69 P. 453 | Or. | 1902
delivered the opinion.
This ease comes here on plaintiffs appeal from a judgment of the circuit court dismissing a proceeding instituted by it to review the action of the District Boundary Board of Linn County, Oregon, changing or re-establishing the boundaries of School District No. 110. The board acted upon a petition of 16 persons, residents of said district and certain unorganized school territory, praying that such unorganized territory be added to the district, and another of 20 residents of district No. 4, praying that its north boundary be re-established as it was originally when district No. 109 was severed from it. Other
The plaintiff insists that the board was without adequate authority in the premises, and, therefore, that its acts in changing or re-establishing said boundaries were inoperative and -void. The board derived whatever authority it had from section 19, subdivision 1, of the act of the legislative assembly of 1899 creating it (Laws, 1899, pp.'209, 216), which'reads as follows: “The superintendent and the county court, or the board of commissioners in counties where this board is a separate body, shall constitute a board for laying off his county in convenient school districts, such board to be styled the District Boundary Board. Said board shall make alterations and changes in the same when petitioned so to do, in the manner hereinafter specified; and the superintendent shall make a record showing the boundaries and numbers of all the districts in his county so established and organized.” The construction put upon this section is that the board can only make the alterations and changes when petitioned in the manner specified, and the contention is that as the manner is not specified, and no method of procedure has been prescribed, the statute is a nullity, and the board, although legally constituted, is left without power in that particular. The respondents contend for a different construction, which is that the board shall make the alterations and changes in the manner specified when petitioned so to do; that is to say, that the words “in the manner hereinafter specified” do not refer to the petition at all, but to the manner of establishing and changing boundaries of districts.
The statute was intended, no doubt, ás a revision of the former method of altering and changing the boundaries of school districts, devolving the authority upon the District Boundary Board instead of the superintendent, but the language conferring the power is identical in either case. We may look, therefore, to the old statute which this was intended to revise, and.consider it in connection with the new in the ascertainment of a
Now, there is no provision whatever for petitioning for new districts, or for having alterations or changes made in those previously established, beyond the provision last above referred to, which would indicate an intendment on the part of the legislature that new districts should be established on a petition of not less than three persons. It is very apparent, therefore, that something of the legislative purpose has been omitted in framing the act, and it is also quite apparent that the language “in the manner hereinafter specified,” as used in the old act, alluded to the manner in which the superintendent should be petitioned to make the alterations and changes. If bearing that sense in the old, there is nothing in the new or present statute to indicate that it should be given a different construction; and such is the meaning derivable from its general arrangement. To give it the construction contended for by respondents, there must be a transposition of clauses, and this is not permissible unless such a meaning was clearly intended, such intention to be ascertained from other provisions of the act when construed as a whole; and there can reasonably be no such deduction in this case. Such