Source: http://courts.mrsc.org/supreme/052wn2d/052wn2d0617.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 00:42:21+00:00

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MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS - GOVERNMENTAL POWERS AND FUNCTIONS -LEGISLATIVE POWERS - LIMITATIONS. A city of the first class has as broad legislative powers as the state, except when restricted by enactments of the legislature or provisions of the city's charter.
 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - PRESUMPTIONS IN FAVOR OF CONSTITUTIONALITY. Every presumption is in favor of the constitutionality of a law or ordinance, and the burden rests upon the party who challenges an ordinance to establish clearly its invalidity.
 STATES - PROPERTY - DISPOSITION - POWER TO LEASE. A sovereign may lease its property to private parties, so long as there is no interference with the public use.
 MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS - PROPERTY - DISPOSITION - POWER TO LEASE. A city of the first class has the power to lease space on its parking meters for advertising purposes, unless the exercise of that power contravenes the state constitution.
 SAME - STREETS - USE BY MUNICIPALITY FOR PURPOSE OTHER THAN HIGHWAY. If the particular use of streets authorized by a city is private, it is not unconstitutional on that ground, unless the particular encroachment is unreasonable.
 SAME. In an action to declare void and to enjoin performance under a city ordinance and an agreement between a city and an advertising company permitting the placing of advertising on city parking meters by the company, held that the use authorized was public in nature.
 SAME - EMINENT DOMAIN - INJURIES TO PROPERTY NOT TAKEN - USE OF STREETS. In such an action, the metal holders and advertising signs affixed on the parking meters were not unreasonable encroachments upon abutting property, and, therefore, there was no constitutional taking justifying compensation, where photographs in evidence did not support allegations that these devices would create a "wall effect" along the curb and that they would obstruct or interfere with pedestrian or vehicular traffic.
«1» Reported in 328 P. (2d) 873.
 See 8 A. L. R. (2d) 373. 396; 37 Am. Jur. 746.
does not protect a business against the hazards of competition, and the damages to the abutting owner, if any, were entirely conjectural and extremely remote.
 SAME - GOVERNMENTAL POWERS AND FUNCTIONS - DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY. In such an action, held that there was no unlawful delegation of discretionary administrative power by the ordinance and agreement, which permitted the city commission unlimited discretion in approving advertising signs to be placed on parking meters.
 SAME - ORDINANCES - CONSTRUCTION - PURPOSE OF ACT. It must be presumed that the framers of the Yakima City Charter had a definite purpose for Art. XI, relating to the granting of franchises. and that they adopted and formulated the various sections of this article in harmony with that purpose.
 STATUTES - CONSTRUCTION - INTENT. In cases involving the construction of statutes in which the intent is not clear, the meaning of doubtful words may be determined by reference to their association with other associated words or phrases, and when two or more words are grouped together, and ordinarily have a similar meaning, but are not equally comprehensive, the general word will be limited by the qualified or special word.
 MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS - STREETS - GRANT OF RIGHT TO USE FOR PURPOSES OTHER THAN HIGHWAYS - CHARTER LIMITATIONS. Art. XI, § 2 of the Yakima City Charter, providing that no franchises or right to occupy or use the streets of the city shall be granted except by ordinance submitted to the vote of the electors, does not require that a contract between the city and an advertising company to place advertising signs on the city's parking meters be submitted to the electorate, since the the charter provision was intended to place a limitation only on the power of the city commission to grant rights to public utilities or public service companies to furnish services to the members of the public generally, and an advertising company is not a public utility in the common understanding of that term.
Appeal from a judgment of the superior court for Yakima county, No. 40414, Willis, J., entered August 23, 1956, in favor of the plaintiff and intervener, in an action to declare an ordinance and agreement invalid and for injunctive relief. Reversed.
Arthur Kirschenmann, Robert R. Roberts, Hawkins &Loy, and Cheney & Hutcheson, for appellants.
Beaulaurier & Hanson, for respondent Winkenwerder.
Halverson, Applegate & McDonald, for respondent Republic Publishing Co.
"AN ORDINANCE relating to advertising signs on parking meters, and authorizing execution of a contract with the Meter Advertising Company pertaining thereto, and providing for the utilization of the City's share of the revenue therefrom for traffic regulation purposes.
"Section 1. The Meter Advertising Company, a Washington corporation, is hereby granted permission and directed to place and maintain advertising signs in suitable metal holders affixed to the top of at least 500 parking meters located in the central business district of said city during a six-month period, commencing September 15th, 1955, and thereafter for such additional period, if any, as may be authorized by ordinance or resolution adopted by the Yakima City Commission, in consideration of the sum of $1.00 per parking meter per month for all parking meters upon which said advertising signs are placed, to be paid to said city, and in accordance with the terms and conditions more fully provided in the agreement of even date herewith between said parties, a copy of which is attached hereto and incorporated by reference herein; and the Mayor and City Clerk are hereby authorized and directed to execute said agreement on behalf of said city.
"Section 2. All revenue received by the city therefrom shall be placed by the City Treasurer in the Parking Meter Fund from which the same shall be expended and utilized solely and exclusively for the payment of a portion of the expense of traffic regulation in said city.
"Section 3. The said Company shall not use any parking meters in said City in such a manner as to prevent, obstruct or interfere with the use thereof for the primary purpose of regulating traffic and parked vehicles.
"Section 4. Nothing herein permitted shall be deemed unlawful or a violation of Ordinance No. A-282, passed on July 25, 1917, or Ordinance No. B-1526, passed on December 31, 1953, as amended, or any other ordinance of said City heretofore passed.
"Section 5. This ordinance shall be in full force and effect thirty days after its passage, approval and publication as provided by law and the City Charter.
"PASSED BY THE CITY COMMISSION, signed and approved, this 26th day of July, 1955.
candidate for any political office in said city, nor advertising exclusively for any one political party; but political advertising thereon shall so far as practicable be available in equal amounts to each political party and the candidates thereof. The Company shall to a reasonable extent include without additional charge on said advertising signs, traffic slogans or other similar language encouraging traffic safety and careful automobile operation.
"7. No sign advertising the business of a competitor or competing product shall be placed in front of, adjacent to or within a distance of one-half block (on the same side of the street) of a competing business establishment. With reference to a corner establishment, said restriction shall apply for a distance of one-half block on each street from the said corner. The authority and responsibility for determining what is or is not competitive advertising shall be solely that of the City Commission (or a public official, if any, of said City designated by it)."
Pursuant to the ordinance and the agreement, the company installed the holders and the advertising signs on the top of various parking meters in the city. Thereafter, Roy Winkenwerder initiated a declaratory judgment action seeking to have the ordinance and agreement declared invalid, and an injunction requiring removal of the metal holders and the advertising from the city parking meters. The Republic Publishing Company filed a complaint of intervention, requesting a permanent injunction against the city and the company.
maintaining holders and advertising signs to or upon parking meters in the City of Yakima." The city and company have appealed.
Counsel have stipulated the accuracy of certain pictures showing the parking meters with the advertising holders affixed thereto. These pictures were attached to the complaint and are contained in the record. Rather than to give a detailed description of the metal holders and the signs contained therein, we reproduce below two of the photographs.
"It is evident from the constitution of this state and legislative enactments that, in Washington, cities of the first class are vested with very extensive powers, and that, under Rem. Comp. Stat., § 8982, supra, the statutes of this state concerning the same must be liberally construed by the courts for the purpose of carrying out the manifest intent of the legislature to establish cities of the first class as selfgoverning bodies, only `subject to and controlled by general laws.'"
 It is clear from the Ennis case and from many other decisions of this court that the only limitation on the power of cities of the first class is that their action cannot contravene any constitutional provision or any legislative enactment. See State ex rel. Billington v. Sinclair (1947), 28 Wn. (2d) 575, 183 P. (2d) 813; State ex rel. Griffiths v. Superior Court (1934), 177 Wash. 619, 33 P. (2d) 94; Walker v. Spokane (1911), 62 Wash. 312, 113 Pac. 775. (Cf. Washington Fruit & Produce Co. v. Yakima (1940), 3 Wn. (2d) 152, 100 P. (2d) 8, 103 P. (2d) 1106, 128 A. L. R. 159; and Brennan v. SeattLe (1929), 151 Wash. 665, 276 Pac. 886, relative to the broad police powers of a city of the first class.) The principles adhered to in the preceding cases clearly indicate that a city of the first class has as broad legislative powers as the state, except when restricted by enactments of the state legislature.
Respondents have not challenged the ordinance and agreement as contravening any state statute. If the state could constitutionally exercise the powers which the city is here attempting to exercise, then the ordinance and agreement are valid, unless they contravene some provision of the city's charter.
"We must be cautious about pressing the broad words of the Fourteenth Amendment to a drily logical extreme. Many laws which it would be vain to ask the court to overthrow could be shown, easily enough, to transgress a scholastic interpretation of one or another of the great guarantees in the Bill of Rights. They more or less limit the liberty of the individual or they diminish property to a certain extent. We have few scientifically certain criteria of legislation, and as it often is difficult to mark the line where what is called the police power of the States is limited by the Constitution of the United States, judges should be slow to read into the latter a nolumus mutare as against the lawmaking power."
In Kimmel v. Spokane (1941), 7 Wn. (2d) 372, 109 P. (2d) 1069, we held that an ordinance providing for the installation and maintenance of parking meters is a valid exercise of a city's police power. It is not disputed that the parking meters are the property of the city.
". . . may acquire property within or without its boundaries for municipal purposes by purchase, gift, devise, lease or condemnation, and may sell, lease, hold, manage and control such property as its interests may require, . . ."
"If the city's position is tenable, it could then divert to private and commercial use all forms of apparatus maintained by the city on sidewalks of private property. Thus, the city's fire plugs, fire alarm boxes, police call boxes, and traffic light standards could be utilized by the city for commercial advertising, if the principle for which defendants are here contending is valid."
A parade of horrible possibilities is not necessarily a sound reason for invalidating an ordinance or a legislative enactment. There is time enough to deal with the possibilities if they become realities. The question we are facing here is the power of the city to use its property (parking meters) for advertising purposes. The expediency of such a course of action is a political question. Personal predilections against the seemingly omnipresent advertising men should not lead to placing a constitutional limitation on the sovereign powers of the people in the instant case.
case.] It is the legal limitation upon these secondary uses which is the subject of our inquiry with respect to appellants' first contention.
 It is clear from the York case, supra, that the state has absolute control over the streets-limited only by the constitution. It follows that the state, and thus the city in the case at bar, has the power to lease space on its parking meters for advertising purposes, unless the exercise of that power contravenes the constitution.
It is contended that the city cannot constitutionally permit and direct the use of the sidewalks, or parking meters thereon, by a private corporation for private gain or profit. Essentially, this argument is that incidental or secondary uses are not constitutional unless they are such as to justify eminent domain proceedings.
(5) The limitation on reasonable incidental uses rests with the people, it being a political and not a judicial question.
"`The people of a municipality, who incur and pay the expenses for the construction and maintenance of their streets, and who largely use them, are usually most capable of exercising discretion in the secondary and subordinate purposes for which their streets shall be used.'"
"In our opinion, the rules which we have above summarized do not support appellants' contention that incidental uses of highways must be such as justify eminent domain proceedings. They suggest, rather, that the use must have some element of public benefit, and must not be inconsistent with the public use to which the highways are dedicated."
"It is argued that the use of the streets authorized by this ordinance is for a private purpose.
"That is, it is claimed that the ordinance authorizes the relator to place advertisements on the boxes and hence the profit to the relator is the primary purpose of the ordinance and this being a matter of private gain the use is private and not public.
public and not private. The same objection as to advertisements can be made to street car lines, for such companies derive a profit from permitting advertisements to be placed in their cars, and the city gets no part of the profits arising from such advertisements, whereas, here the city gets fifteen per cent of the gross receipts. But the fact that the city gets all, or any proportion, or none of the profits arising from advertisements placed on such receptacles or allowed by street car companies to be placed in their cars, or by telegraph or telephone companies to be placed on their poles, does not in any manner even tend to determine the question of whether the receptacles or street car lines or telegraph or telephone poles are or are not public utilities which make the use of the streets public and not private. Neither does the question whether the primary and principal purpose of and inducement to the persons granted such franchises is for private gain, and the public profit or advantage is of only an insignificant and secondary nature, afford a fair or determining test to apply to the validity of such an ordinance. For these conditions are present in all cases of public utilities that are furnished by private persons at their own cost. The crucial and final test is, does the use - utility - subserve a public purpose - does it furnish a natural need of the city or its citizens - does it contribute to his comfort, prosperity or happiness? If it does. it is public; otherwise, not. The proportion between the public and the private benefit derived from the use is not a determining factor in the problem. If the public is benefited in any degree the use is public, even though the individual who furnishes the small benefit to the public, may be benefited many times as much as the public."
In the instant case, the public may benefit in a number of ways by this ordinance. For example, many of the signs advise or warn the public relative to traffic safety; other signs inform the public as to what products are available, and where; the revenue received by the city will lighten the tax load; and the use of the money for traffic regulation will directly benefit the public.
". . . the said metal holders and advertising material located upon the above described real estate materially impair plaintiff's right of free passage and repassage to said real estate, are large and gaudy in appearance, create a wall effect along the curb in front of Plaintiff's place of business, and constitute an unreasonable encroachment materially impairing the view of Plaintiff's place of business by the public and the use of said street and sidewalk as public thoroughfares."
In the light of the stipulated accuracy of the photographs introduced into evidence, we do not believe that the metal holders and advertising signs affixed on the parking meters will create a "wall effect" along the curb, or that they will obstruct or interfere with pedestrian or vehicular traffic. We are unable to conclude that these devices, so pictured, are unreasonable encroachments. We might emphasize for clarity that the reasonableness of a particular encroachment must be determined from the facts peculiar to each case.
"While there is a divergence of opinion in the cases as to what justifies compensation for an additional burden, it has been persuasively suggested that the line should be drawn at `unreasonable interference' with the rights of the abutting owner."
See, also, the decision by Justice Holmes in NobLe State Bank v. Haskell, supra, with respect to there being a constitutional taking only when there is an unreasonable taking.
The cases cited and relied on by respondent clearly involve unreasonable encroachment.
It is from hazards of that order, and not from restraints of law capriciously imposed, that the appellant seeks relief. The refuge from its ills is not in constitutional immunities."
In addition, it would seem that damages to respondentintervener, "if they exist at all, are entirely conjectural and extremely remote." Burns v. St. Paul City R. Co. (1907), 101 Minn. 363, 112 N. W. 412.
On the basis of the record before us, we can find no unlawful taking without compensation or without due process of law.
 Respondent vigorously contends that the ordinance and concomitant agreement permit the Yakima city commission unlimited discretion in approving the advertising signs as to their nature, size, and general appearance and, as such, constitute an unlawful delegation of discretionary administrative power. This argument hardly merits comment. The "unlawful delegation of discretionary administrative power" rule, by its own terms, applies to administrative agencies. The city commission of Yakima is a legislative body. In this case there is no delegation of authority whatsoever; the city commission merely reserved to itself the right to approve the advertising signs. One city commission could not set up rules governing the approval of the signs, which could not later be changed by a subsequent city commission; therefore, such rules would serve no useful purpose.
The complaints of respondent and intervener respondent indicated other contentions pertaining to unconstitutionality. However, their appellate briefs contain no arguments with respect to such other contentions, and we assume that they have been abandoned.
It is contended that the ordinance and the agreement involved the granting of rights under Art. XI, § 2; that the matter was not submitted to a vote of the Yakima electors (as required by Art. XI, § 2), and that the ordinance and agreement are inoperative and invalid.
It is the city's position that Art. XI of the city charter deals only with franchises, as evidenced by its title. The city contends that the phrase, "or right to occupy or use the streets, highways, bridges, or public places of the city," is merely another way of saying "franchise;" and the city contends that this ordinance and agreement do not rise to the dignity of a franchise.
Article XI of the Yakima city charter is entitled, "Franchises." "The word `franchises' has various significations. both in a legal and popular sense. The reLation in which the term is employed controLs its meaning." (Italics ours.) 12 McQuillin on Municipal Corporations (3d. ed.), §§ 34.04. p. 16.
 In its broadest sense, the word franchises is synonymous with freedom, liberty, rights, privileges., powers, and immunities. See 23 Am. Jur., Franchises, § 2, p. 715. But the word franchises has many more limited meanings, depending on its context. See 12 McQuillin, supra, §§ 34.01 through 34.09. It must be presumed that the framers of the Yakima charter had a definite purpose for Art. XI, and that they adopted and formulated the various sections in harmony with that purpose.
"That purpose is an implied limitation on the sense of general terms, and a touchstone for the expansion of narrower terms. This intention affords the key to the sense and scope of minor provisions. From this assumption proceeds the general rule that the cardinal purpose or intent of the whole act shall control, and that all the parts be interpreted as subsidiary and harmonious." 2 Horack's Sutherland on Statutory Construction (3d. ed.), § 4704, p. 338.
their meaning with the subject matter and general purpose of the entire article. See State ex rel. Peter v. Listman (1930), 157 Wash. 229, 288 Pac. 913.
". . . the meaning of doubtful words may be determined by reference to their association with other associated words and phrases. Thus, when two or more words are grouped together, and ordinarily have a similar meaning but are not equally comprehensive, the general word will be limited and qualified by the special word." 2 Horack's Sutherland on Statutory Construction, sUpra, § 4908, p. 393.
streets, highways, bridges, or public places of the city. See Washington Fruit & Produce Co. v. Yakima (1940), 3 Wn. (2d) 152, 100 P. (2d) 8; 12 McQuillin, supra, § 34.01, p. 7.
The advertising company is not a public utility in the common understanding of that term. It is our judgment that Art. XI, § 2, of the Yakima city charter did not require that the contract with the advertising company be submitted to a vote of the electorate.
We have found no defect in the substance of or the procedure in adopting the ordinance and concomitant contract; therefore, we conclude that they are valid. The judgment of the trial court should be reversed with directions to dismiss the actions. It is so ordered.
HILL, C. J., WEAVER, and OTT, JJ., concur.
MALLERY, J. (concurring) - The demurrer should have been sustained. The plaintiffs have no right to maintain their action under the declaratory judgment act or at all.
The key word in the above italicized language is right. This court unanimously held in Kitsap County v. Bremerton, 46 Wn. (2d) 362, 281 P. (2d) 841, that one attacking the validity of an act must show that its enforcement operates as an infringement on the complaining party's constitutional rights; and without such a showing, the validity of an act cannot be questioned. De Grief v. Seattle, 50 Wn. (2d) 1, 297 P. (2d) 940, Adams v. Walla Walla, 196 Wash. 268, 82 P. (2d) 584, Washington Beauty College v. Huse, 195 Wash. 160, 80 P. (2d) 403.
advertising matter does not involve a private right of the respondent. He cannot litigate a political matter falling within the charter powers of the city without alleging special damages.
December 4, 1958. Petition for rehearing denied.

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