Municipal law

“ Suggestions have been made to the Commissioners that the nature of the thoroughfares, and the structure and internal arrangement of the buildings in districts inhabited by the working classes in large towns would be greatly improved if subject to the regulations of a Building Act enforced by the municipal authorities, or by a local board of health; they invite you to reflect on the provisions of such a law, and to state under what circumstances and to what extent you conceive such interference desirable. ”

“ Again, a town is any collection of houses larger than a village; or any number of houses to which belongs a regular market, and which is not a city. (Johnson, Webster, Ogilvie.) The same authorities define a village as a small collection of houses in the country, less than a town. According to this distinction, the law, in giving power to 'any village, city, county, or township' to make donations and issue bonds to the railroad company, confers the power upon bodies of higher and lower degrees of municipal organization than towns, and leaves them out. ”

“ If our act was illegal, we are willing to meet it, and although I cannot see the distinction that you draw about the acts of the city council, and what difference it could have made in point of fact, law or justice, between the city council's acting together or separate, or how much more legal it would have been for the municipal court, who were a part of the city council, to act separate, instead of with the councillors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The legal validity of any act by the city, such as the issuing of bonds, the contracting for a municipal waterworks or the granting of a municipal franchise, is not determined by the expressed desire of its citizens, but by the voice of the legislature as set out in some statute. The real seat of municipal authority, therefore, is not in the citizens, but in the state legislature; the city lives and moves and has its being in the will of the state. ”

“ Whether the board of public works is also a part of and an agency of the municipal corporation is the question before us.
1. The authorities state, and our own knowledge is to the effect, that the care and superintendence of streets, alleys, and highways, the regulation of grades, and the opening of new and closing of old streets, are peculiarly municipal duties. No other power can so wisely and judiciously control this subject as the authority of the immediate locality where the work is to be done. ”

“ The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. ”

“ Regulation by the state has the advantage of making the provisions apply uniformly to all cities within its borders and is obtained by no more effort than is required to get an ordinance through the Council of a single municipality. On the other hand, the municipal ordinance has the advantage of being secured by residents of the community who are intelligently concerned in the local problem and who will therefore take an active interest in having its provisions enforced. ”

“ The constitution of a municipality assumes that citizens will give, freely and without pay, such time as is wanted for the conduct of the municipal affairs. In local government the Settlement carries on a quiet work which is perhaps more effective than its classes and its lectures. ”

“ With the new municipalities, a really autonomous and decentralized municipal government will be established in the towns, since no provincial assembly is created in the capitals of the provinces or districts, and each municipality is the legitimate administrator of the interests of its town, and will keep, preserve, and expend for the public welfare of the municipal funds. ”

“ These are some of the tasks which cannot safely be intrusted to a municipality unless its government is above suspicion, unless men of probity and capacity are placed in power, unless the whole community extends its sympathy to the work and keeps a vigilant eye upon all the officials. Municipal governments cannot be encouraged to own public utilities so long as there is a risk that somebody may own municipal governments. ”

“ What is the Police? This we can best answer by a deduction of the conception of the police power of the state. The state, as such, has entered into a common compact with its citizens by which each party assumes certain duties and receives certain rights. We have shown the means of connection between the state and the citizens in all cases in which the citizen can and undoubtedly will prefer complaint. ”

“ The supervision of the state extends to the lock upon the door, and there begins mine own. The lock is the boundary line between the power of the government and my own private power. It is the intention of locks to make possible self-protection. In my own house my person is sacred and inviolable even to the government. In civil cases government has no right to attack me in my house, but must wait till I am upon public ground. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The city is organized, like the state government, on the plan of distributed powers and diffused responsibility. It contains, as a rule, an elaborate system of checks which affords little opportunity for the prompt and effective expression of local public opinion in the administration of municipal affairs. At the same time, it gives the municipal authorities power to inaugurate and carry out policies to which local public sentiment may be strongly opposed. This is seen in the control which the mayor and council quite generally exercise over the matter of municipal franchises. ”

“ The territorial legislature at least had the same authority as that possessed by congress to recognize claims of the nature described. It is a legislative power, and it was granted to the territorial legislature by the acts already referred to. A city is a municipal corporation and a political subdivision of the state, and, what the state could do itself, it has the power to direct its agent, the municipality, to do. ”

“ Each man to his liking played his part at the annual gathering, and realized that he was of some consequence in controlling the affairs of the township. Thus did the inhabitants continue to encroach upon the authority of the Justices in Session, who from time to time issued their decrees, dealing with some of the matters over which the town meetings had assumed jurisdiction, until 1850, when our present municipal system was introduced and the justices were practically shorn of all but their judicial power. ”

“ In all the municipal corporations dealt with by the act, the town council was to consist of a mayor, aldermen and councillors, and the councils were given like powers, being divided into those with and those without a commission of the peace. The minutes were to be open to the inspection of any burgess, and an audit of accounts was required. The exclusive rights of retail trading, which in some towns were restricted to freemen of the borough, were abolished. The system of police, which in some places was still medieval in character, was placed under the control of the council. ”

“ The mayor shall have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases arising under the ordinances of the corporation, and shall issue such process as may be necessary to carry said ordinances into execution and effect, appeals may be had from any decision or judgment of said mayor, or aldermen, arising under the city ordinances, to the municipal court, under such regulations as may be presented by ordinance. ”

“ Counties, cities, and towns are municipal corporations, created by the authority of the legislature; and they derive all their powers from the source of their creation, except where the constitution of the State otherwise provides. Beyond doubt, they are, in general, made bodies politic and corporate; and are usually invested with certain subordinate legislative powers, to facilitate the due administration of their own internal affaris, and to promote the general welfare of the municipality. They have no inherent jurisdiction to make laws, or to adopt governmental regulations ”

“ It shall be proper for said cities to provide, by ordinance, for the exercise of all rights and powers herein conferred upon the City Planning Commission, by a park commission, or kindred municipal bureau or commission, authorized under existing laws. And no person holding office under the government of any of said cities, except the mayor, members of councils, or commissioners, shall be ineligible to serve as a member of a City Planning Commission. ”

“ The Urban District.—Of areas within which are administered the local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several of distinct importance, although in reality the institutions of urban government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Municipal Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and a mass of subsequent and amending legislation. ”

“ It has been held that municipalities are not liable for such acts and omissions in the exercise of the police power, or in the performance of such municipal faculties as the erection and maintenance of a city hall and courthouse, the portection of the city's inhabitants against disease and unsanitary conditions, the care of the sick, the operation of fire departments, the inspection of steam boilers, the promotion of education and the administration of public charities. ”

“ Of these the most important was the Municipal Act, which gave local self-government to the villages, towns, townships and counties of Upper Canada. The people of each municipality could now manage such matters as building roads, bridges, jails and court-houses, through men elected for that purpose, and who were called councillors in villages, towns and townships, and aldermen in cities. ”

“ There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether great or small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town, therefore, without distinction of size, ought to have its municipal council. It is equally obvious that every town ought to have but one. The different quarters of the same town have seldom or never any material diversities of local interest; they all require to have the same things done, the same expenses incurred; and, except as to their churches, which it is probably desirable to leave under simply parochial management, the same arrangements may be made to serve for all. ”

“ The municipalities are in their area under their own responsibility the only public body responsible for the whole local public administration. They can take over any public duty if it is not by explicit legal regulation assigned exclusively to other bodies in urgent public interest.
(2) The municipal unions have within their legal responsibilities the same position.
(3) The right to self-administer their matters are provided to the municipalities and municipal unions by the state. The overseeing of the state is restricted to ensuring that the administration is in conformance with the laws. ”

“ In some localities the inhabitants have met together and voluntarily formed a municipal organization for the purposes of local government, adopting the form of a municipal constitution and charter, under which said officials have been appointed; and ordinances creating and regulating a police force, a fire department, a department of health, and making provision for the care of the insane and indigent poor and sick and for public schools, have been passed. ”

“ A bill to incorporate a city and provide for its government may, without conflicting with the constitutional clause, contain provisions relating to the various subjects upon which municipal legislation may be required for the preservation of peach, good order, and health within its limits, the promotion of its growth and prosperity, and the raising of revenue for its government. ”

“ Courts do not build housing nor do municipalities. That function is performed by private builders, various kinds of associations, or, for public housing, by special agencies created for that purpose at various levels of government. The municipal function is initially to provide the opportunity through appropriate land use regulations and we have spelled out what Mount Laurel must do in that regard. ”