Court Opinion

ID: 9548283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:01:02.663199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:45.815478
License: Public Domain

Ott, J.
(concurring specially)—I have signed the majority opinion, but feel compelled to emphasize an additional amendment that would have to be read into the constitution, if the appellant’s contention were to be sustained. The majority opinion emphasizes only one, relating to the procedural matter of notice.
The questioned section of the constitution (Art. XI, § 10) provides in part:
“. . . Any city containing a population of twenty thousand inhabitants, or more, shall be permitted to frame a charter for its own government, . . . ”
There is no qualification or reservation in the right of a city to frame its own charter, except that it have the requisite population.
To sustain appellant’s contention, a second amendment would be necessary relating to substance, namely, that only those cities can qualify for a charter which contain a population of twenty thousand or more inhabitants, and which have within their borders “two daily newspapers regularly published as such.”
I am satified that those who framed our constitution never intended, as is suggested by appellant, that there should be such an additional requirement' placed upon a city in order to qualify for a charter form of government.
That the city met the single substantive constitutional requirement of population is not disputed. That it caused the notice to be published in two newspapers, both of which were published and distributed daily in Vancouver for the entire thirty-day period prior to the day of submitting the proposal to the electors for approval or rejection, was clearly established by the stipulated facts. The city fully complied with all of the constitutional requirements.