Leet v. County Board of Education
Leet v. County Board of Education
Opinion of the Court
Opinion op the Court by
Affirming.
(On the 25th day of January, 1923, the County Board of Education of Oldham county, by an order duly made and spread upon its records, called an election to be held in the Liberty consolidated school district in that county on February 6, 1923, between the hours of 10 a. m. and 5 p. m., for the purpose of submitting to the legal voters therein the question as to whether the district would issue' bonds in an amount not to exceed twelve thousand dollars ($12,000.00) “for the purpose of providing suitable grounds, school buildings, furniture and apparatus” for the use of the district.
Printed posters containing notice of that election and signed by the chairman and secretary of the board, not less than one foot square, were duly posted in the district at a dozen or more public places therein and it was also inserted one time in the “Oldham Era,” a weekly newspaper published in the county and of general circulation therein, all of which was done as much as ten days before the election. At the election 142 votes were cast in favor of the issuing of the bonds and 63 votes against the proposition. The election returns were duly canvassed and certified to the County Board of Education and it was preparing to. issue the bonds when plaintiff and appellant, James Leet, a taxpayer in the district, brought this suit against the board and the members thereof to enjoin it or them from doing so upon thirteen different grounds set out in the petition. The court sustained a demurrer filed thereto and upon plaintiff declining to plead further the petition was dismissed, from which judgment he has appealed. We have not. been favored with a brief for the defendants and appellees, but in brief filed for plaintiff (appellant) each of the grounds are expressly abandoned except numbers 1, 3, 7 and 13, and we will dispose of them in the order named.
In ground (1), it is claimed that the consolidation of the district on November 5,1921, was and is void because the order of the Board of Education by and through which
The third ground relied on is the same as the first part of ground (1), above considered, and nothing further need be said concerning it.
The seventh ground relied on attacks the order of the Board of Education made on February 13, 1923, whereby the issuance of the bonds was provided for because that meeting of the board was a specially called one and not a regular one. No statute, no decision and no sound reason is advanced for this objection. Section 4433a-l of the Kentucky Statutes (the one authorizing this character of election), and the one immediately succeeding it, was enacted at the 1920 session of the legislature and is chapter 45 of the Sessio'n Acts for that year, page 199. The provision for the creation of consolidated districts was first enacted in 1908 and is section 17 of chapter 56, page 133, of the Acts for that year, and is now section 4426a-5 of the present Kentucky Statutes, and it is the .same as section 80 of chapter 24, page 162, of the Acts of 1916, which latter act was a recodifioation of the statutes of this' Commonwealth relating to common schools. Neither of the two last mentioned statutes provided for the issuing of bonds by the consolidated district for the purpose hereinbefore mentioned and which provision was made for the first time by the legislature of 1920, as we have before shown. The action of the board in directing the issuing of the bonds after they are voted is purely ministerial and it necessarily should be done as soon after a favorable election as possible so that the contemplated improvements, might be commenced and completed and the district get the benefit therefrom at the earliest moment consistent with valid procedure. Unless, therefore, the statute contains something requiring the order by the County Board of Education now complained of to be made at a regular meeting, we can conceive of no reason why it should not be done at a special one. We, therefore, find no merit in this contention.
The same objection is made in ground (13), wherein it is alleged that the order of the County Board of Education appointing the officers to hold the election was made at a special session. No greater reason is advanced for this objection than is done in support of the seventh one above considered, and for the reasons therein stated it
The other grounds relied on, as we have hereinbefore stated, are not discussed or referred to in briefs, but without repeating them here we deem it only necessary to say that they are each as much devoid of merit as those that we have mentioned and to some extent discussed.
Finding no error in the judgment it is accordingly affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.