Section 280.121 - Intercounty drains; petition to establish; filing, signers; certificate of county treasurer. - Michigan Statutes

THE DRAIN CODE OF 1956 (EXCERPT)
Act 40 of 1956

280.121 Intercounty drains; petition to establish; filing, signers; certificate of county treasurer.

Sec. 121.

After an intercounty drainage district has been established and the order therefor filed as hereinbefore provided, a petition to locate, establish and construct a drain may be filed with any commissioner having jurisdiction of any of the lands designated in such order as constituting the drainage district. Such petition shall ask for the location, establishment and construction of the drain or drains, or any part thereof, as described in said order. The petition shall be signed by a number of freeholders in said drainage district, whose lands would be liable to an assessment for benefits, equal to 1/2 of the number of freeholders whose lands would be traversed by the drain or drains applied for, or abut on the part of any highway or street along the side of which such drain extends, between the point where such drain enters such highway and the point where it leaves such highway and which lands are within the drainage district. Such petition shall be accompanied by a description of the land in said district owned by each signer and by a certificate of the county treasurer as to payment of taxes and special assessments against such lands; such certificate shall be in substantially the following form:

I hereby certify that there are no taxes or special assessments unpaid against any of the lands described in the annexed list according to the records of the county treasurer's office for the past 3 years, except as follows:

Description Year Tax or assessment Amount ............. ........... ...................... .........

The name of any signer as to whose land such certificate shows taxes or special assessments unpaid for 3 years shall not be counted. The eligibility of the signers to such petition shall be determined by their interest of record in the office of the register of deeds, in the probate court or the circuit court of the counties in which such lands are situated at the time such petition is filed. In determining the number of owners whose lands are traversed by such drain, or abut thereon as hereinbefore prescribed, the drain commissioner shall investigate the records of the register of deeds, of the probate court and of the circuit court of the county, and shall make diligent inquiry in the community, including inquiry of anyone in possession of all of such lands so traversed or so abutting, as to the ownership thereof. In lieu of a petition signed by freeholders, the petition may be signed solely by a city, village or township in each county involved, when duly authorized by its governing body, or by any combination of such municipalities, if each petitioning municipality will be liable to assessment at large for public health for any part of the cost of the proposed drain. In the event of a municipally signed petition, then the foregoing provisions of this section, other than the first 2 sentences and these last 2 sentences thereof, shall not be applicable.

History: 1956, Act 40, Imd. Eff. Mar. 28, 1956 ;-- Am. 1968, Act 79, Eff. Nov. 15, 1968
Popular Name: Act 40