Court Opinion

ID: 9699092
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:10:12.196469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:46.396293
License: Public Domain

Currie, J.
(concurring). Apparently this is the first time that this court has given recognition to the significance of the 1924 amendment to sec. 3, art. XI of the Wisconsin constitution in so far as its effect upon village and city incorporation proceedings is concerned. As this constitutional provision prior to this amendment was construed by this court in State ex rel. Holland v. Lammers (1902), 113 Wis. 398, 86 N. W. 677, 89 N. W. 501, it constituted a limitation on the powers of the legislature to incorporate villages and cities. Such limitation was that an area to be incorporated must have the characteristics of a village, or city, as the framers of- our constitution understood such characteristics to be based upon their concepts of the same obtained from their New England and New York backgrounds. However, the 1924 amendment eliminated such limitation and left the inherent power of the legislature to incorporate villages and cities unrestricted except as to a limitation found in some other part of the constitution.
The one remaining limitation upon the legislature’s power to incorporate municipalities is that contained in sec. 23, *600art. IV, Const., which provides: “The legislature shall establish but one system of town and county government, which shall be as nearly uniform as practicable.” The only limitation imposed by this constitutional provision is that large areas of agricultural lands which are not needed for expansion purposes by the municipality proposed to be incorporated, shall not be included within the boundaries of such municipality. Obviously, such limitation has no application to an area such as respondent’s 17-acre tract which is about to be subdivided into building lots and is not devoted to agricultural purposes. Whether such 17 acres will ever be needed for expansion purposes of the village of Elmwood Park is wholly immaterial. This is because it is not agricultural land commonly subjected to town government.
Because of the 1924 amendment to sec. 3, art. XI, Const., a circuit court should never deny an application for incorporation of a village on the ground that it does not possess the characteristics of a village, if the petition meets the population-density requirement of the statute, except upon the sole ground that unneeded agricultural lands have been included within the corporate boundaries. This is because neither the statute enacted by the legislature for the incorporation of villages, nor the constitution, presently provides any other limitation in the nature of “characteristics of a .village.” Therefore, much of that which was stated by the majority opinion in In re Village of Oconomowoc Lake (1955), 270 Wis. 530, 72 N. W. (2d) 544, about “village characteristics” and a “village in fact” has been relegated to repudiated dicta by the court’s opinion in the instant appeal.