Court Opinion

ID: 9458165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:44:25.33752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.508903
License: Public Domain

BUTZNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I dissent because Virginia’s annexation laws,1 though fair on their face, were deliberately used to debase the votes of the black citizens of Richmond. It is no longer open to dispute that a state or one of its political subdivisions is prohibited from changing political boundaries to intentionally dilute the weight of the votes of black citizens.
The fifteenth amendment to the United States Constitution provides, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960), the Court held that the amendment prohibited the Alabama legislature from redefining boundaries so as to remove all but four or five of Tuskegee’s 400 black voters, while not removing a single white voter. Mr. Justice Frankfurter stated the principles which are controlling here: “When a State exercises power wholly within the domain of state interest, it is insulated from federal judicial review. But such insulation is not carried over when state power is used as an instrument for circumventing a federally protected right.” Quoting from earlier cases, he emphasized that “Acts generally lawful may become unlawful when done to accomplish an unlawful end. . . . ” 364 U. S. at 347, 81 S.Ct. at 130. Relying on Gomillion, in Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U.S. 379, 388, 91 S.Ct. 431, 437, 27 L. Ed.2d 476 (1971), the Court pointed out that annexation “dilutes the weight of the votes of the voters to whom the franchise was limited before the annexation, and ‘the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of the citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.’ ” 2
*1101The City of Richmond does not seriously challenge the principles stated in Gomillion and Matthews. Instead, citing Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810); United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968); and Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, 91 S.Ct. 1940, 29 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971), it claims that the federal judiciary is prohibited from examining the motives that prompted annexation. Undoubtedly these cases state a sound general rule, but there are exceptions. The Court has never hesitated to declare unconstitutional deliberate acts done under color of state law to deny or abridge rights secured by the fifteenth amendment. It would be anomalous indeed if the amendment prohibited direct impediments to the franchise while simultaneously sheltering abridgment that is accomplished by devious and indirect means.
The city’s position was squarely rejected in Gomillion, where the Court said that a similar argument “would sanction the achievement by -a State of any impairment of voting rights whatever so long as it was cloaked in the garb of the realignment of political subdivisions. ‘It is inconceivable that guarantees embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence.’ ” 364 U.S. at 345, 81 S.Ct. at 129. In an earlier case that invalidated a voter registration requirement that appeared neutral on its face, but in actuality was a pitfall for black citizens, the Court held that the fifteenth amendment “nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.” Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275, 59 S.Ct. 872, 876, 83 L.Ed. 1281 (1939).3
Deliberate attempts to subvert other fundamental rights have not been insulated from judicial inquiry. Only this term, Mr. Justice White reiterated that “the State [can] not deliberately and systematically deny to members of [a defendant’s] race the right to participate as jurors in the administration of justice.” Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625, 92 S.Ct. 1221, 31 L.Ed.2d 536 (1972) (emphasis added). And the Court, in Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 250, 56 S.Ct. 444, 80 L.Ed. 660 (1936), invalidated a tax on newspapers that was “seen to be a deliberate and calculated device in the guise of a tax to limit the circulation of information to which the public is entitled in virtue of the constitutional guarantees.” (Emphasis added.)
We are not in this case concerned with the constitutionality of Virginia’s annexation statutes or the motives behind their enactment. The issue is whether officials of the City of Richmond employed the statutes to deliberately dilute the votes of the city’s black citizens. I believe, therefore, that the *1102district court did not err in examining every facet of the annexation case to determine whether, under the cloak of annexation, the city’s black citizens were intentionally deprived of the rights secured to them by the fifteenth amendment.
Virginia’s annexation laws grant broad discretion to an annexation court. Essentially, the court is required to determine “the necessity for and expediency of annexation.” Va.Code Ann. § 15.-1-1041.4 It never has been suggested that a proper function of annexation was to redress any supposed imbalance between the black and white voters of a city.
A number of facts are uncontradicted. Near the end of an annexation case that proceeded intermittently for approximately eight years, Richmond and Chesterfield County officials reached agreement on the terms and conditions of annexation. The agreement was promptly presented to the court which adopted it verbatim in its decree. By statute, an annexation becomes effective on January 1 following a final decree. Thus, if the people annexed from Chesterfield were to vote, in the June 1970 election for city council, the annexation case, including appellate review, if any, had to be terminated before December 31, 1969. The plaintiff claims that the compromise was deliberately timed and designed to enfranchise additional white voters for the 1970 election. The city denies the allegation.
There can be no doubt that Richmond’s annexation of a portion of Chesterfield County diluted the vote of black citizens who resided in Richmond before annexation. Black citizens constituted 51.5 percent of Richmond’s population before annexation. The annexation decree added 47,262 people, of whom only three percent were black, By this means the city’s erstwhile majority of black citizens was reduced to a minority of 42 percent of the total population. These facts standing alone, however, would not entitle the plaintiff to prevail. See Wright v. Rockefeller, 376 U.S. 52, 84 S.Ct. 603, 11 L.Ed.2d 512 (1964). But he proved much more. He established that through private meetings, from which members of city council who opposed annexation were excluded and to which the public was in no way privy, the city officials deliberately devised a means for increasing the white population under the guise of acquiring additional land for metropolitan expansion. Based on this evidence, the district court found that the compromise was a “purposeful device” to dilute the vote of Richmond’s black citizens. From the evidence, I am satisfied that this finding was not clearly erroneous.
Negotiations between the city and the county for settlement of the annexation suit had been conducted from time to time over a period of many years. However, until the spring of 1969, when the annexation trial was in progress, little had been accomplished. The compromise which termined the suit was negotiated *1103almost entirely between the then Mayor of the city and the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Chesterfield County. In the district court, at the trial of the case we are now reviewing, the Mayor resolutely maintained that he had supported the annexation to enlarge the city’s boundaries for industrial and business development and to strengthen the city’s finances by taxes derived from this expansion.5 He emphatically denied that a desire for new voters was a reason for the compromise,® and that the couneilmanic elections in June 1970 had any bearing on the timing of the annexation.6
7
Quite a different account of the city’s goal was given by the county’s chief negotiator, the Chairman of its Board of Supervisors. He testified that as early as 1965 one of the city’s councilmen and an attorney for the city met with him to explore the possibility of settling the annexation suit before trial. At that time the city’s representatives did not talk about land, roads, schools, or utilities. They told him they “needed 44,000 leadership type of white affluent people,” and were particularly interested in the number of black citizens in a 51 square mile area they were proposing to take.8 No agreement was reached at this meeting. The Chairman of the Board of Supervisors met again with representatives of the city at least twice in 1968. At these meetings, Richmond’s newly elected Mayor, who ultimately became its chief negotiator, was present. Again the negotiations revolved around the number of people and from where they were to come. The Chairman testified that the city representatives did not reveal how much vacant land they wanted, how many schools they wanted, or what facilities they needed. They did not discuss the assessables or the percentage of *1104industrial land they required. At the final meeting of that year, the Chairman testified, he had hoped the city would withdraw what the county considered unreasonable demands. As before, the demands turned out to be simply for people.9
After several delays and one mistrial, the annexation trial resumed in the spring of 1969, and meetings between the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor quickened. About May 1, the Mayor and the Chairman met again. The Mayor then indicated the number of people he wanted from an area he pointed out on a map he had brought along. There was no talk about vacant land, schools, utilities, or roads. In the words of the Chairman of the Board, “We were talking about where an area would be, or possibly be, to encompass the number of people they said they needed to accomplish their desires and for settlement, for a compromise settlement.” Ninety-five percent of the people in the area the city designated were known to be white, and five percent black.
Át a May 15 meeting between the Chairman and the Mayor, the Mayor was told that it was unlikely that the county board would agree on 44,000 people. The Mayor, on the other hand, reported that he had been in touch with the majority of city council members and he “knew what was on their mind. He knew about what they thought they would agree on . and he indicated this was approximately 44,000 people.”
At this meeting the annexation line was drawn. The Chairman of the Board of Supervisors was explicit in his testimony concerning it: “I said, let me dictate a line to you of an area that will encompass this many people. You write it down.” That line became the final annexation line “except for a couple of minor changes made at the county’s request and one at the city’s request.” The Mayor did not ask about the number of school children; he did not ask about the vacant land in the area. He did, however, ask the Chairman “to verify [with the Executive Secretary of the Board] how many people were in the area of the line we drew. This I did.
In June, the Chairman and an attorney for the county met with the Mayor and other representatives of the city and agreed that the city should pay approximately $27,300,000 for the area to be annexed. At trial, the Chairman of the Board was asked, concerning the meeting, “Did they [the city’s representatives] give you any conditions that went along with this line and a dollar amount, any conditions to the agreement?” He replied,
“They gave the condition — Our purpose of going there was to find out if they meant business and what they said, if they meant it, and if they were willing to stand behind it. They stipulated the condition they would go along with the agreement provided that no appeal was made by the county, and the annexation should take effect January 1, 1970, and the people in this area would be citizens from that date on and would be eligible voters in the Councilmanic election of 1970.”
*1105The Chairman’s testimony is amply corroborated. The Executive Secretary of the Board of Supervisors, having attended several of the negotiating sessions, stated that the emphasis at the conferences “was always people, the number of people,” and that race was discussed. He emphasized that the county representatives “would talk about schools and land, vacant land, for expansion, but [the city’s representatives] would always come back eventually to the number of people they needed.” He corroborated that on the night the Mayor and the Chairman tentatively agreed upon the annexation line, the Chairman telephoned him, read the line, and “asked me to figure up the exact number of people in that line to ascertain if 44,000 people were in that line.” Referring to the June 1969 meeting, he said the city representatives “had mentioned rather pointedly that if we did appeal that the people in the annexed territory would not come into the city on January 1. This was absolutely necessary in order that they could vote in the election of June, 1970.”
While the city was demanding verification of the number of people in the tentative area, it was far less concerned about other information essential to an ordinary annexation suit. It had employed a full time boundary expansion coordinator, whose duty was to provide city officials and attorneys data about the area the city was seeking. Not until eleven days after the Mayor and the Chairman of the Board tentatively agreed on the line ultimately approved by the annexation court was the boundary expansion coordinator told about it and asked to furnish pertinent essential information about the area, including the value of utilities, schools, the amount of the tax assessables, and an analysis of the present and potential uses of the land.
Other witnesses, testifying about extra-legislative declarations of city officials, told of the concern over the likelihood of black voters exercising the balance of power in the 1970 elections.10 Quite properly, the district judge did not rely on these casual conversations to show the purpose of the compromise. They do, however, strongly corroborate the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors’ account of the facts leading to the city’s agreement to settle the annexation suit.
Annexation, though not indispensable to a city’s economy,11 is often desirable, and the Constitution should not be so narrowly construed that annexation is foreclosed simply because the racial balance of the city will be altered. City officials faced with a charge that they have violated the fifteenth amendment by annexing adjacent territory should be afforded ample opportunity to rebut the • allegations by showing the propriety of the boundary changes.12 Richmond, however, has not rebutted the plaintiff’s proof by showing that the compromise of the annexation case accomplished a legitimate end. Although the city professed that it was seeking vacant land for business and industry, it settled for only 475 acres (.74 of a square mile) of potential industrial land, and 729 acres (1.1 square mile) of potential commer*1106cial land. Developed industrial and commercial land amounted to even less — 312 acres, industrial; and 351, commercial. On the other hand, residential land, of which almost half was already developed, aggregated 12,536 acres, or more than 19.5 of the 23 square miles annexed. Indeed, the population density of the area annexed was so great that the city acquired approximately one-third of Chesterfield’s school children and found itself with 3,000 more pupils than its then existing classrooms could accommodate. After annexation, Chesterfield was left with an area of 437 square miles and a population of 77,046. Richmond’s area was increased to 50 square miles with a total population of 249,430.
' It is idle to suggest there is no large amount of nonresidential land in the county that the city might annex. Both the Mayor and the Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors recognized that industrial sites were available on the James River south of the city, but at the outset of negotiations the Chairman made it plain that annexation of this area was not negotiable. That is not to say, however, that an annexation court would not award the area to the city if it were convinced that the economic well-being of the city' would be enhanced. Far from confirming the city’s professed reason for its agreement with the county, the description of the annexed area, especially its paucity of vacant commercial and industrial land for expansion, supports the district judge’s finding that the compromise was a “purposeful device to further racial discrimination” by diluting the vote of Richmond’s black citizens.
The city contends that the improper motives, if any, of its former Mayor cannot be imputed to the annexation court or taint its decree. It points out that the city council never formally considered the compromise and that the court was not bound to accept it. The addition of white voters, claims the city, was caused by judicial action which has not been impugned. This theory, though plausible, does not bear scrutiny. Throughout his negotiations the Mayor did not confer with three members of the council who opposed annexation. Indeed, these three were excluded from secret meetings which other members of council attended, and they were not briefed about the progress of the negotiations. Although he was empowered to do so, the Mayor called no meeting of council to publicly debate the merits of the compromise and to adopt an appropriate ordinance or resolution approving or rejecting it. The city’s attorneys were opposed to the settlement that the Mayor and the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors had negotiated, and at a conference in chambers with the annexation court they made their position' known arid explained their belief that formal council action was necessary.13
*1107Nevertheless, the city’s attorneys made only a pro forma objection to the admission of the compromise in evidence when it was offered by the county. And, of course, city officials, having previously exacted a promise from the county not to appeal; had no intention of appealing the court’s admission of the compromise over the objection of the city’s attorneys. The fact that the council was never afforded an opportunity at a public meeting to approve or reject the compromise demonstrates that the May- or and five of the other members of council, by agreement with the county, were able to thwart the three members who would have opposed the compromise. But this method of proceeding cannot validate the attempt of the May- or and those who sided with him to infringe the rights guaranteed by the fifteenth amendment. The city is correct in saying the annexation court was not bound to accept the agreement. The fact remains, however, that the court did accept it and adopted it verbatim in its decree.
The evidence does not disclose that the annexation court was told about the city’s purpose for compromising the case. The city does not suggest — indeed it cannot — that the annexation court would have approved the compromise had it known of its illegal purpose. The city’s failure to make this information available to the annexation court cannot now serve to strengthen the city’s position. I am confident that had that court known the facts that were subsequently exposed in this suit, it would not have approved the compromise.
Since a majority of our court has ruled that the annexation is valid, they had no occasion to discuss a remedy. Because I believe the annexation violates the Constitution, I will express my views, though briefly, about appropriate relief. The district judge, impressed by the fact that the annexation case was instituted in 1961 for proper purposes and that annexation to some extent was inevitable, declined to divest the city of the annexed area. He ordered instead a special election in which voters in the original part of the city would elect seven councilmen, and those in the new part, joined by some 8,000 persons who were citizens of the city before annexation,, would elect two eouncilmen. Transferal of the 8,000 citizens was designed to comply with the Supreme Court’s “one man, one vote” mandate by properly apportioning the population of the two voting districts. Thereafter, the city council would be elected as its members, or the state legislature, decided.
Although a court of equity has wide discretion in fashioning a remedy, the relief it decrees must be effective to right the wrong with which it deals. United States v. E. I. Du Pont De Nem-ours & Co., 366 U.S. 316, 327, 81 S.Ct. 1243, 6 L.Ed.2d 318 (1961). I believe the district court’s remedy is inadequate for several reasons. It does not correct the impermissible conversion of Richmond’s black citizens from a majority of the population to a minority. It presupposes that the wrong can be righted by a single special councilmanic election. The problems of cities, however, cannot ordinarily be solved by one election. Change reflecting the will of the electorate is an ongoing process, occurring in the course of many elections and in the light of new information and personali*1108ties. By assigning only two members of council to the newly annexed citizens, the remedy effectively denies them a voice in the city government. It compounds this error by adding some 8,000 persons who were residents of the city before annexation to this group, thereby arbitrarily limiting their voting power. The remedy attempts to redress only the election of city council. It does not encompass the election of other city officials such as treasurer, commissioner of revenue, and city sergeant, who must of necessity be elected on a city-wide basis.
I believe the only adequate remedy is to require Richmond to divest itself of the annexed area. Officials of the county have testified that they would willingly accept return of the area and its citizens and that the county is financially able to reimburse Richmond for expenditures it has made as a result of annexation. Divestiture should not prove more difficult or complicated than annexation. It will restore the voting rights of all Richmond citizens, not only for council-manic elections but for the election of other important city officials as well.
Divestiture is not intended to freeze the racial composition of Richmond’s population. This composition will change freely as white and black people move in and out of the city. Moreover, the relief I would grant is not designed to deny Richmond, or any other city, the right to expand its boundaries through annexation, or otherwise, even though such expansion may adversely affect the voting power of one race or another. Annexation is a legitimate means of improving the economy of a city and the quality of its environment. The Constitution, I believe, does not forbid a city to expand its boundaries, even though enlargement may have the collateral effect of modifying its racial composition. The remedy I suggest is intended to prevent city officials, black or white, from deliberately and intentionally employing annexation laws to dilute the voting rights of any race.
Therefore, I would affirm the district court’s ruling that the compromise of the annexation suit violated the fifteenth amendment because it was a deliberate act to dilute the voting rights of black citizens, and I would remand the case for reconsideration of the remedy.

. Va.Code Ann. §§ 15.1-1032 et seq. (Repl. vol. 1964, Supp.1971).

. Matthews dealt with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973c (1970), and at oral argument we were advised that the Attorney General of the United States has filed an objection under the Act to the annexation because it dilutes the rights of black voters. His opinion is not subject to review in these proceedings, but the Supreme Court’s observations about annexation are instructive because the Act was passed to enforce the fifteenth amendment. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 308, 86 S.Ct. 803, 15 L.Ed.2d 769 (1966).

. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 311, 86 S.Ct. 803, 810, 15 L.Ed.2d 769 (1966), catalogs devices “designed to deprive Negroes of the right to vote” in violation of the fifteenth amendment.
“Grandfather clauses were invalidated in Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 [35 S.Ct. 926, 59 L.Ed. 1340], and Myers v. Anderson, 238 U.S. 368, [35 S.Ct. 932, 59 L.Ed. 1349], Procedural hurdles were struck down in Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, [59 S.Ct. 872, 83 L.Ed. 1281]. The white primary was outlawed in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, [64 S.Ct. 757, 88 L.Ed. 987] and Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, [73 S.Ct. 809, 97 L.Ed. 1152], Improper challenges were nullified in United States v. Thomas, 362 U.S. 58, [80 S.Ct. 612, 4 L.Ed.2d 535]. Racial gerrymandering was forbidden by Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, [81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110], Finally, discriminatory application of voting tests was condemned in Schnell v. Davis, 336 U.S. 933, [69 S.Ct. 749, 93 L.Ed. 1093]; Alabama v. United States, 371 U.S. 37, [83 S.Ct. 145, 9 L.Ed.2d 112]; and Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, [85 S.Ct. 817, 13 L.Ed.2d 709].”
To these cases may be added Hadnott v. Amos, 394 U.S. 358, 89 S.Ct. 1101, 22 L.Ed.2d 336 (1969), which voided discriminatory enforcement of a corrupt practices law against Negro candidates.

. This phrase was construed by the Supreme Court of Virginia in County of Fairfax v. Town of Fairfax, 201 Va. 362, 111 S.E.2d 428, 432 (1959), as follows:
“In determining whether annexation is necessary and expedient for a city or town, factors to be considered are its size, its crowded conditions, its past growth, its need in the reasonably near future for development and expansion, the health of the community, whether the terms proposed are reasonable, fair and just, and whether proper provision will be made for future management, . the result of the development promised by the combination of the resources of two urban communities under a single political unit in the light of the best interests of the State, the town, or city, the county, and the territory proposed to be annexed, . . . community of interest, if any, between the town or city and the area proposed to be annexed, . . . and financial ability of the town or city to provide for development after annexation.

. The Mayor testified that he supported annexation for the following reasons:
“Because I was firmly convinced from my observation and from subsequent service on Council that the boundaries of Richmond had to be expanded. It was an old city. We had to go to any available space for industrial, business development. Some of the area that remained appeared to be open but it was not usable because of flooding, things of that sort. I felt we had to expand the boundaries of Richmond because I don’t think you can be on Council long without it being abundantly clear that the demands and needs of the city are ever increasing, speaking of finances, and that the resources do not increase likewise on the same ratio. You have got to get funds to provide city services, the police, fire department, schools, safety, and the demand for money had become so great the average citizen cannot continue to bear the tax burden. You have to look for business to help bear this great tax burden. We could not expand our business operations. We did not have any area in which to locate. We had to look' for other areas for expansion.”

. The Mayor testified,
“I was not particularly interested in voters. When you sit down to work up a budget for the City of Richmond, I don’t think you can pay off people with voters. You have got to have dollars and cents. That is what I was looking for, dollars and cents.”

. When asked, “Did the couneilmanic elections in June 1970, have any bearing on wanting to have this annexation effective?,” he responded,
“No, sir. You had to have an annexation agreement or whatever. It had to be effective sometime. They had many Couneilmanic elections since I have been trying to expand Richmond.”

. The Chairman testified:
Q What did they [the city’s representatives] talk about?
A They talked about people.
Q Did they talk about votes?
A I am sure in this discussion votes were talked about.
They asked us in the fifty-one square mile area approximately how many black citizens were in this area. I had no definite census, but it was estimated about five percent of the area of fifty-one square miles were black and about ninety-five percent were white.
Q When they discussed people, were they discussing a need for 44,000 white people or 44,000 black people?
A Well, in that area, they had to be talking about the ratio I just mentioned.

. Concerning a December 1968 meeting, the Chairman of the County Board testified :
Q What were the unreasonable demands ?
A 44,000 people.
Q Did they have any unreasonable demands about how much land they wanted?
A No, sir.
Q Or how much schools they wanted? How many roads?
A They did not discuss them.
Q Utilities? Assessables? The tax base?
A Those items were not discussed except other than to the degree the city people at times, at some of the meetings, indicated they needed land for expansion. The amount or the quantity was not brought up.
Q Were you successful in getting the city to put a line on the map?
A No, sir.

. Some of these declarations were vulgar assertions of white supremacy. Others were specifically directed to worry over the outcome of the 1970 elections. Typical of the latter is the testimony of a member of the General Assembly of Virginia, who had been appointed to a legislative commission to consider expansion of the city’s boundaries. He testified that at a commission meeting in July 1968 at Wil-liamsburg, city officials told Mm “they were concerned that the City Council races in 1970 would go all black.”

. Expansion of Norfolk, the state’s largest city, lias been blocked by incorporation of adjacent rural areas as cities. More recently, the General Assembly has imposed a moratorium on future annexations of counties by cities. Ch. 712, [1972] Va. Acts (Approved April 10, 1972).

. Bee generally, Ely, Legislative and Administrative Motivation in Constitutional Law, 79 Yale L.J. 1205 (1970).

. The city’s chief trial counsel said:
“If it please the Court, I think I should say this as Chief Counsel in the case: I would not want the Court to think that we have been trifling with the sincerity of the witnesses and what we have spoken during the trial of this case, knowing that negotiations were being had.
I, for one, have not met with the Board of Supervisors and I, like my associates here, are opposed to the settlement that has been discussed.
On the other hand, I am sure the Court recognizes that we are in an awkward position with respect to our duties as attorneys. I think the Court ought to know the mechanics through which this will have to go; the City Attorney lias alluded to them but he didn’t spell them out in detail.
This ordinance has to carry in meticulous detail every fact relating to this compromise, a good many of them, as we pointed out in the conference on yesterday afternoon haven’t even been discussed. This has been on a very general basis with the Mayor.
The engineering staff of the City have not been involved and we don’t know what the problems are with respect to the utilities, we are not sure what the school problem is. We know that there may be involved about 3000 school children that will be out of quarters under what has been talked about.
All of which means that the Council must have, every single one of them, de*1107tails spelled out in an ordinance to be drafted by the City Attorney. This is required by Charter. Then that has under the Charter to be advertised and after that advertisement, which is a week, then the matter has to come up for public hearing, at which hearing I assume that all who are connected in any responsible position with the case, that the public and the members of the Council would ask them to express their views about this thing, and then after that’s done the vote will be taken.
I don’t know what the vote wil be. I have been in these things in Council for so long that I know that there is ofttimes a great many things can happen between the introduction of an ordinance, Judge, and when the public gets it before it and what it will be, that is, Council’s action, is something else.”