Culbertson minutes record business-licensing ordinance text; council records passage of related ordinance

The Culbertson Town Council’s minutes for April 4, 1927 include the reproduced text of a business-licensing ordinance and record the presentation and approval of a related ordinance.

At the April meeting Mayor J. E. Rucker presided and the auditing committee was asked to review presented bills. The minutes then record ordinance activity: a measure entered on the minutes as Ordinance No. 53 is described as amending an earlier ordinance and addressing licensing; the minutes further reproduce a licensing ordinance text that the transcript labels “Ordinance #44.” The minutes state that Ordinance No. 53 was presented, read, passed and approved, with “all members voting in favor.” The record structure in the minutes makes the relationship between the numbered entries (44 and 53) and the enacted licensing provisions unclear; the licensing text appears on the minutes immediately after the ordinance-notice language.

The reproduced licensing text requires every person, firm or corporation engaged in enumerated occupations, trades or professions in the Town of Culbertson to obtain a town license each quarter. The minutes list sample per-quarter fees for many categories; examples include barber ($2.00 per quarter), blacksmith ($2.00), banks ($5.00), drug stores ($5.00), hotels and public lodging houses ($5.00), garages ($5.00), restaurants ($3.00) and telephone exchange ($5.00). The ordinance text also prescribes fines for operating without a license (minimum $5.00, maximum $100.00, plus amounts due for the license).

The minutes record that any ordinances in conflict with the new provisions would be repealed and that the ordinance text was passed onto the official record (signed and attested by the town clerk on the minutes).

What happens next: the minutes show the council moved on to adjourn; the record does not include a separate roll-call vote count for the licensing text itself beyond the notation that Ordinance No. 53 was presented and approved and that the ordinance copy was entered into the record.

Notes on sources and uncertainty: the April minutes reproduce the ordinance wording verbatim but are internally inconsistent in numbering (the licensing text is headed “Ordinance #44” while the preceding paragraph refers to Ordinance #53 as amending ordinance #38). The article reflects the minutes’ language and flags that the exact ordinance number tied to the licensing provisions is not unambiguously recorded in the minutes.