Legal Documents of Gatlinburg

SECTION 6. Be it further enacted, That the affirmative vote of a majority of members elected to the Board of Commissioners shall be necessary to adopt any ordinance or resolution. The vote upon the passage of all ordinances and for the adoption of such resolutions as the Board by its rules shall prescribe, shall be taken by yeas and nays and entered upon the minutes. Each and every ordinance or resolution passed by the Board shall be signed by the presiding officer or two members and filed with the Recorder who shall also sign same and record same in a book to be kept for that purpose.

Each proposed ordinance or resolution shall be introduced in written or printed form and shall not contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly stated in the title; but the general appropriation ordinance may contain the various subjects and accounts for which money is to be appropriated. The enacting clause of all ordinances passed by the Board shall be: ‘Be It Ordained by the City of Gatlinburg’. All ordinances shall conclude with the provision that ‘This ordinance shall take effect fifteen days from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it’; provided that the closing of an emergency ordinance shall read: ‘This ordinance shall take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.’

No ordinance, unless it be an emergency measure, shall be passed until it has been read at two (2) regular meetings not less than two (2) weeks apart; provided, however, that if any ordinance is amended on the second reading, a third reading of that ordinance shall be required prior to adoption and final passage.

All ordinances passed by the Board shall be in effect from and after fifteen days from the date of final passage, except that the Board may, by an affirmative vote of four of its members, pass, upon one reading, emergency ordinances to take effect at the time of passage.

To meet a public emergency affecting life, health, public peace or property, the Board may adopt one or more emergency ordinances. An emergency ordinance may not be enacted to make a grant, to levy taxes, renew or extend a franchise or regulate the rates to be charged by any public utility. An emergency ordinance may be introduced in the form and manner prescribed for ordinances generally, except that it shall be plainly designated as an emergency ordinance and shall contain, after the enacting clause, a declaration stating that an emergency exists and describing it in clear and specific terms. An emergency ordinance shall become effective immediately upon its adoption or at such other time as designated within the ordinance itself. Every emergency ordinance shall automatically stand repealed as of the sixty-first day following the date upon which it was adopted, but this shall not prevent reenactment of the ordinance in the form of a regular ordinance; however emergency ordinances which appropriate emergency or supplemental appropriations, or transfer of funds shall not be repealed but shall continue in full force and effect unless specifically repealed by an additional ordinance. 

Every ordinance of a general or permanent nature shall be published once within ten days after its final passage; provided that if it appears to the Board that a newspaper publication is unnecessarily expensive and unjustified in any particular case, such other means of securing due publicity may be resorted to in lieu of newspaper publication as the Board by informal resolution may designate.

The publication of ordinances, as well as other publications mentioned in this Charter, shall be made in a newspaper of general circulation in the City and County in body type of the paper and under headlines in twelve point type. [As replaced by Priv. Acts 1949, ch. 811, §1(k), and amended by Priv. Acts 1977, ch. 150, §4]