This provision sets who pays survey costs, caps certain legal and engineering expenses, limits changes to an acreage tax, and allows drainage authorities to make joint-enterprise arrangements or submit questions to voters.
§1795. Expenses of surveys; change in acreage tax; joint enterprise All expenses for preliminary surveys to determine the cost of draining, shall be advanced by the land owners petitioning the drainage commissioners for drainage, and shall be reimbursed to the owners by the drainage commission out of any funds realized from the sale of bonds if the drainage of the lands is proceeded with as contemplated in this Part. The total cost of all legal expenses incurred in organizing a drainage or subdrainage district and issuing bonds therefor shall never exceed one and one-half per centum of the total bond issue, where the bond issue is less than three hundred thousand dollars, and shall not exceed one per cent where the bond issue is three hundred thousand dollars or more. The cost and expenses for engineering work for the survey, designs, plans, specifications, assistance in letting contracts, the general supervision and final inspection of the work shall not exceed six per cent of the cost of the drainage work; except that special services for work beyond the above enumerated usual engineering services may be reimbursed to the engineer. The acreage tax may be increased or diminished from time to time as the needs of the district may require but the amount thereof shall not exceed the amount voted. No tax which secured an issue of bonds shall be reduced or diminished before the bonds are fully paid. The governing authorities of gravity drainage districts and gravity subdrainage districts may contract and agree with other gravity drainage districts or gravity subdrainage districts, and drainage districts, and subdrainage districts, organized under Article XV of the Constitution of Louisiana for the year 1921 and with municipal corporations, to undertake and complete as a joint enterprise, works which are of mutual benefit, but the proportion which each gravity drainage district, gravity subdrainage district, drainage district, subdrainage district, or municipal corporation, shall contribute shall be determined in advance. The work so jointly undertaken shall belong to the gravity drainage district, gravity subdrainage district, drainage district, or subdrainage district and municipality contributing to the construction thereof, in proportion to the contribution. The governing authorities of gravity drainage districts and gravity subdrainage districts may submit to the voters the question of the construction of drainage works as a joint enterprise with the municipalities or other gravity drainage districts, gravity subdrainage districts, drainage districts, and subdrainage districts, and also to submit to the voters the question of constructing the drainage works in connection with the construction of other improvements, but the authority to submit these questions shall not deprive the governing authority of the power to act without submitting the question. Amended by Acts 1958, No. 334, §1.