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1991 Connecticut Attorney General Reports and Opinions 1 (1991)

handle is hein.sag/sagct0010 and id is 1 raw text is: 1991 Formal Opinion, Attorney General of Connecticut

Attorney General's Opinion
Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal
January 6, 1991
The Honorable Reginald J. Smith
Senate Minority Leader
State Capitol
Hartford, CT 06106
Dear Senator Smith:
In your letter dated June 25, 1990, you requested our opinion on the following questions regarding the meaning
of subsection (g) of Section 7-147b of the Connecticut General Statutes:
I. If the possible creation of a local historic district is being considered by a municipality under Conn. Gen.
Stat. §7-147a and 7-147b, and if a municipality owns real property within the proposed local historic
district, is the municipality's legislative body entitled to vote, under Conn. Gen. Stat. §7-147b(g), on the
proposed establishment of the district?
2. Under the circumstances described in (1) above, would community members, either those in the
municipality as a whole or only those within the proposed historic district, be entitled to cast a vote as
collective owners of the municipal property in a vote taken under Conn. Gen. Stat. §7-147b(g)?
To answer your first question, in most instances a municipality will not have a vote in an election held under
Conn. Gen. Stat. §7-147b(g) regarding possible establishment of a local historic district within the
municipality. There is, however, one set of circumstances under which a municipality would have the right to
cast a vote in such an election. A municipality will have one vote or a fraction of a vote in such an election if
the municipality owns real property within the proposed district, which property appeared at some time on t he
municipality's last-completed grand list of real property within the proposed district, which property was
assessed at that time at a value for taxing purposes of a least one thousand dollars, and which property was
owned at that time by a party (a) who was liable to the municipality for taxes on that assessment, or (b) who
would have been so liable were it not for an exemption under subdivision (7), (8), (10), (11), (13), (14), (15),
(16), (17), (20), (21), (22), (23), (24), (25), (26), (29) or (49) of Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-81. Under these
exceptional circumstances, the municipality would have at most one vote.
To answer your second question, members of the community, even under these exceptional circumstances,
would have no right to vote in an election under Conn. Gen.. Stat. §7-147b(g), because the municipality's vote
must be cast, under that same statutory subsection, by the municipality's chief executive officer or his or her
designee.
We also call your attention to the fact that, in a sense, a municipality may cast the deciding vote in any

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