Opinion ID: 2606260
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: whether santa clara is a proposed city

Text: The only issue that remains is petitioners' contention that these annexations did not comply with the mandatory statutory limitations concerning annexation of land from one city to another. We reject this argument. ORS 199.462(2)(b) limits the authority of a Boundary Commission to authorize annexation of territory: Territory within a city may not be included within or annexed to another city. Former ORS 199.415 provided a definition of city: As used in ORS 199.415 to 199.519, unless the context requires otherwise:      (6) `City' includes proposed city. [8] Petitioners argue that these annexations are invalid because they cover territory included within the proposed city of Santa Clara. According to petitioners a proposed city comes into existence immediately upon the filing of a prospective petition for incorporation with the county clerk. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument, as do we. The statute provides no deadline for the completion of the signature collecting process, once a prospective petition for organization of a city has been filed. Thus, if petitioners' position were correct, the filing of a prospective incorporation petition would ban annexation for as long as the incorporation petition was in the signature-gathering process  perhaps forever. We see no need to adopt such an irrational interpretation of the statutes when the incorporation process contains a number of additional steps, each of which could be a logical point for a proposed city to come into existence. As the legislature has eliminated proposed cities from the statutory scheme, we need not determine exactly when that point is reached. [9] We need only hold that at the time these seven tracts of land were annexed by Eugene there was no proposed city of Santa Clara, but only a proposal to propose the city. Thus, these annexation were performed in accordance with state law and were valid under the charter of the City of Eugene.