Court Opinion

ID: 9580375
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:04:30.211048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:14.797787
License: Public Domain

Per Curiam.
Leave to review the decision below (5 Mich App 415) was granted to consider the possibly too broad conclusion of Division 2 that (p 420) “Read as a whole, the apparent meaning of ‘district or territory affected’ is clearly ‘political subdivision’.” The quoted words appear in section 6 of article 2 of the Constitution of 1963:
“Sec. 6. Whenever any question is required to be submitted by a political subdivision to the electors for the increase of the ad valorem tax rate limitation imposed by section 6 of article 9 for a period of more than five years, or for the issue of bonds, only electors in, and who have property assessed for any ad valorem taxes in, any part of the district or territory to be affected by the result of such election or electors who are the lawful husbands or wives of such persons shall be entitled to vote thereon. All electors in the district or territory affected may vote on all other questions.”
The phrase, “district or territory affected,” coupled as it is in the last sentence with “all electors” and “all other questions,” may in conceivable circumstances render electors eligible to vote upon a question shown as affecting the district or territory in which they reside, even though they do not *43reside in tlie specific political subdivision which, as here, has initiated the election in question. It turns out, however, that this plaintiff made no such sup-positious case. An examination of the complete transcript of proceedings in circuit discloses that plaintiff, along with the defendants and intervening parties, definitely assured the trial judge that no facts were in dispute. The hearing accordingly proceeded upon the pleadings and disclosed legal issues, and resulted in a judgment denying the injunctive relief sought by plaintiff.
We hold that plaintiff has made no showing that any elector or electors residing in the village of Oxford, distinguished from the electors of the unincorporated part of the township, were “electors in the district or territory affected.” Such failure of proof both warranted and required holding that plaintiff was not by section 6 entitled to restrain the election which the “electors residing in the unincorporated portion of the township” had initiated pursuant to section 12 of the township rural zoning act  (CLS 1961, § 125.282 [Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 5.2963(12)]). They, the electors so residing, were on the face of the pleadings and submissions of the parties the only eligible voters at such election. The panel below was right in so holding.
None of the other questions considered in the opinion of the panel has been submitted here, all parties in this Court having confined themselves to the issue of applicability of said section 6.
Affirmed. No costs.
Dethmbes, C. J., and Kelly, Black, O’Hara, and BRENNAN, JJ., concurred.