Green v. City of Cascade

• Citation: 231 N.W.2d 882
• Decision Date: 31 July 1975
• Docket Number: No. 2--57953,2--57953
• Parties: Leo J. GREEN, Appellant, v. CITY OF CASCADE, Iowa, Appellee.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 882

231 N.W.2d 882

Leo J. GREEN, Appellant, v. CITY OF CASCADE, Iowa, Appellee.

No. 2--57953.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

July 31, 1975.

Reynolds, Gilchrist, Nutty, Smith & Sharp, Ames, for appellant.

Moss & Heims, Dyersville, for appellee.

Submitted to MOORE, C.J., and REES, UHLENHOPP, REYNOLDSON and HARRIS, JJ.

UHLENHOPP, Justice.

This appeal involves a test of the validity of municipal general obligation bond proceedings and of portions of the home-rule act, chapter 1088 of the Acts of the 64th General Assembly.

By action of its council, the City of Cascade, Iowa, elected to come under §§ 1 through 198 of the home-rule act. See § 9(2) of the act. Thereafter the council proposed to issue bonds for an essential corporate purpose under part 3 of division VII of the act. Section 106(2) of the act requires a council proposing to issue such bonds to hold a meeting to receive and consider oral or written objections. Accordingly, the Cascade council held such a meeting after publishing notice, received, considered, and overruled written objections by plaintiff Leo J. Green, and took additional action toward the issuance of bonds.

Plaintiff appealed to district court from the action of the council. In that court he urged several contentions which, after trial, the trial court overruled. Hence the present appeal by plaintiff to this court, where he again presses his contentions.

I. Notice. Plaintiff first contends that Cascade's notice of the required meeting was insufficient in content. The first sentence of § 106(2) of the home-rule act governs here:

Before the council may institute proceedings for the issuance of bonds for an essential corporate purpose, a notice of the proposed action, including a statement of the amount and purposes of the bonds, and the time and place of the meeting at which the council proposes to take action for the issuance of the bonds, must be published as provided in section three (3) of this Act (§ 362.3, Code 1975).

In pertinent part, Cascade's notice states that the council will meet at a specified date, hour, and place to institute proceedings for the issuance of $50,000 of general obligation bonds 'for the purposes of defraying the costs of constructing and repairing street improvements, constructing facilities useful for the collection and disposal of sewage wastes, and the undertaking of the construction of a street improvement jointly with the County of Jones.'

We require strict compliance with statutory requirements in proceedings involving special assessments. H. L. Munn Lumber Co. v. City of Ames, 176 N.W.2d 813 (Iowa). The present proceedings, however, involve general obligation bonds, where the standard is substantial compliance. 2 Antieau, Municipal Corporation Law, § 15.10 at 15--23 (1973); 15 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, § 43.42 at 558 (1970 rev. ed.).

Upon examining the statute and the notice, we conclude that Cascade substantially--though minimally--complied with the notice requirement.

II. Multiple Essential Corporate Purposes in Single Proceeding. In his argument, plaintiff conceded that § 109 of the home-rule act authorizes a council to include more than one essential corporate purpose in a single proceeding looking toward issuance of general obligation bonds. We so hold.

III. Authority to Perform Essential Functions in Question. Plaintiff contends next that Cascade has no authority to perform the functions in question--to construct and repair streets and to construct facilities for collection and disposal of sewage--because the home-rule act grants no such authority.

We now have the Home Rule Amendment to the Iowa Constitution. The Amendment states (Iowa Constitution, article III, § 40):

Municipal corporations are granted home rule power and authority, not inconsistent with the laws of the general assembly, to determine their local affairs and government, except that they shall not have power to levy any tax unless expressly authorized by the general assembly.

The rule or proposition of law that a municipal corporation possesses and can exercise only those powers granted in express words is not a part of the law of this state.

The Amendment is of the self-executing type. Scheidler, Implementation of Constitutional Home Rule in Iowa, 22 Drake L.Rev. 294, 302, 304. Street construction and repair and sewage collection and disposal manifestly constitute local affairs, and the Amendment itself gives cities authority to handle such matters.

We do not find merit in plaintiff's third contention.

IV. Authority to Issue General Obligation Bonds. Plaintiff next argues that Cascade does not possess authority to issue general obligation bonds for the repairs and improvements involved here--again because the home-rule act grants no such authority.

The Home Rule Amendment reverses the previous rule which required a statutory grant of authority in order for cities to issue bonds. 56 Am.Jur.2d Municipal Corporations, Counties & Other Political Subdivisions § 580 at 631; 64 C.J.S. Municipal Corporations § 1902 at 475. Under the Amendment itself, cities have authority to issue general obligation bonds incident to their local affairs and government. True, without legislative authorization cities cannot levy taxes and therefore they could not pay bond principal and interest, but the legislature granted them that additional authority. See §§ 82 and 85(2) of the home-rule act. Cities are, of course, subject to the debt-limitation clause in § 3 of article XI of the Iowa Constitution.

We reject plaintiff's fourth argument.

V. Rate of Interest. Plaintiff claims that the procedure in the home-rule act for issuing bonds is 'so vague, incomplete, defective, indefinite, or so conflicting or inconsistent as to be unworkable or incapable of enforcement,' for the reason that § 110(2) of chapter 1088 provides the bonds shall bear interest at rates not exceeding the limitations imposed by chapter 75 of the Code and chapter 75 provides no applicable limitations. Davidson Building Co. v. Mulock, 212 Iowa 730, 751, 235 N.W. 45, 54.

Plaintiff's claim is now moot. The legislature has inserted maximum interest rates in chapter 75. 66 G.A., S.F. 526, § 4. We do not intimate that his claim would be good had the legislature not inserted such rates.

VI. One Subject, Expressed in Title. Plaintiff asserts that the home-rule act violates § 29 of article III of the Iowa Constitution:

Every act shall embrace but one subject, and matters properly connected therewith; which subject shall be expressed in the title. But if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be expressed in the title.

Plaintiff faces the heavy burden of overcoming the presumption of constitutionality which legislative acts carry. Keasling v. Thompson, 217 N.W.2d 687 (Iowa).

The title of the act is this:

An Act relating to home rule for cities; establishing the city code of Iowa which provides for powers and duties of cities including the power to impose penalties by ordinance, city development, organization of city government, city elections, city legislation, city finance including the power to issue bonds, city utilities, and administrative agencies of cities; coordinating the Code of Iowa with the city code of Iowa; repealing incompatible chapters in Title fifteen (15) and reenacting provisions from Title fifteen (15) which belong in other parts of the Code of Iowa; removing inconsistent references, incorrect provisions, limited grants of power, and restrictions based upon population; and providing for a state housing code and penalties for violation thereof, to be enforced in cooperation with city officials.

The topics in the home-rule act are these:

Powers and duties of cities

City development

Organization of city government

City elections

City legislation

City finance

City utilities

Administrative agencies

State housing code

We are clear that the title of the act expresses the subject matter. But does the act embrace only one subject and matters properly connected therewith?

This court stated the rules relating to application of § 29 of article III of the constitution in State v. Talerico, 227 Iowa 1315, 1322, 290 N.W. 660, 663. See also Long v. Board of Supervisors of Benton County, 258 Iowa 1278, 1284, 142 N.W.2d 378, 382:

The primary and universally-recognized purpose of the one-subject rule is to prevent 'long-rolling' in the enactment of laws, the practice of several minorities combining their several proposals as different provisions of a single bill, and thus consolidating their votes so that a majority is obtained for the omnibus bill where perhaps no single proposal of each minority could have obtained majority approval separately. It was designed to prevent riders from being attached to bills that are popular and so certain of adoption that the riders will secure adoption, not on their own merits, but on the merits of the measure to which they are attached.

After the electors approved the Home Rule Amendment, the legislature had the task of revamping the entire title of the code dealing with municipal corporations. It could perform the task piecemeal or by one act. It chose the latter method. We think the various parts of the act, with one exception, were sufficiently interrelated to constitute the subject of one enactment. Cf. Widney v. Hess, 242 Iowa 352, 45 N.W.2d 233.

The one exception is found in §§ 199, 236, 237, 238, and 240 of the act. Section 236 amends the chapter of the code pertaining to the State Department of Health by granting that department authority to promulgate by rule a state housing code which apparently would apply to both rural and urban areas throughout the state. Sections 199, 237, 238, and 240 amend or repeal other parts of the Code accordingly. We think these housing code provisions are not germane to the rest of the act. But the inquiry does not end at...