Mayor of Pascagoula v. Delmas

Citations

• 108 Miss. 91
• 66 So. 329

Syllabus

<p>1. Municipal Corporations. Fiscal management. Issuance of bonds. ■Purpose. Construction of wharves. Authority to issue bonds. Special laws.</p> <p>Under Code 1906, section 3327, authorizing the issuance of bonds by municipal corporation organized under sections 2399-3446, for the establishment, alteration and changing of the channels of streams or watercourses, the bridging of the same, and bays; such municipalities have no powers, except those expressly given by the legislature, and the power to issue bonds cannot be implied, and a city so organized was not authorized to issue bonds to construct a wharf on a river flowing through the city as a part of a scheme to improve the river for navigation, to aid which the United States government had appropriated funds for dredging and deepening the channel, on condition that the city built a wharf.</p> <p>2. Municipal. Corporations. Bonds. Authority to issue. Special law.</p> <p>Under Laws 1914, chapter 147, section 1, subdivision “j”; authorizing cities to issue bonds for the construction of wharves, harbors, and under section 7, of the act declaring that the act shall not affect the validity of any bonds previously issued or authorized at an election held under existing law, and should not affect any private or local law in force authorizing the issuance of bonds for any purpose; where the aldermen of a city prior to such law had authorized the issuance of bonds to construct a wharf along a river, when it had no such authority, and there had been no election, because there had been no objection filed, the statute could not be construed as applying to all unfinished proceedings looking to the issue of bonds other than the classes enumerated and excepted, and was not retroactive, so as to validate wharf bonds which the city intended to issue.</p> <p>3. Same.</p> <p>Statutes not expressly made retrospective in terms are otherwise construed, if possible, and where retrospective are construed as narrowly as possible.</p>