Municipal corporations — Powers — Operation and ownership of sewers — Charges — Relationship to actual use — Ordinance imposing charge in part based upon assessed valuation — Taxation — Constitutional law — Acts of July 18, 1935, P. L. 1286, and May 14, 1937, P. L. 630.
1. The Act of July 18, 1935, P. L. 1286, as amended by the Act of May 14, 1937, P. L. 630, which empowers municipalities to provide for the imposition and collection of an annual rental or charge for the use of sewer facilities, such rental to be "apportioned equitably among the property served", requires that the charge be reasonably proportional to the value of the service rendered and not in excess of it. [49]
2. An ordinance of a city which imposed a sewer rental composed of a (1) charge of three mills upon each dollar of the assessed valuation of the property served and (2) twenty-five per cent of the water rent, was held to be invalid on the ground that that portion of the rental consisting of the charge of three mills per dollar upon the assessed valuation of the property served had no substantial relation to the cost or value of the sewerage facilities actually used by the property, and was therefore unauthorized by the Act of 1935, as amended. [49-50]
3. Such charge upon property owners using sewerage was in large part a tax, having no relation to the extent of the use of the sewers by the property owners. [50-2]
4. The debt limitation contained in Article IX, section 8, of the Constitution, is in effect a limitation upon the right of the city to tax, and an improvement cannot be said to be self-liquidating when the major part of the so-called revenue is derived not from a use charge but from a tax. [49, 57]
5. Hamilton's Appeal, 340 Pa. 17, held controlling. [49, 51, 58]
Argued September 23, 1941.
PER CURIAM, September 29, 1941:
The order of the court below is affirmed on the opinion of Judge FLOOD.