Dobbs v. Maine School Administrative Dist. No. 50

• Decision Date: 25 September 1980
• Citation: 419 A.2d 1024
• Parties: Bettina DOBBS et al. v. MAINE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT NO. 50.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 1024

419 A.2d 1024

Bettina DOBBS et al. v. MAINE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT NO. 50.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 2, 1980.

Decided Sept. 25, 1980.

Murray, Plumb & Murray, E. Stephen Murray (orally), Ellyn C. Ballou, Portland, for plaintiffs.

Drummond, Woodsum, Plimpton & MacMahon, Richard A. Spencer (orally), Portland, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and WERNICK, GODFREY, NICHOLS, GLASSMAN and ROBERTS, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

Plaintiffs in this action are twelve voter-taxpayers of School Administrative District No. 50 (S.A.D. 50), which consists of the towns of Thomaston, St. George, and Cushing. Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that a June 19, 1979, district vote approving a bond issue for school construction was void, and request an injunction against any action based on that vote. The Superior Court ordered summary judgment for defendant S.A.D. 50, and plaintiffs appeal. ¹ We deny the appeal.

On April 24, 1979, three propositions that would have authorized certain school construction in S.A.D. 50, and the issuance of bonds to finance the same, were defeated by vote of the residents of the district. ² Subsequently, S.A.D. 50's Board of Directors was presented with petitions signed by 903 citizens of the district in support of the proposed construction. The petitions, however, failed to comply with the requirements of 20 M.R.S.A. § 225(2)(I) ³ (Supp.1980) in that they were neither submitted within 7 days after the April 24 vote nor accompanied by a tender of costs. On May 17, the Board of Directors voted, 9-to-1, to resubmit the school construction questions to the voters. At the subsequent referendum vote, held on June 19, 1979, the three propositions passed. ⁴ Plaintiffs then brought this action to enjoin S.A.D. 50 from issuing any bonds or taking any other action in reliance upon the results of the second referendum. At a pretrial conference, the parties stipulated that judgment could be entered for S.A.D. 50 if its Board of Directors as a matter of law possessed independent discretionary authority to resubmit previously defeated questions to the voters and if the Board did in fact exercise that independent authority rather than act under the compulsion of the petitions. The Superior Court justice found for defendant S.A.D. 50 on both the legal and the factual questions thus posed. We affirm his decision.

I.

The first issue presented to us is whether S.A.D. 50's directors had the independent authority to resubmit the school construction questions to the voters at the June 19, 1979, election. Our examination of the relevant statutes and their legislative histories satisfies us that the legislature that first created Maine's school administrative district system expressly empowered S.A.D. directors in their discretion to put a referendum question to a second vote, and that no subsequent legislature has altered that grant of power.

In 1957, the Ninety-eighth Legislature enacted the comprehensive School Administrative District Act, ⁵ which is now 20 M.R.S.A. ch. 9. That statute granted the directors of a school administrative district extensive powers in financing, constructing, and operating the schools under their jurisdiction. As pertinent here, the legislature declared:

To procure funds for capital outlay purposes . . . the school directors of said district are authorized to issue bonds and notes of the district . . . . The issuing of bonds or notes for capital outlay purposes shall first be approved by a majority of those qualified voters of the district voting at an election called by the school directors and held as provided in section 111-T . . . .

(Emphasis added) R.S. 1954, ch. 41, § 111-K. That portion of section 111-K that is quoted here survives, without any change of substance, as the present 20 M.R.S.A. § 304. ⁶

The introductory paragraph of the referred-to section 111-T expressly authorized S.A.D. directors to call district meetings. The relevant portions of that section 111-T provided:

When it is necessary to hold a district meeting to approve the issuance of bonds or notes for capital outlay purposes, . . . the school directors shall be authorized to call such meeting as follows:

I. Each district meeting shall be called by a warrant. . . .

II. The warrant for calling the district meeting shall be as follows:

III. Form of said articles:

The first paragraph of section 111-T has survived, without any change that is here relevant, as the first paragraph of 20 M.R.S.A. § 225.

The legislative grants of authority in the portions of sections 111-K and 111-T that have been quoted above were in terms unlimited. Section 111-K put no restraints whatever on the power of S.A.D. directors to submit to the district voters referendum questions, including those that had previously been voted down. On the contrary, the first paragraph of section 111-T affirmatively provided that the directors might in their discretion call a district meeting to approve the issue of bonds "(w)hen it is necessary." By its terms, then, section 111-T provided for a school district's directors to call however many meetings were necessary, in their judgment, to bring bond issue questions before the voters. In summary, the 1957-58 Legislature plainly granted the directors of an S.A.D. broad powers to determine when and how many times a bond question should be submitted to the district's voters. The precise language of those provisions has been carried forward in the present School Administrative District Act.

Plaintiffs contend, however, that the broad power to call district meetings granted to S.A.D. directors by the introductory paragraph of what is now section 225 is limited by subsequent provisions of that section. Plaintiffs argue that the concluding phrase of the introductory paragraph of that section, namely, the phrase "as follows," introduces a set of restrictions on the directors' powers, rather than merely a description of the manner in which those powers are to be exercised. A further examination of the original R.S. 1954, ch. 41, § 111-T, refutes any such construction; the balance of the section as originally enacted clearly served only the function of spelling out the procedure to be followed by the directors in calling district meetings. That section 111-T(II) set out eight requirements for the warrant to call a district meeting. The requirements were that a meeting be called within 45 days of the date of the warrant; that the articles to be voted on at that meeting be set out in the warrant; that the warrant be directed to any resident of the S.A.D. directing him to notify town officers of the requirement that they call a town meeting; that the warrant be served upon each town clerk in the district; that return of service be made; that the town clerk notify the municipal officers and that they in turn call a town meeting; that the voting at the meeting be done according to certain statutory provisions; and that the voting in cities be conducted in a specified manner. These requirements involved the mechanics for calling a district meeting and neither added to nor took away from the grant of power in the section's introductory paragraph authorizing the directors to decide when to set those mechanics in motion. In short, the plain language of the original section 111-T reveals a legislative intent to do no more than establish the procedure by which district meetings might be called when the directors saw fit to call them in accordance with the broad grant of authority contained in the introductory paragraph.

Sections 111-K and 111-T as originally enacted not only expressly authorized S.A.D. directors in their discretion to call a district meeting to consider or reconsider bond questions, but also provided no other method of bringing such questions to a vote. That statutory scheme was in sharp contrast to the then-existing provision in municipal law, which in one form or another had been on our statute books since 1821, ⁷ allowing 10% but in any event no less than ten of a municipality's voters to petition a local justice of the peace to call a town meeting following an unreasonable refusal of the town's selectmen to do so. In 1973, the legislature, aware of that discrepancy, determined to give a minority of a school district's voters rights similar to those enjoyed by a municipal minority. See 1973 Leg. Rec. 4861. Accordingly, that legislature added what is now the last sentence of section 225(2)(A), which provides:

When requested by 10% of the number of voters voting for the gubernatorial candidates at the last statewide election in the municipalities comprising the district, the directors shall call a district meeting, placing before the voters the specific school construction article which has been requested by the petitioners.

This court was called upon to construe the new last sentence of section 225(2) (A) in Heald v. School Administrative Dist. No. 74 Me., 387 A.2d 1 (1978). The only issue in Heald was whether under that statutory provision 10% of an S.A.D.'s voters could compel the calling of a reconsideration meeting against the directors' wishes. We held that the new language in section 225(2)(A) did not empower them to do so. We did, however, recognize in dictum the power of the district directors to call a district meeting, even for reconsideration of a bond issue question. Id. at 4. There is nothing in section 225(2)(A) or its legislative history that suggests that in 1973 the legislature, by giving voters the power to force the calling of a district meeting, intended to limit in any way the directors' existing authority to do so whenever in their judgment the meeting was "necessary." ⁸

After the Superior Court decision in Heald, but before this court's opinion affirming that decision, the legislature in 1977 enacted section 225(2)(I), the focus of the present controversy. ⁹ Plaintiffs assert that, even if S.A.D. directors previously...