Request By:
Mr. Elmer Cunnagin, Jr.
Laurel County Attorney
Courthouse
London, Kentucky 40741
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The Laurel County Fiscal Court created a Bush fire protection district under the provisions of KRS Chapter 75, and which district has been in existence and active for approximately three years. See KRS 75.025.
Several residents of the fire protection district have petitioned the Laurel County Fiscal Court, requesting that body to dissolve the fire protection district.
Your question is whether or not a fire protection district, which has been created by the fiscal court under the provisions of KRS Chapter 75, may be dissolved by that body? The answer is "no".
There is no express statutory provision dealing with the dissolution of a fire protection district created under KRS Chapter 75.
A fire protection district created under this chapter is a type of municipal corporation.
Kelley v. Dailey, Ky., 366 S.W.2d 181 (1963) 183. It is well settled that the formation and dissolution of a corporation, including municipal corporations, is purely a matter of legislative prerogative. Valla v. Preston Street Road Water Dist. #1, Ky., 395 S.W.2d 772 (1965) 774.
It may be noted that KRS 75.020 provides for the enlarging or diminishing of the territory of a fire protection district. Actually, the statute suggests no limitation to the degree of diminution. Conceivably under the unlimited power of territorial diminution, a fire protection district could be diminished to the point of nothingness. In such case the trustees would have no territory over which to exercise supervision. Thus it is our view that, where such a fire protection district is diminished to the point of substantial nothingness under KRS 75.020, a corporate dissolution would be no more than a normal, reasonable and necessary concomitant of such authority. As the court said in Valla v. Preston Street Water District #1, above, in a similar statutory situation, 1 "We are not disposed to believe that the legislature ever intended or would intend the empty effigy of a corporate creature to be strung up throughout eternity on the end of an aimless technicality."
In summary, if the fire protection district's territory in question were to be diminished under the procedure laid out in KRS 75.020, 2 and assuming that the diminution finally ordered by the court substantially attained the point of nothingness or zero, then it is our opinion that trustees in that court action could also ask the court to include in the judgment an order of dissolution, subject to any applicable conditions of KRS 75.020. The court in Valla, above, expressly held that KRS 74.110 (a similar statute for water districts) authorizes and prescribes the procedure for dissolution if and when it is incident to a substantially complete territorial diminution. This means to us that the court ruled that the statute itself was complete in prescribing a procedure of diminution and dissolution, when the dissolution is an incident to a substantially complete territorial diminution. This would finally mean, under a complete diminution of territory under KRS 75.020, a disposition of all the district's assets and an assumption or satisfaction of its liabilities.
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 KRS 74.110 provides for enlarging or diminishing the territory of a water district. There is no express provision in Chapter 74 dealing with dissolution of a water district as such.
2 Trustees of fire district file petition in circuit court, etc.