City of St. Petersburg v. Briley, Wild & Associates, Inc., 39240
| Decision Date | 23 September 1970 |
| Docket Number | No. 39240,39240 |
| Citation | 239 So.2d 817 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | The CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG, George McGonegal and Betty McGonegal, his wife, Appellants, v. BRILEY, WILD & ASSOCIATES, INC., Pinellas County, Florida, a political subdivision of the State of Florida, Harold Mullendore, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Pinellas County, Florida, City of Safety Harbor, Florida, a municipal corporation; City of Belleair Beach, Florida, a municipal corporation, Appellees. |
Carl R. Linn, St. Petersburg, for appellants.
Richard Stewart, Clearwater and Frank L. Watson of Bryant, Freeman, Richardson & Watson, Jacksonville, for appellees.
This is an appeal from a decision of the Circuit Court of Pinellas County initially construing Article VIII, Section 1(h) of the 1968 Constitution of Florida, F.S.A., which is as follows:
We have jurisdiction under the provisions of Article V, Section 4(2).
This suit is one brought by the plaintiff, Briley, Wild & Associates, Inc., consulting engineers, against the defendant, Pinellas County, Florida, to recover payment of the sum of $100,381.73 allegedly due the plaintiff from the defendant for engineering services rendered under a contract between the parties by the terms of which the County employed the plaintiff as consulting engineers in connection with a proposed construction and expansion of sanitary sewage facilities in Pinellas County. The contract between the plaintiff and defendant County provided that the plaintiff would furnish all sanitary engineering work for the County in connection with said project. The over-all plan called for the ultimate cost to the County of approximately $50,000,000.00 to be divided into several phases. The beginning phase is calculated to cost $2,500,000.00, and it is for services rendered by plaintiff in connection with this phase of the project that this suit was instituted. This particular phase of the work contemplates the construction of a master sewage treatment plant in an unincorporated area of the county, together with the construction of transmission lines and lift stations, in accordance with the plans and specifications prepared by the plaintiff.
The defendant County included in its 1969--70 budget as an item in the General Fund Capital Outlay Reserve Account the sum of $2,500,000.00 estimated to defray the costs of this phase one construction. This sum is now in the General Fund of the County and was raised from ad valorem taxes levied upon all properties situated in the county, both in the incorporated and in the unincorporated areas. When the plaintiff presented its bill for payment for services to date the same was questioned by the Clerk of the Circuit Court, acting as County Auditor, it being his contention that the provisions of Article VIII, Section 1(h), supra, prohibit the use of monies raised by general ad valorem taxation to defray the costs of sewage facilities to be constructed in unincorporated areas of the county. The defendant County wants to pay the plaintiff, and, therefore, this lawsuit was begun as a friendly suit to determine its authority to do so. By way of counterclaim the defendant County sought a declaratory judgment of the trial court to construe the effect of the above constitutional provision upon its authority to pay not only the plaintiff for its services rendered to date, but also to use general county ad valorem taxes to defray this particular phase of the contemplated project and future phases thereof. The City of St. Petersburg, the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Pinellas County, the City of Safety Harbor, the City of Belleair Beach and the McGonegals, as taxpayers, intervened to contest the authority of the County to spend funds derived from general ad valorem taxes for the purposes heretofore stated. Thus, a suit which started out as a friendly lawsuit concluded as a bitterly contested one, primarily between the County of Pinellas and the City of St. Petersburg and the McGonegals, as residents and taxpayers of the City of Safety Harbor.
The suit went to trial upon the complaint of the plaintiff, the answer and counterclaim of the defendant County and the pleadings of the intervenors. The trial judge held that the contract sued upon was a valid and binding contract between the County and the plaintiff, that the amount sued for was properly due and owing from the County to the plaintiff under the contract, that the County was entitled to a declaratory judgmnt as to its authority to pay such sum to the plaintiff, that the Board of County Commissioners of the County proceeded properly under Special Act 69--1479 in approving and initiating the implementation of the master sewage facilities plan of the County, in accordance with the plan prepared by the plaintiff, for the purpose of eliminating pollution for the benefit of all areas of the County, both incorporated and unincorporated.
The record upon which the trial judge based his findings establishes that the population of the County is increasing rapidly in many of the unincorporated areas which are urban in nature and already densely populated; that the City of St. Petersburg located in the southeast portion of the county composes about one-fourth of the county area and has approximately 222,885 people and 58 square miles; that the city millage rate in that city is 16.25 mills; that the county millage rate is 10 mills countywide; that St. Petersburg, through its own resources plus a federal grant, has built and operated its own sewer treatment facility and renders quality sewerage services to its residents estimated to be adequate for its own area until 1985; that the urbanized areas of the County with few exceptions have shown no desire to incorporate; that over a period of years the County has attempted to solve the sewage pollution problem of the county as a whole by acquisition and construction of sewer systems through the use of special sewer districts created pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 153, Part II, F.S., financing such systems by revenue certificates issued against prospective service fees charged to the people served and/or assessed against their property; that the County purchased the sewer system serving the municipality of Kenneth City with the proceeds of such revenue certificates, and has purchased several other small existing systems by using available general funds of the County; that there exists an admitted present need in the County for upgrading its sewer plants and for providing additional sewage treatment facilities for the districts and for the other fast-growing urban areas of the County; two of the existing municipal systems have inadequate treatment facilities and are now being operated beneath State Health standards and have been cited by State Health authorities for failure to bring their plants up to proper standards. Because of these problems the County sought and obtained a special act of the Legislature in 1969 (Chapter 69--1479) which would authorize it to consolidate the various sewer districts as a first step to embark on a county-wide sewerage system plan pursuant to the general act, Chapter 153, F.S., and in accordance with a master plan prepared by consulting engineers; that this master plan called for as the first phase of the overall plan of sewerage control the construction of a master sewage treatment plant to be located in the southwestern portion of the County which would permit and call for the elimination of several smaller plants in some of the municipalities and unincorporated areas of the county; such master treatment plant is to be constructed adjacent to the existing treatment plant of the South Cross Bayou Sanitary District located in an unincorporated area of the county; that the existing plant now treats sewage from the City of Kenneth City and from parts of the cities of Pinellas Park and Largo; that it is proposed that such new master treatment plant (including the existing South Cross plant) will treat the sewage of the incorporated areas of Madiera Beach, Redington Beach, North Redington Beach and Redington Shores immediately upon its completion, and contracts have been entered into with those cities by the County for such purpose.
The Board of County Commissioners of the County in implementing the special act of the Legislature (Chapter 69--1479, Special Laws of Florida) adopted the master plan as prepared by the plaintiff consulting engineers and by resolution determined that there was a need for master pollution control facilities of sanitary sewerage in the County; that inadequate sewage treatment is presently polluting the rivers, streams, and bays throughout the County; that the implementation of the master sewerage facilities plan prepared by the plaintiff will tend to eliminate such pollution, and that the results will be beneficial to all residents of the County, including those in the incorporated as well as in the unincorporated areas.
(3) That the use of the General Fund of Pinellas County to pay the sums due called for under the contract between the plaintiff and the County...
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