CHAPTER 232 AN ACT TO CODIFY AND AMEND THE CHARTER OF THE CITY OF WINSTON-SALEM AND AMENDMENTS THERE- TO; TO DEFINE ITS CORPORATE LIMITS AND TO PRO- VIDE FOR ITS GOVERNMENT, AND FOR OTHER PUR- POSES. The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
Section 37. The board of aldermen shall have the power to enact ordinances in such form as they may deem advisable, as follows: For the protection of the waterworks and water supply of the city of Winston-Salem; to grant to any person, firm or corporation a franchise and right to own, control and operate, for a term of years or otherwise, street railways, telephone, telegraph, lighting or heatimg systems, or any other business engaged in public service; to fix tolls of street railways; to contract as to compensation for such franchise, and to control, regulate and tax the same; to prevent vagrancy, and any person not engaged in any lawful cocupation and who spends his time im gambling or loafing about the streets, without visible means of support, shall be considered a vagrant; to regulate and conduct all elections, to prevent interference with the officers thereof, and to preserve order thereat; to prescribe rules and regulations for the government and duties of police officers; to prohibit all trades, occupations or acts which are nuisances; to define and condemn nuisances and provide for the abatement or removal of same; to grant permits for the construction of buildings and other structures, and to prohibit the construction of any building or structure which in the judgment of the board of aldermen may be a nuisance, or of injury to adjacent property, or to the general public; to regulate and control the character of buildings which shall be constructed or permitted to be and remain in any part of the city of Winston-Salem, with the right to declare the same a nuisance or unsafe, and cause their demolition or removal; to provide for the leveling, filling in and drainage of all ponds, sunken lots or other places in which water stands and stagnates, and to recover from the owner or occupant the expenses of doing the same, which expense shall be a lien upon the lots so improved and enforced as liens for taxes; to prevent dogs, hogs, cattle and other livestock from roaming at large in the city, and to regulate or prohibit the keeping of hog pens within the city limits; to define and establish the fire limits and prevent the location of wooden or other buildings within said fire limits and in any part of the city where they may increase the danger of fire; to regulate and prescribe what character of buildings shall be constructed within the said limits, and provide for the conditions under which buildings*may be erected; to establish and appoint a fire commissioner or fire commission, and prescribe the duties and powers thereof; to prohibit the collection or existence in, on or about any storehouse, warehouse, residence or any private premises of inflammable or combustible matter or material; require the owner of such premises to remove or destroy same, and provide rules for the removal or destruction of such inflammable or combustible matter; and for purposes herein set forth to authorize an examination and inspection of all stores, warehouses, residences or any private premises; to establish, regulate and control the markets or market buildings, to fix the location of any market building, prescribe the time and manner and place within the city wherein marketable articles, such as meats, perishable vegetables, fish, game, and, all other kinds of perishable food or diet shall be bought or sold; to appoint keepers of markets and prescribe their duties and fix their compensation ; to regulate the license of itinerant merchants or peddlers, and of those doing a temporary business; to establish, regulate and control cemeteries; to provide for the manner in which bodies may be interred therein or removed therefrom, and for beautifying, ornamenting and keeping the same in condition; to provide suitable grounds for the enlargement, extension or establishment of mew cemeteries, providing separate cemeteries for white and black; to control and regulate the time and manner of burying the dead, the burial of any person within the corporate limits of the said city not within said cemeteries, and provide for the punishment of persons violating the rules and regulations concerning the cemetery; to provide for the establishment, organization, equipment and government of fire companies, fire commissioners and fire-alarm system, and to adopt rules for the conduct, regulations and terms of office thereof; to regulate the erection, placing and maintenance of all telephone, telegraph and other electric wires and to prohibit the same from being strung overhead in a public street, and to 28Private compel the owners and operators of telephone, telegraph or electric wires to put same under ground; to prohibit or control the use of any gasoline engine, the making or repairing of boilers, the establishment or operation of any plant or business which is or may become a nuisance to any part of the community; to prohibit or control the firing of firearms, firecrackers, torpedoes or other explosive materials, and to govern the sale thereof; to control and regulate the speed of all horses or other animals, automobiles, buggies, carriages, wagons or other vehicles on the streets; to regulate the speed of railroad engines and trains or street cars within the corporate limits, or the stopping of engines or cars in the streets or crossings of the city; to specify the manner in which all stove pipes and flues and electric wires shall be put in buildings, and to control and regulate the arrangement and operation thereof; to control and regulate the place and manner in which powder and other explosives and inflammable substances may be kept and sold, and the place and manner in which commercial fertilizers are stored; to provide for the sanitary condition and keeping of all lots, cellars, houses, water closets, privies, lavatories, stables, sites, and other places of like character, to provide for the examination and sanitation thereof, and for that purpose ordinances may be passed authorizing sanitary officers or policemen to enter the premises suspected of being im bad or unsanitary condition and have the same cleaned at the expense of the owner, or abate such places as nuisances and recover of the occupant #NAME? owner the expense thereof; to regulate the due observance of Sunday; to prevent the entrance into the city or the spreading of any contagious or infectious disease therein, and, for that purpose, may stop, detain and examine every person coming from places believed to be infected with such disease; to establish and maintain quarantines against communities and territories where it is suspected prevails any infectious or contagious disease; to establish and regulate hospitals within the city or within three miles thereof, and may cause ary person in the city suspected to be infected with such disease and whose stay in the city may endanger public health, to be removed to the hospital or other place that the mayor may select; to prevent from coming into the city any second-hand clothing, bedding or furniture; to remove from the city or destroy any furniture or other articles which may be suspected to be tainted or infected with contagious or infectious disease or in such condition as may generate and propagate disease; to abate all nuisances which may be injurious to public health; may vaccinate or otherwise subject to medical treatment all persons having smallpox or other contagious or infectious disease; to recover, by proper action against those who may cause the same, all costs and expenses of the moving and treating people having or suspected of having contagious or infectious diseases; shall have power, by force, to remove all persons from the city or to carry them to hospitals or other places selected by the mayor or board of aldermen and detain them therein; to prohibit the carrying on of any disorderly house or house of ill-fame, or gambling house or house where games of chance are being carried on or where liquors are illegally sold; to provide for the inspection and examination thereof; and, for that purpose, may-enter upon said premises and make arrest of any person or persons violating the ordinances of the city in reference thereto; to prohibit the construction of cellars under sidewalks or the making of entrances into sidewalks, and to make rules and fix specifications for the construction of all cellars under sidewalks or entrances into sidewalks; to regulate and control motion picture shows, and all exhibitions or places of public amusement, and all exhibitions or performances given therein; provide a board of censors who shall have power to inspect and view all public places of amusement or exhibtions given therein, and prohibit such as, in their judgment, are immoral or against public interests, and any violation of an order of the board of censors shall be unlawful, and every day an exhibition is permitted after am order of the board of censors prohibitng it shall constitute a separate offense. On behalf of the general welfare of the city of Winston-Salem, and for the good order and government thereof, the board of aldermen may, in addition to the foregoing powers. pass or ordain any resolution or ordinance, and enforce the same by proper punishment or penalty, which it may consider wise or proper, not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the State.
Section 45. The board of aldermen shall provide for the establishment, continuance, maintenance and support of a system of public schools, and for this purpose shall annually appropriate a certain part of the taxes of the city, the amount of such appropriation to be ascertained and fixed by the board of aldermen. The board of aldermen shall have power to fix the salaries of the superintendent of schools and the assistant superintendent of schools and shall proportion and distribute the school fund in the annual budget. Said schools shall be devoted to the education of the young, by high school and graded system, and shall be open to all bona fide residents of the city of Winston-Salem between the ages of six and twenty-one years, but persons living beyond the limits of the corporation may attend the schools upon the payment of tuitiom fees and under such regulations and rules as may be prescribed by the public school commissioners; that white and colored schools shall be conducted in distinct and separate buildings and departments; that said public schools shall be managed by a board of seven citizens and taxpayers of the city, two thereof being members of the board of aldermen, all of whom shall be elected by the board of aldermen, and in case of any vacancy occurring during the term of office of any commissioner, the board of aldermen shall appoint some one to fill out the unexpired term. That said board of commissioners shall be a body corporate and politic, under the name of the Public School Commissioners of Winston-Salem, and shall elect one of their number chairman and take in charge the various public schools of the city. The commissioners aforesaid shall have the power to select the superintendent of schools, assistant superintendent, directors of various departments of public schools, and teachers and other employees, and to dismiss them for cause: Provided, that the selection and appointment of the superintendent of schools, and the assistant superintendent, shall be with the advice and consent of the board of aldermen; the said board of commissioners shall also have power to fix the salaries of teachers and other employees, except as provided above, to aid them in the establishment of grades and the enforcement of discipline, to abate nuisances at the schools, to regulate the admission of pupils from without the corporate limits and fix the rate of tuition, to visit the schools regularly for inspection and do all other acts pertaining to their office for the good and success of the school. Said commissioners shall serve without compensation. The term of office of said commissioners shall be as follows: Those elected from the board of aldermen shall serve during the term for which they have been elected aldermen, and the other five commissioners shall be elected, for a term of three years each, by. the board of aldermen at its first regular meeting in September as follows: In September, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven, two members shall be elected; in September, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight, two members shall be elected; in September, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine, one member shall be elected, and so on by annual election to fill unexpired terms. The members of the present board shall hold office for the term for which appointed, and until their successors are elected and qualified.