Court Opinion

ID: 9732119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:08:48.872232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:23.565825
License: Public Domain

Dethmers, C. J.
Plaintiffs, as taxpayers of defendant city, seek to enjoin defendants from conveying, without consideration therefor, city property, used as a public park, to the United States govern*578ment' as a site for a reserve armory school. After hearing on a show canse order and on the merits a decree entered denying injunctive relief and dismissing plaintiffs’ bill of complaint. They appeal.
Plaintiffs urge, as controlling, Michigan Constitution of. 1908, art 8, § 25, which reads, in part:
“No city or village shall have power * * * to loan'its credit, nor to assess, levy or collect any tax or assessment for other than a public purpose.”
and article 10, § 12, which reads:
“The credit of the State shall not be granted to, nor in aid of any person, association or corporation, public or private.”
These constitutional provisions were held applicable. to and controlling of the situation in Detroit Museum of Art v. Engel, 187 Mich 432. There the plaintiff, a private corporation, served a public purpose and its operations were conducted solely for the benefit of the general public, the city had title to the property it used and occupied, and the city had representation on its board of directors. This Court, nonetheless, held violative of the above constitutional provisions a statute empowering the city to appropriaté public funds for plaintiff’s support and maintenance because it was not a municipal agency and did not serve a city public purpose. This Court quoted therein from Attorney General v. Board of Supervisors, 34 Mich 46, 48, the following:
“Taxes and loans, when authorized to be raised! by any public body, must be raised under the implied! condition that they are to be applied to the public uses under the control or care of that body.”
Such was the language employed by this Court! in the latter ease to arrive at the conclusion that a resolution of a county board of supervisors was void *579which provided for the raising of money 'by the county to be paid over to the towns within it 'for expenditure by the latter on their roads and bridges.
Defendants contend that the mentioned constitutional provisions have no application to the facts at bar under our holding in Hays v. City of Kalamazoo., 316 Mich 443 (169 ALR 1218). With that we are not in accord. We there upheld a city appropriation for a service which we found to be beneficial to the city government. In so doing (p 455) we distinguished that case from the Detroit Museum Case on the express grounds that, although in the Museum Case the invalid appropriation for the museum would have been “for the benefit of the general public,” nevertheless, it “did not serve a city public purpose” while that in the Kalamazoo Case did serve, a city public purpose. Under the reasoning of the above capes it follows in the case at bar that the proposed transfer of the city property, without consideration, to' 'the United States government, even though beneficial to the' general public, amounts to an appropriation which is not for a city public purpose, an application thereof to public uses not under the control or care of the city, and, hence, void. To same effect, in a situation directly in point, see Opinions of the Attorney General 1935,1936, p 394, and cases therein cited.
Decree below reversed and set aside. A decree may enter here providing for permanent enjoining of defendants from malting the proposed conveyance without consideration. No costs, a public question being-involved.
Sharpe, Kelly, and Carr, JJ., concurred, with Dethmers, C. J.