Davis

An application was made in the court below by the plaintiff city for a writ of mandate to compel the city clerk, Davis, to indorse the action of plaintiff’s city council in allowing the claim of Mercedes Gutierrez for sixteen hundred dollars for the agreed purchase price of a site for a fire-engine-house, upon said claim, and issue his warrant for said amount. The writ was granted, and the defendant, Davis, appeals. Stafford, who intervened as a taxpayer, also appeals.

The position of both the defendant and the intervener is, that the plaintiff’s charter does not authorize the purchase of land for buildings which its council may or may not thereafter determine to build, but only for buildings which the council has already actually and definitely determined to build, and that in this case no determination of the council actually to build the engine-house mentioned in the ordinance is shown.

The provisions of the charter relating to the subject are as follows: “Said corporation shall have power: ... 4. To acquire, receive, hold, and enjoy real and personal property within and without its territory, necessary, or convenient for municipal purposes, or for the exercise of the powers…