transcribed by Dorothy
Wiland
Both Wrong.
Court may thus Hold
in the Action to Compel
the City Council to
Accept the Tax Rate
Fixed by Sinking Fund
Trustees.
To hold that both are right and yet both wrong. Such might be the decision of the Circuit court in the matter of the suit raising the question of the right of Council to reduce the levy of the Sinking Fund trustees, according not arbitrary to an attorney who has given much study to municipal law. He said the court might hold that Council had no right to reduce the levy, as an abstract proposition, after finding that the levy as fixed by the trustees was not arbitrary or unreasonable.
But it could also hold that the Sinking Fund trustees had failed to make a legal levy, since they had failed to certify their levy to Council before the first Monday in May, as provided in Section 108 of the code, and had also erred in certifying the aggregate levy instead of the "several amounts," needed for future payment of bonds, final judgments, interests, rents, and the expense of the Sinking fun. The court might also hold that the difference in the levy would amount to only $100,000 for the one year, and that this could not possibly very materially jeopardize the rights of the people, but that, on the contrary, the public business might be more interfered with, in view of the lateness of the proceedings, by restoring the rate certified by the trustees.
The court could take the view that since the objection of the petitioner for a mandamus was purely technical, while the trustees themselves were technically at fault, the confusion that would be caused in the conduct of public business would be reason enough not to issue the writ. It could say that while the Sinking Fund trustees, if they had strictly followed the law, might be entitle to have their levy go unchanged, yet they had not followed the law, since they had first certified 4 mills on June 13 and 3.24 mills on October 5.
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