CITY OF PORTLAND.

IN BOARD OF MAYOR AND ALDERMEN,

March 14, 1881.

Ordered, That a joint special committee of two on the part of this Board and three on the part of the Common Council be appointed to supervise the work of printing and binding the revised ordinances of the city under the contract made by order of the last City Council through its committee on revised ordinances.

Read and passed; and appointed Aldermen Chapman and Winslow, and sent down.

IN COMMON COUNCIL. Read and passed in concurrence, and appointed Messrs. Melcher, Duddy and Thurston.

Approved, March 15, 1881.

PREFACE.

The City Council, by the foregoing orders, authorized a revision and compilation of the city ordinances, together with the city charter and such statutes as should be applicable to city affairs. The committee to whom the work was assigned have attended to their duty, with the assistance of Clarence Hale, Esq., City Solicitor, and present this book as the result of their labors. In the preparation of this work the general plan adopted in previous editions has been substantially followed, because the arrangement is familiar to members of the city government and to our citizens. The historical and explanatory notes have been enlarged, and a great number of references have been made to judicial decisions. These notes and references have been made with as much brevity and conciseness as possible, and are inserted not with the idea of making this book a treatise on municipal law, but in the hope that city officers and members of committees, in their departments, may find some helpful suggestions, and some answers to the inquiries that constantly arise as to the rights of the city and the duties of its various officers and agents in the administration of municipal affairs. With this object in view more general statutes relating to municipal matters are printed in this volume than have been in former editions,

although it would be obviously impossible that all the laws bearing on those matters could be embraced in a book of this.size. The citations from statutes are made from the revised statutes of 1871, and from the yearly statutes since that time. This has involved much more labor in compilation than would have been necessary if the revision of the State statutes, now in progress, had been completed. In many cases statutes bearing on municipal affairs have been only referred to without taking the space to quote their language, but in nearly all cases where statutes have been quoted at all, they have been printed in full from the original laws. The ordinances passed since the last revision in 1868, both those in the Municipal Registry of 1880 and those made since its publication, are compiled without change, and grouped in their proper chapters with the ordinances already printed in the edition of 1868.

In the execution of the plan of the committee the volume contains:

1st, The ordinances of the city.

2d, The city charter and special acts of the legislature relating to the city, collated under appropriate titles and chapters; also special acts bearing upon our railroad, and other public interests, as well as some agreements and citations from records bearing on those interests.

3d, Such notes and memoranda of judicial decisions as are deemed necessary and useful, so far as space would permit.

4th, An appendix containing the Rules and Orders of the City Council and of the two Boards, and a catalogue of the City Council since the incorporation of the city.

Portland, November, 1881.