Devine v. Board of Supervisors

THE COURT This is an action to restrain the defendants from levying a special tax for the current year to create an interest and sinking fund to provide for the payment of the principal and interest of certain so-called Folsom road bonds. A general demurrer to the complaint was overruled, and, defendants declining to answer, judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiff, from which the defendants appeal.

The only question to be determined is the validity of the bonds, and this depends altogether upon the power of the board of supervisors to issue them, for, so far as the proceedings leading to their issuance are concerned, they seem to have been perfectly regular in form.

The issuance of the bonds in question was no doubt designed as a means of cooperation in carrying out the purposes of an act approved March 29, 1897 (Stats. 1897, p. 239), entitled: “An act to provide for the construction of a state highway or wagon road from Sacramento city to Folsom, in Sacramento county, and appropriating crushed rock and granite or stone blocks for drains and culverts for same.”

By the terms of this act the governor was authorized to appoint three commissioners, whose duty it should be to construct a model road between the designated termini. No money was appropriated to pay the expense of building the road, but the directors of the Folsom prison were authorized and directed to [672]furnish, free of cost the necessary crushed rock for macadamizing, and cut stone for culverts, drains, etc.

The act contains no invitation to Sacramento, county to contribute funds to pay expenses, but prohibits the doing of any work on the road until the title to the lands upon which it is laid shall have been conveyed to the state.

In October, 1897, the defendants—the board of supervisors —ordered a special election for voting upon a proposition to issue the bonds of the county to the amount of seventy-five thousand dollars, “for the purpose of improving and macadamizing the public road, to wit, the highway in Sacramento county which is now situated and runs closely to the line of the Sacramento and Placerville Bailroad, which now extends between said Sacramento city and the town of Folsom.”

At the election duly held in pursuance of this order the proposition was carried by a large majority, and thereupon the board duly passed an ordinance providing for the issuance of the bonds and for the creation of an interest and sinking fund to pay them. The bonds were subsequently issued and sold at a premium.