirely, and for all the extent of the municipal district, in the hands of the mayor and his lieutenant, who shall be elected immediately by the primary assemblies. ”

“ A number of chief executive officers are elected for four years; the mayor and Council appoint others, and the appointment is made at the middle of the mayor's term in order to lessen the immediate influence of municipal patronage upon elections. Single commissioners control the parks, streets, water service, harbour and wharves, and sewers, and these constitute, with the mayor, a board of public improvement. Under an enabling act of 1907 the municipal assembly in 1909 created a public service commission, of three members, appointed by the mayor. ”

“ But on the other hand, the Aldermen shewed by many reasons, that unto them belongs the election of Mayor, both because they, the Aldermen are the heads, as it were, and the populace the limbs, as also because it is the Aldermen who pronounce judgments in pleas moved within the City. Of the populace on the other hand there are many who have neither lands, rents, nor dwellings in the City, being sons of divers mothers, some of them of servile station, and all of them caring little or nothing about the City’s welfare. ”

“ The law names certain things which each city charter shall provide, and imposes certain restrictions on the powers of cities. There must be an elected Mayor and a body vested with legislative power; the clerk, treasurer, and assessors, and other officers may be elected or appointed. This permits the establishment of a commission system, or of a Mayor and council with distinct powers. Provision must be made for the levy, collection, and return of State, county, and school taxes, for annual appropriations for municipal purposes, and for a system of accounts. ”

“ In other parishes, municipal administrations shall be composed of a mayor and two administrators; a substitute commissary of the responsible tribunal shall hold the function of commissary near the municipality gratuitously.
Art. 49. Members of these municipal administrations shall be nominated for two years; they may always continue beyond that time. Their nomination devolves to the Governor, who, on a list of at least sixteen individuals, presented by each municipal administration, chooses the persons most appropriate to manage the affairs of each parish. ”

“ Let us make our own selections—or, rather, help our mayor to make hers—and show this town what can be done with an honest and sane council, every man of whom has at heart the framing of a model municipality and the development of an ideal city. ”

“ Every large town has a mayor and deputy mayor, appointed by the government, and a town council, of whom one third are similarly appointed, while the citizens choose the rest; a proportionate number of councillors representing each religious community. ”

“ The corporate authority of said city shall be vested in one principal officer, styled the 'mayor;' in one board of aldermen, consisting of two members from each ward, who, with the mayor, shall be denominated the common council. ”

“ The chief executive officer of a city is a mayor. A city is divided into wards of convenient size, in each of which are chosen one or more aldermen, (usually two,) and such other officers as are named in the charter. The mayor and aldermen constitute the common council, which is a kind of legislature, having the power to pass such laws, (commonly called ordinances,) and to make such orders and regulations, as the government of the city requires. ”

“ The recorder made a speech to the livery-men, 'apprising them of the custom and manner of choosing a lord mayor; which, he observed, was for the Common Hall to nominate two of the aldermen who had served sheriffs, to the Court of Aldermen, who had then a right to elect either of them into that great office, and which ever that the court so fixed on, the Common Hall was bound to accept.' When he had ended, the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen retired into the Council Chamber, and left us to preside at the election, attended by the Common Sergeant and other officers. ”

“ Towns were always trying to get out of the power of the overlords' reeve or the shire-reeve, and gradually many of them got the right of appointing their own reeve. That right was granted by charter, usually from the king. That is the beginning of our present borough towns. The mayor in them is the chief magistrate. In many country towns two different courts are often held in the same building: the Borough Sessions, at which the mayor presides, deal with offences done in the town; and County Sessions, at which magistrates from the country district round deal with offences outside the borough. ”

“ A borough was run by a mayor elected usually for life. By being members of a guild, merchant-traders and craftsmen acquired the legal status of burgesses and had the freedom of the borough. Each guild occupied a certain ward of the town headed by an alderman. The town aldermen made up the town council, which advised the mayor. ”

“ The Council was ordained to consist of “a Mayor, six Aldermen, and eighteen Councillors, to be respectively elected at such times and places, and in such manner” as those of other boroughs existing under the same acts, in common with which they “shall have, exercise, and enjoy all the powers, immunities, and privileges, and be subject to the same duties, penalties, liabilities, and disqualifications” appertaining to such positions. ”

“ Municipalities are established in the district or sub-district capital towns, and wherever there is a population sufficiently large and enlightened to be entitled to municipal rights.12 A president (mayor) , vice-president, or councillor must be between twenty-six and sixty-five years of age, and must intelligently speak, read, and write Spanish, English, or the principal local dialect. Ecclesiastics, soldiers in active service, and persons receiving emolument from public funds are debarred from these offices. ”

“ Mayors shall direct,
coordinate and oversee actions in implementation of decisions of the local councils, and shall
serve as the primary liaison between the local councils and the Governors.
2) Mayors shall be elected and removed pursuant to section 4 (3) of this Order.
3) The Deputy Mayors report to the Mayor and the most senior Deputy Mayor (based on length
of public service) shall assume the role of the Mayor in the absence of the latter official.
4) Mayors and Deputy Mayors may attend the regular meetings of the local councils as nonvoting
members. ”

“ The choice of the municipal councils shall not extend to a deputy, a general councilor, or an arrondissement councilor. [Footnote: See Article 4, law of February 24, 1875, supra. ] All communal electors, including the municipal councilors, are eligible without distinction. ARTICLE 3. In the communes where a municipal committee exists, the delegate and alternate shall be chosen by the old council. [Footnote: Amended by Article 8, law of December 9, 1884, infra. ] ARTICLE 4. If the delegate was not present at the election, the Mayor shall see to it that he is notified within twenty-four hours. ”

“ But the thing which the town lacks, as compared with the complete city, is very different in America from what it is in England. In America it is municipal government—with mayor, aldermen, and common council—which must be added to the town in order to make it a city. ”

“ Each rural parish, and each town, forms a commune or municipality in which all who pay the local taxes are voters. Each commune has a communal or municipal council. The communal assembly or municipal council decides on all questions of administration, police and communal economy. ”

“ The Borough Council, or County Borough Council, which differs from the Borough Council in that it controls the interests of a population of 50,000 or more inhabitants and enjoys more powers than an ordinary Municipal Council, holds and manages the property of the town, and may, with the consent of the Local Government Board, acquire fresh property. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That the common council shall, annually, at their first meeting after their own election and qualification, choose by ballot a fit and able man, having the qualifications herein after directed, to be mayor of the town, which choice shall be made by a majority of the whole number of members of the said common council, unless the whole number of members be equally divided between two persons, in which case one of those two persons shall immediately, by the vote of the president of the council, elected. ”

“ The charters of all boroughs have been brought into substantial agreement and the organs of borough control are everywhere the same. The governing authority is the borough council, which consists of councillors, aldermen, and a mayor, sitting as a single body. The councillors, varying in number from nine to upwards of one hundred, are elected by the voters of the borough, either at large or by wards, for three years, and one-third retire annually. ”

“ With only a fourth of the population they will hold three fourths of the public offices, have the majority in the municipal council, the mayor of the commune, if not the adjunct, the highest grades in the national guard, the member of the conseil-général, the deputy, sometimes the senator, and the most widely circulating journal of the district, daily filled with eulogiums on their merit. ”

“ Tradition declares that the mayor, when he had [193] read the Proclamation, drank ale from a silver flagon, and that thereupon the bustle and business of the fair began. I believe as a matter of fact the proclamation was usually read by the Lord Mayor’s attorney, and repeated after him by the sheriff’s officer, in the presence of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and sheriffs. The officers of the Lord Mayor’s household afterwards dined at the Sword-bearer’s table. This may have become the custom at a later date. See 1688. ”

“ The executive powers, which in the country districts are vested in the fogeds, in the towns are committed to the judges of the courts of first instance. The management of the affairs of the parish is placed in the hands of a council, chosen by the peasants, which deliberates on all matters which concern the parish, such as the making of new roads, the application to the central government for assistance, and the repairing of the parish church. ”

“ The municipal and internal affairs are managed by a provincial assembly elected by the people. Every villa or borough throughout the province also possesses its municipal council, and in thinly-populated districts, the inhabitants choose every four years a justice of the peace who adjudicates in small disputes between neighbours. ”

“ The municipalities of to-day—I know not how many men whose time they absorb, but they are very different from the municipalities of my boyhood, and I suspect that if a Town Councillor of forty or fifty years ago were to present himself in a Town Council of to-day, he would regard their work with astonishment, and they perhaps might look at him with some surprise. ”

“ A delegation from township 16, range 1, in this county, has just left me, who came to represent that there are at this time twenty-eight families in that township who are in actual need of the necessaries of life, and they give it as their opinion that their township is not an exception, and that in the very near future a large proportion of the settlers of this Territory will have to have assistance. ”

“ On the first Monday of February next, and every two years thereafter, an election shall be held for the selection of one mayor, four aldermen, and nine councillors, and at the first election under this act, three judges shall be chosen viva voce by the electors present, the said judges shall choose two clerks, before entering upon their duties, shall take and subscribe an oath or affirmation such as is now required by law to be taken by judges and clerks of other elections; and at all subsequent elections, the necessary number of judges and clerks shall be appointed by the city council. ”