Chwalek v. City of Pittsfield
| Decision Date | 09 June 1975 |
| Parties | John C. CHWALEK et al. v. CITY OF PITTSFIELD et al. |
| Court | Appeals Court of Massachusetts |
Philip H. Grandchamp, Adams, for petitioners.
L. George Reder, Asst. City Solicitor, for the City of Pittsfield (Bernard H. Starr, Pittsfield, for Raymond W. Skrocki & others, with him).
Before ROSE, KEVILLE and ARMSTRONG, JJ.
RESCRIPT.
In their appeal from the decree of the Probate Court which dismissed their petition for declaratory relief and declared valid the takings purportedly made by the respondent city of lands and interests in land in the town of Windsor under the authority granted the city for that purpose by St.1968, c. 590, the petitioners contend that the city failed to comply with the proviso in § 1 of the 1968 act whereby any such acquisition was subject to the approval of the Department of Public Health. While the Department concededly approved the acquisitions in its letters dated September 27 and October 20, 1971, its approval was expressly conditioned upon the completion of the acquisitions by September 1, 1972, and the orders of taking at issue were neither adopted nor recorded until December of that year. The 1972 amendment to the 1968 act (St.1972, c. 335) did not, as claimed by the city, extend that deadline. The language in which the amendment is couched ('The authority granted to the city of Pittsfield by th(e 1968) act to acquire any land or rights in land by eminent domain in the town of Windsor shall expire on December (31, 1972) . . .' (emphasis supplied)) clearly manifests a legislative intention to impose a deadline on the city's exercise of its authority rather than to relax any statutory or administrative restriction on that authority. Our interpretation is reinforced by the title of c. 335, 'An Act limiting the time during which the city of Pittsfield may take by eminent domain certain land, rights of way and easements in the town of Windsor' (emphasis supplied) (Maria v. State Examiners of Electricians, --- Mass. ---, ---, fn. 4, a 313 N.E.2d 448 (1974) and cases cited), and by its legislative history, which discloses a series of bills and amendments thereto whereby a variety of deadlines on the city's acquisitions (including November 1, 1971, and September 1, 1972) were proposed and considered (see 1971 House Doc. Nos. 4021, 5428; 1972 House Doc. No. 5484; 1971 House Journal, pp. 1347, 1401; 1971 Senate Journal, p. 2640; 1972 House Journal, pp. 1432, 1483). The judge's finding that the Department of Public Health itself extended the deadline from ...
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...municipality"having first complied with all the preliminary requirements prescribed by law." G.L. c. 79, § 1. Chwalek v. Pittsfield, 3 Mass.App.Ct. 759, 760, 329 N.E.2d 156 (1975). The plaintiff's claim of a violation of G.L. c. 164, §§ 35 and 37, fits comfortably within that statutory lang......
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