31-1608. EXPENDITURES TO MEET EMERGENCY. Upon the happening of any emergency caused by fire, flood, explosion, storm, epidemic, riot or insurrection, or for the immediate preservation of order or of public health or for the restoration to a condition of usefulness of public property, the usefulness of which has been destroyed by accident, or for the relief of a stricken community overtaken by a calamity, or the settlement of approved claims for personal injuries or property damages, exclusive of claims arising from the operation of any public utility owned by the county, or to meet mandatory expenditures required by law, or the investigation and/or prosecution of crime, punishable by death or life imprisonment, when the board has reason to believe such crime has been committed in its county, the board of county commissioners may, upon the adoption, by the unanimous vote of the commissioners, of a resolution stating the facts constituting the emergency and entering the same upon their minutes, make the expenditures necessary to investigate, provide for and meet such an emergency.
All emergency expenditures may be paid from any moneys on hand in the county treasury in the fund properly chargeable with such expenditures, and the county treasurer is hereby authorized to pay such warrants out of any moneys in the treasury in any such fund. If at any time there shall be insufficient moneys on hand in the treasury to pay any of such warrants, then such warrants shall be registered, bear interest, and be called in the manner provided by law for other county warrants.
The county budget officer shall include in the annual budget to be submitted to the board of county commissioners, the total amount of emergency warrants issued, registered and unpaid, during the current fiscal year and the board of county commissioners shall include in their appropriation an amount equal to the total of such registered and unpaid warrants.
History:
[(31-1608) 1931, ch. 122, sec. 8, p. 210; I.C.A., sec. 30-1208; am. 1976, ch. 45, sec. 16, p. 134.]