Municipality

“ 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 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. ”

“ We shut out all speculators.
No towns started in any other way shall have railroad or mail facilities.
When once a municipality is created in the way I have described, it shall provide, in the plat of the town, parks for recreation; no lot shall contain less than half an acre; the streets shall be very wide and planted with fruit trees in double and treble rows. In the center of the town shall be erected a town hall, with an assembly chamber, arranged like a theater, and large enough to seat all the inhabitants. ”

“ I have not, in this paper, attempted to describe the actual condition of any particular municipality, or even presented a picture which could represent the material existence of the cities as a whole. Such a picture would only be a necessary part of a study of institutions when the city itself was the unit to be investigated, and not of one whose chief object is to prove that the city as such had no constitutional existence, but simply formed a part of another institutional unit. ”

“ It may be conceded, as a general proposition, that there is a substantial distinction between the acts of a municipality as the agent of the state, for the preservation of peace and the protection of persons and property, and its acts as the agent of its citizens, for the care and improvement of the public property, and the adaptation of the city for the purposes of residence and business. ”

“ We are told that municipal government should be divorced from politics, and this is doubtless true. A municipality is primarily a business or engineering corporation. Its main concern is with streets, sewers, parks and docks ”

“ These are not under the control of the municipality, but are supported and managed by various public-spirited people who have been invited by the municipality to establish these institutions in an open healthy district, and on land let to them at a pepper-corn rent, it occurring to the authorities that they can the better afford to be thus generous, as the spending power of these institutions greatly benefits the whole community. ”

“ The municipality is partly elective and partly nominative, the majority of the officials being of native birth, and so far as a casual visitor may judge, affairs are managed economically and judiciously. ”

“ A municipality must strive, within its financial and administrative capacity, to achieve the objects set out in subsection (1) . Developmental duties of municipalities
153.
A municipality must —
(a)
structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community, and to promote the social and economic development of the community; and (b)
participate in national and provincial development programmes. Municipalities in co-operative government
154. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The municipality has a direct and far more intimate relation with those subject to its government than does the State, supplying many wants common to its inhabitants, and performing or supervising the performance of many services which outside of the municipality are left to private enterprise. ”

“ A municipality shall be the basic administrative territorial unit at the level of which self-government shall be practiced. Citizens shall participate in the government of the municipality both through their elected bodies of local self-government and directly, through a referendum or a general meeting of the populace. ”

“ The right of the municipality in any given case to suppress uses of land depends on the language of its charter, but under a universal charter provision a municipality may protect the general welfare of its people, and many uses of land are enjoined under this general power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Local administration of each commune or group of communes as determined by law is vested in a municipality, which shall be composed of the mayor, who is its highest authority, and by the council.
The respective organic constitutional law shall establish the modalities and forms that the participation of the local community in municipal activities shall take.
Mayors may, in the cases and in the manner determined by the respective organic constitutional law, appoint delegates for the exercise of their competences in one or more localities. ”

“ THE PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF LAND The ownership of land by the municipality is essential to the execution of many parts of a city plan. Certain acts of private owners which have a tendency to prevent the realization of a plan, either temporarily or for all time, may be enjoined by municipal regulation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And my case to-night is, that the existing local government bodies, your town councils, borough councils, urban district boards, and so forth, are, for the purposes of municipalisation, far from being the best possible bodies, and that even your county councils fall short, that by their very nature all these bodies must fall far short of the highest possible efficiency, and that as time goes on they must fail even more than they do now to discharge the duties we Fabians would like to thrust upon them. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ In larger villages boards of health and other boards and commissions exist to administer various forms of public service. The village may also have its minor court presided over by a justice of the peace.
CITY GOVERNMENT When villages or towns reach a certain population usually fixed by state law, they may be incorporated as cities. The change that takes place is simply one of elaborating the governing machinery and giving to it larger powers to correspond with the larger needs of city life. The complex problems of city government we shall not attempt to study in this book. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ County councils were organized in every county of each state and within most of the counties community councils, usually with the school district serving as the unit, were formed. These community councils were not committees, but were the community itself, with all its citizens and agencies organized for coöperative, effective, national service. It was a neighborhood democracy made effective by organization and it established a direct means of reciprocal communication between the Government and the masses of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The successive stages of integration are the township or ward, which is the unit of organization; the county or province, which is an aggregation of townships or wards; and the national domain or territory, which is an aggregation of counties or provinces; the people of each of which are organized into a body politic. It taxed the Greeks and Romans to the extent of their capacities, after they had gained civilization, to invent the deme or township and the city ward; and thus inaugurate the second great plan of government, which remains among civilized nations to the present hour. ”

“ The government, as provided by the charter of 1867 and numerous amendments thereto, is vested in a mayor, who holds office for two years, and a common council, which elects all administrative officials, excepting the statutory municipal officers, who are chosen by popular vote. The city owns and operates the water-works. ”

“ Local Government.—There is a uniform system of county governments, and general laws are enacted for the organization of townships. Laws affecting municipal corporations must be general laws, applying to classes of municipalities made upon the basis of population. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was not much change for many centuries in the way in which towns and villages were governed.
2. The borough towns, which gained their charters back in the days of King John, or King Henry III, had them confirmed by various kings in later times; but the powers of the towns were not much altered. The corporation of a borough was usually made up of men chosen by the freemen; but if the freemen did not admit many persons to the freedom of the borough, the power of electing, in the course of years, fell into the hands of a very few people. ”