Opinion
No. 29262.
January 26, 1931.
1. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS.
Statement of objection in statutory proceeding to validate school district bonds, in substance, that proceedings "are without legal authority," held insufficient.
2. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS. Statement of objections in statutory proceeding to validate school district bonds must be specific.
Statement of objections to bonds of school district is sufficiently specific if it advises district and court of particular grounds of objection.
3. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS. Recitals in order of board of supervisors ordering issuance of school district bonds regarding indebtedness must be accepted as true, in absence of appeal and direct proof.
Order of board of supervisors authorizing school district bond issue recited that amount of bond issue was not in excess of ten per cent. of assessed valuation of property of district, and that there was no floating or bonded indebtedness outstanding. In proceeding to validate bond issue, objectors offered no direct proof that previous bond issue had in fact ever been actually issued and sold or become valid obligation upon district.
4. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS.
In proceedings to validate school district bonds, objectors cannot intercept alleged illegal purpose when legality does not appear on face of proceedings sought to be validated.
APPEAL from chancery court of Smith county. HON. T.P. DALE, Chancellor.
J. Knox Huff, of Forest, for appellants.
A void order can be attacked in this proceeding.
Bryant v. Board of Supervisors of Yalobusha County, 133 Miss. 714, 98 So. 148.
The assessed valuation of the Pineville school district is two hundred five thousand dollars. There is a twenty thousand dollar bond issue in force to retire which a tax is being levied on the property of the district and a sinking fund is being set up in the treasury of the county. It follows that the limit of any possible legal issue, or the aggregate of all issues, cannot exceed thirty thousand seven hundred fifty dollars, the same being fifteen per cent. of the total assessed valuation of said district. But here we have a twenty thousand dollar issue and a nineteen thousand dollar issue making a total of thirty-nine thousand dollars. Hence, the order issuing the latter bonds does exceed the jurisdictional amount is in violation of the law and, therefore, must be void.
Chapter 207, Laws of 1920, section 5986, Code of 1930.
The only exception to the limitation fixed in the statute is for the purpose of refunding the outstanding bonded indebtedness of such county or district when the same shall mature. Here the purpose is to build and equip a schoolhouse in and for the district.
Chapter 32 of the Laws of 1928, under which this procedure is had, section 314, Code of 1930, says that if the bonds are validated by the chancellor under that procedure, thereby they become obligations and as such shall be forever conclusive against the district.
Homer Currie, of Raleigh, for appellee.
The burden rests upon the appellants to show conclusively that the constitutional and statutory limitations are exceeded by the issuance of the nineteen thousand dollar bonds, and this they have not done, not having shown that the bonds, nor any part of same, under the proposed twenty thousand dollar issue were ever sold, and that same became an obligation of the district.
The orders of the board of supervisors fully adjudicates, fully setting out all of the necessary jurisdictional facts, the entire matter of the nineteen thousand dollar issue, and were not appealed from by the appellants.
Argued orally by J. Knox Huff, for appellant, and by Homer Currie, for appellee.
The board of supervisors of Smith county, at the July, 1930, meeting, and at subsequent meetings in due course, took the steps and entered the several orders requisite for the issuance of the bonds of the Pineville consolidated school district, in said county, to the amount of nineteen thousand dollars. When later the statutory proceedings to validate said bonds came on to be heard before the chancellor, appellants filed their objections, which, after the evidence was taken, the chancellor overruled.
Two points are argued by appellants — the main contention being that the assessed valuation of the property in said district is only two hundred five thousand dollars; that there was previously authorized and validated on and before February 28, 1929, upon the same district and for the same purpose, an issue of twenty thousand dollars in bonds, making a total of more than fifteen per cent. of the assessed valuation; hence that there is an excessive and illegal proposal in the last issue here brought into question.
There are two answers to the contention; the first being that the only statement of the ground of objection, in respect to the said contention, is in the following words: "All proceedings in the matter of the issuance of said bonds are without legal authority." Such an objection is of no more practical effect than if the parties had simply appeared and said, "we object." In proceedings of this nature, objections must be specific, so as reasonably to advise the opposite parties and the court what it is particularly that is being insisted upon.
In the second place, the order of the board of supervisors, ordering the issuance of the present proposed bonds of said district in the said sum of nineteen thousand dollars, which order was made more than a year later than the said first order for twenty thousand dollars in bonds, adjudicates and recites as follows: "And whereas it further appears that the nineteen thousand dollars of bonds sought to be issued is not in excess of ten per cent. of the assessed valuation of the property of the said district, and that there is no floating or bonded indebtedness against said district, and whereas," etc. No appeal was taken from this latter order; whence it follows that this adjudication and recital of adjudicated facts by the board "that there is no floating or bonded indebtedness against said district" must be accepted as true, and that it must therefore be assumed that the previously authorized bonds of twenty thousand dollars were not issued within the time limited by law, or were not sold, or in some manner were canceled or otherwise had failed to become outstanding obligations of the district. And certainly the foregoing assumption must stand as true in view of the fact that appellants offered no direct proof that these first bonds of twenty thousand dollars were in fact ever actually issued and sold, and thence have remained as valid obligations upon the district, and we are not meaning by the foregoing remarks to hold that it would have been competent to so prove in contradiction of the adjudication of the board. That question is not involved; it being enough to say, so far as this case is concerned, that there was no direct attempt to make the said proof.
The second contention is that the purpose for which the present issue of nineteen thousand dollars has been authorized is not to erect and equip a school building in said district, as the orders therefor recite, but is intended to be used to pay for a school building already erected under a void contract. No authority is cited in support of the proposition that, in a validation proceeding, objectors may intercept an alleged purpose to devote the proceeds to an illegal object, when no such illegality appears on the face of the proceedings sought to be validated, and we have been unable to find any such authority. We have concluded that it will be time enough, and the more appropriate, to take action on that complaint, when the illegal purpose, if any there be, is actually attempted to be put into effect.
Affirmed.