Opinion ID: 1641504
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The pertinent statute provided:

Text: The county board of education may, in its discretion, detach territory from 1 district and attach it to another when requested to do so by resolution of the board of any district whose boundaries would be changed by such action, or when petitioned by not less than 2/3 of the resident owners of the land to be transferred. The county board of education shall take final action in regard to the resolution or petition within a period of 60 days of the receipt of the resolution or petition. Only territory contiguous to a district may be transferred. Whenever the latest available taxable valuation of the area to be detached is more than 10% of the latest available taxable valuation of the entire school district from which it is to be detached, the action of the county board of education directing such detachment shall not be valid unless approved, at an annual or special election called for that purpose in the district from which the detachment is to be made, by an affirmative vote of a majority of the school tax electors of the district, voting thereon. MCL 340.461; MSA 15.3461. (Emphasis added.) Plaintiffs contend that the italicized portion of this statute must be construed so as to require a vote of the electors of the transferor district for any property transfers after ten percent of the school district's property value has been transferred. As plaintiffs concede, a literal reading of the statute does not favor their position. The phrase area to be detached is to be construed. Both the phrase itself and its context clearly point to the area involved in a single transfer. By identifying the area as that which is to be detached, the statute cannot easily be read to have applied to that which already had been detached. Further, the statute, prior to using the phrase, stated: The county board of education may, in its discretion, detach territory from 1 district and attach it to another when requested to do so by a resolution of the board of any district whose boundaries would be changed by such action, or when petitioned by not less than 2/3 of the resident owners of the land to be transferred. MCL 340.461; MSA 15.3461. The territory the county board may have detached was that identified either in a resolution of the boards of affected districts or in a petition of the landowners seeking the transfer. Thus, when the statute later referred to  the area to be detached, the only area which it was specifying was that which would be identified in such a resolution or petition. To conclude that this language refers to the areas involved in all prior petitions or resolutions that had resulted in transfers would contravene its clear and unambiguous meaning. Ordinarily, this conclusion would render further interpretation of the statute unnecessary. Legislative intent controls statutory construction, and, in ascertaining such intent, the Legislature must be presumed to have intended the meaning expressed by the language it has chosen. When that language is clear and unambiguous, no further interpretation is necessary. Dussia v Monroe County Employees Retirement System, 386 Mich 244; 191 NW2d 307 (1971); City of Grand Rapids v Crocker, 219 Mich 178; 189 NW 221 (1922). There is, however, an exception to this fundamental rule of statutory construction that arises when a literal reading of the statutory language would produce an absurd and unjust result and would be clearly inconsistent with the purposes and the policies of the act in question. Salas v Clements, 399 Mich 103, 109; 247 NW2d 889 (1976). Plaintiffs argue that this is a case in which a literal reading would circumvent the legislative intent. Pointing to the fact that a school district could be destroyed by many transfers of less than ten percent, the plaintiffs argue that what cannot be accomplished directly in one large transfer, without approval of its electors, should not be permitted to occur indirectly through many small transfers. We, however, cannot agree that the legislative intent is so clear as to justify a departure from the statutory language. While the present situation may not have been intended or considered by the Legislature, the interpretation which plaintiffs advocate also seems unlikely to have been within the legislative intent. Plaintiffs' interpretation would require a vote of the school tax electors for any transfer  no matter how small or how far in the future  after the ten percent limitation had been reached by prior transfers. It does appear clear that the Legislature did not intend to require voter approval for relatively minor property transfers. Additionally, plaintiffs' interpretation would require the courts to fill gaps left by the legislative silence regarding how the ten percent valuation should properly be computed on a cumulative basis. Specifically, the question would arise in circumstances in which property transferred out of the district later changes its value in comparison with the rest of the district. Suppose a transfer represented eight percent of the entire district's taxable valuation at the time of the transfer, but subsequently would represent only five percent of the district's valuation if it were valued as part of the district. If a later petition seeks to transfer three percent of the latest taxable valuation of the district, the question whether the prior transfer is to be treated as five percent or eight percent would be determinative of whether the three percent transfer would need to be approved by the voters. The statute's absence of any formula suggests the Legislature never envisioned that the ten percent limitation would be treated on a cumulative basis. The fact that the courts would be asked to fill such gaps as this further indicates that plaintiffs' concerns should be more properly addressed to the Legislature. The strong competing interests at stake in this case also make it difficult to conclude that the legislative intent is so clear and that the literal meaning is so unjust and unreasonable as to justify a departure from the statutory language. On the one hand, there are the interests of a school district in surviving as strong and viable as possible. On the other hand, there are the interests of those parents who live on the borderline with another district who would favor having their children educated in the other district. We are not now in a position either to ascertain whose interests the Legislature would or should have favored had they considered the present situation or to shape our own solution for how both of these interests might be best accommodated. We do note, however (though we do not now review, see infra), that approval by the County Board of Education, or, on appeal, the State Board of Education, was necessary for any proposed transfer. See MCL 340.461; MSA 15.3461, and MCL 340.467; MSA 15.3467. [2] Therefore, we conclude that under § 461 of the School Code of 1955 a transfer had to be approved by the school tax electors only when, considered alone, it was greater than ten percent of the latest available taxable valuation of the district.