Case Title: Clift v. City of South Burlington

Citation: 2007 VT 3

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 2007-01-18T00:00:00Z

Document:
Clift v. City of South Burlington (2006-155)

2007 VT 3

[Filed 18-Jan-2007]

                                 ENTRY ORDER

                                  2007 VT 3

                      SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2006-155

                             DECEMBER TERM, 2006


  Agnes Clift, John Clift,             }         APPEALED FROM:
  Sue Metcalf, Angela Crady,           }
  Kathryn Flynn, Francis Myers,        }
  Ruth Milhouse, Mary Lou              }         Chittenden Superior Court
  Newhouse, et al.                     }
                                       }  
      v.                               }
                                       }
  City of South Burlington             }         DOCKET NO. S0468-05 CnC

                                                 Trial Judge: Ben W. Joseph

             In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

       ¶  1.  Petitioners are a group of South Burlington voters who signed
  a petition requesting that the City of South Burlington add an advisory
  article to its 2005 town-meeting warning.  The City refused because the
  article did not relate to "city business."  Petitioners filed a complaint
  in Chittenden Superior Court, claiming that the South Burlington City
  Council was required by law to include the article in the warning.  The
  superior court granted summary judgment to the City and we now affirm.

       ¶  2.  Petitioners and other South Burlington residents, totaling
  more than five percent of city voters, petitioned the Council to include
  the following article in the 2005 annual town-meeting warning:

    Shall the City of South Burlington, on behalf of concerned
    citizens, advise the City Council to ask our state legislators, in
    writing, to enact legislation that will protect young girls by
    requiring clinics to notify at least one parent prior to providing
    a surgical or chemical abortion to their minor daughter, with
    special provisions to protect girls in abusive situations?

  At a duly warned meeting in April 2005, the Council took up for
  consideration the issue of the 2005 town-meeting warning.  After a
  discussion that included Council members and city residents, including
  several petitioners, the Council decided not to submit the petitioned
  article to voters because it did not concern "city business."  This led the
  Council to approve the warning without inclusion of petitioners' article. 
   
       ¶  3.  In May 2005, petitioners filed a challenge to the Council's
  decision in superior court, seeking an order-in the nature of mandamus-to
  compel the City to include the advisory article either in the 2006
  town-meeting warning or a special-meeting warning.  In reply, the City
  asserted that its refusal to include the article in the warning was within
  its lawful discretion.  The parties filed cross-motions for summary
  judgment.  In March 2006, the superior court granted the City's motion,
  opining that the article submitted by petitioners, "does not relate to city
  business in the sense that it does not address a matter under the general
  supervision, legal authority or control of the City or of City voters." 
  This appeal followed.

       ¶  4.  We review a grant of summary judgment using the same standard
  as the trial court.  In re Griffin, 2006 VT 75, ¶ 11, ___ Vt. ___, 904 A.2d 1217.  We will affirm the lower court's decision "if there are no
  genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to
  judgment as a matter of law."  Id.  There are no material facts in dispute
  in this case; however, the parties disagree as to whether including
  petitioners' article in the warning is a ministerial duty of the City
  compelled by law.

       ¶  5.  Under 17 V.S.A. § 2642(a), a municipality is required to
  include the following in its annual town-meeting warning:

    the date and time of the election, location of the polling place
    or places, and the nature of the meeting or election. [The
    warning] shall, by separate articles, specifically indicate the
    business to be transacted, to include the offices and the
    questions to be voted upon.  The warning shall also contain any
    article or articles requested by a petition signed by at least
    five percent of the voters of the municipality and filed with the
    municipal clerk not less than 40 days before the day of the
    meeting.

  While petitioners complied with the procedural requirements of the
  statute-that the petition be signed by more than five percent of voters and
  submitted more than forty days before the meeting date-our precedent
  indicates that the City was nonetheless justified in declining to include
  petitioners' article in the town-meeting warning.
        
       ¶  6.  Over the past thirty-seven years, this Court has consistently
  held that municipalities must have some discretion over the issues that are
  presented to voters at town meeting.  Beginning with Royalton Taxpayers'
  Protective Ass'n v. Wassmansdorf, we have interpreted our statutes to
  compel municipalities to present an article to voters only when "the
  purpose stated in such petition set[s] forth a clear right which [i]s
  within the province of the town meeting to grant or refuse through its
  vote."  128 Vt. 153, 160,