City of Portland v. Welch
| Decision Date | 31 July 1928 |
| Citation | 269 P. 868,126 Or. 293 |
| Parties | CITY OF PORTLAND v. WELCH, COUNTY ASSESSOR, ET AL. |
| Court | Oregon Supreme Court |
Department 2.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Multnomah County; John H. Stevenson Judge.
Suit by the City of Portland, a municipal corporation, against H. U Welch, County Assessor of Multnomah County, and others. Decree for complainant, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.
Leon W Behrman, Deputy Dist. Atty., of Portland (Stanley Myers Dist. Atty., and George Mowry, Deputy Dist. Atty., both of Portland, on the brief), for appellants.
Frank S. Grant, City Atty., and L. E. Latourette, Deputy City Atty., both of Portland, for respondent.
This is an appeal from a decree enjoining the defendants, as the taxlevying officers of Multnomah county, from assessing or levying general taxes upon certain real property belonging to and situate within the city of Portland. The property in question, together with other adjoining lands, was purchased by the city for the purpose of establishing a municipal park. The park has been established and it was deemed inadvisable to use a portion of the purchased property for municipal park purposes. Such portion has been platted into lots by the city and offered for sale, but has not yet been disposed of. These platted and unsold lots are the subject of controversy here.
Section 4235, Or. L., as amended by chapter 270, Laws 1925, provides in part as follows:
As originally enacted on January 27, 1854 (see General Laws of Oregon, compiled and annotated by M. P. Deady, p. 894, § 4), this exemption was defined by the words:
"All public or corporate property of the several counties, cities, villages, towns and school districts in this state, used or intended for corporate purposes."
So far as applicable to the exemption from taxation of real property belonging to a city, the statute remained in its original form until amended by chapter 268, Laws 1907 when the words, "held under a contract for the purchase thereof," were added. Hence, since 1854, this statute defining the exemption from taxation of real property belonging to the cities of this state has been in operation without amendment except the provision making taxable lands owned by a city which have been contracted to be sold by the city to a private individual, until amended in 1907, and, during all of that time, so far as known to us, no attempt has been made by any officer in the state to tax any of the public or corporate property of a city or other corporate bodies named in the statute. This contemporaneous construction placed upon the act by all of the departments and officers of the state is very persuasive upon the meaning of the statute and affords strong grounds against the placing of a different construction even if the language of the act would seem to indicate that such was the real meaning of the words used in the statute. The fact that the 1907 Legislature amended the act by inserting the words, "held under a contract for...
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Nw. Natural Gas Co. v. City of Gresham
...State Tax Com., 221 Or. 398, 351 P.2d 694 (1960) ; Portland v. Multnomah County, 135 Or. 469, 296 P. 48 (1931) ; and Portland v. Welch et al., 126 Or. 293, 269 P. 868 (1928). We discussed those cases in Rogue Valley Sewer Services, observing that “ ‘[t]he intention to tax a municipality is ......
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Rogue Valley Sewer Servs. v. City of Phx.
...cited to cases discussing the general statutory exemption from taxation for public property in public use. See Portland v. Welch et al., 126 Or. 293, 296–97, 269 P. 868 (1928) (city real property exempt from county taxation under statute); State v. Preston, 103 Or. 631, 636–37, 206 P. 304 (......
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McCarthy v. Coos Head Timber Co.
...statute depends largely upon whether such construction is reasonably contemporaneous with the enactment of the statute. City of Portland v. Welch, 126 Or. 293, 269 P. 868; Kelsey v. Norblad, Governor, 136 Or. 76, 298 P. 199; Eugene School Dist. No. 4 v. Fisk, 159 Or. 245, 79 P.2d 262; Howel......
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Methodist Book Concern v. St. Tax Com'n
...to impose a property tax upon the plaintiff's property in the past constitutes an estoppel, the plaintiff cites Portland v. Welch et al., 126 Or. 293, 269 P. 868. That case goes no further than to say that the contemporaneous construction placed upon the act by the state officers is very pe......