are in all respects just and correct, and that no payments have been made, and that no set-off exists except those stated.

§ 16. No action or proceeding to recover or enforce any claim against the city shall be brought until the expiration of forty days after the claim shall have been filed with the City Clerk for presentation to the Common Council for audit, in the manner and form aforesaid, and no action shall be maintained against the city for personal injury, unless notice of intention to commence such action shall have been filed with the Corporation Counsel within six months after such cause of action shall have accrued. Before the Common Council shall audit any claim other than for personal injuries or injuries to property the Board of Aldermen shall refer it to the auditor. If the claim be not made out and verified as above required the Board of Aldermen may, within thirty days. after its presentation, refuse on that ground to audit it. All actions brought against the city to recover damages for personal injuries caused by negligence must be commenced within one year from the time of receiving the injuries.

§ 17. The Common Council shall, from time to time, enact ordinances:

(1.) To fix the number of and the salary or compensation to be paid to the several officers and employees of the city not otherwise herein fixed or provided for, and the times when the same shall be paid. Such salary or compensation shall be fixed in the case of elective officers before their election and in case of appointed officers before their appointment. No change shall be made in the salary or compensation of any officer or employee during his term of service, and no extra compensation shall be granted to any such officer or employee or to any contractor.

(2.) To prescribe the duties of all officers or persons elected or appointed under this act, not herein prescribed.

(3.) To define and prevent disorderly conduct; to prevent all disorderly assemblages, all disturbing noise, all drunkenness in public places; and to punish vagrants, beggars, annd disorderly persons as defined by law.

(4.) To preserve and protect the harbors, canals, basins, and other waters of the city; to prevent all encroachments, obstructions, and deposits in them; to prohibit or regulate bathing or swimming in any waters in the city; to prevent any steam vessel, while navigating waters within the city, from using wood for fuel; to regulate and prescribe the mode and speed of vessels, boats, and floats in entering and leaving them, and in coming to, laying at, or departing from the wharves and piers, and the disposition of the sails, yards, anchors, and appurtenances; and to empower the harbor master to prescribe and regulate the location therein of all vessels, boats, or floats, and to compel them to change their location.

(5.) To prescribe general regulations for the erection of all buildings in the city; to define the limits within which wooden buildings shall not be erected, placed, or rebuilt, and the manner in, and the materials of which all buildings shall be constructed within such limits; also to define outer limits in which wooden buildings may be constructed, placed, or rebuilt, under such regulations as may be imposed by ordinance, special permission from the Common Council being required therefor; every building erected or placed contrary to any ordinance passed under the above provisions shall be deemed a common nuisance, and may be abated as such. An application for special permission to erect, place, or rebuild any building within the outer limits contrary to such ordinances shall, before being acted upon, be properly referred by the Board of Aldermen, and a resolution granting such permission can only be passed at a

regular meeting, held subsequent to such reference, and by the unanimous vote of the members of the Common Council present. To prevent all unsafe construction or condition of chimneys, flues, stoves, pipes, and other things used for fire or conducting smoke; to compel the cleaning of them, and to regulate their construction and condition; to prevent the deposit of ashes in unsafe places and receptacles; to regulate the use of lights in buildings in which combustible articles may be deposited; to regulate the carrying on of manufactories liable to cause fires, and to regulate and prevent the use of fireworks and firearms in the city; to prevent bonfires in the streets and public grounds; to compel the owners and occupants of buildings to have scuttles in the roofs, and stairs and ladders leading to the same, and to require fire-escapes to be placed upon buildings when, and as directed by the Department of Fire; to punish the willful making of a false alarm of fire, or willfully calling a police patrol wagon without cause; and to prohibit the formation of fire, hose, or hook and ladder companies.

(6.) To license and regulate cartmen, porters, owners and drivers of all vehicles used for the transportation of passengers or property for hire, and to fix the rates of compensation to be taken by them; to license and regulate plumbers, auctioneers, butchers, hawkers, peddlers, junk dealers, pawnbrokers and the business of pawnbrokerage, and to fix the rates to be charged by pawnbrokers in their business; to regulate the running at large of dogs, and to license the same; to prohibit, license or regulate public billiard rooms, bowling alleys, runners or solicitors for houses of entertainment, railroads, vessels and vehicles, and the exhibition of shows of every kind, and of theatrical representations; to prescribe the terms and conditions on which licenses shall be granted; to impose and levy a tax upon the owner or owners of hackney carriages, sleighs, cabs, coupés, private carriages, barouches, buggies, wagons, omnibuses, carts, drays,

baggage wagons, automobiles, motor vehicles, bicycles, tricycles and similar vehicles, or any other vehicle, the privilege of operating, driving or propeling the same along or upon the public streets, avenues, highways, and other public places in the city of Buffalo; to fix the amount of such tax and to prohibit the use of the public streets, highways, avenues or other public places of the city by the owner or owners, or driver or drivers, of any such vehicle in the event of any tax so imposed not being paid, and to fix and provide such penalty or penalties as it shall deem proper for a violation of any such ordi

nances.

Thus amended by L. 1904, c. 31.

The power to tax carriages and all that follows were added by this amendment.

(7.) To prohibit or regulate the use of locomotive engines, and of steam, and to regulate other motive power and speed on any portion of any railroad within the city; to require any railroad company to keep a flagman or gates at each railroad crossing of a public street, to provide for the inspection of steam engines and boilers used in the city, and to prohibit the use of unsafe ones, and to prohibit any person who has not been duly licensed under such regulations as the Common Council may prescribe, from running any steam engine, stationary or otherwise, in the city, except the engineers of duly incorporated steam railroads (while engaged in operating or running the locomotive engines of said railroads) and engineers duly licensed by the authorities of the United States (while engaged in operating or running engines upon the waters under the jurisdiction of the United States or of the State of New York); to classify such engineers and to provide for the appointment by the Mayor of such inspector, examiners and employes as may be required to carry out such ordinance. (A marine` engineer holding a United States license shall, on presenting such United States license to an examiner of the city of Buffalo, appointed pursuant to the provisions of this

section, be given an examination, and if found qualified shall be given a stationary engineer's license of the same relative grade as the United States license that the applicant holds, or of a grade sufficiently high to allow him to operate the plant that he was operating at the same time that this act goes into effect, provided, however, that such marine engineer shall be a resident of the city of Buffalo for a period of three years before making such application, and a citizen of the United States. Such examination to be held in writing, and if any engineer so examined shall be dissatisfied with the decision of the said examiner he shall have the right to appeal to the Mayor; and the Mayor shall appoint a board of three disinterested engineers, which may be composed of two chief engineers in active service and a mechanical engineer of this city to hear and determine said appeal; and in case the person appealing be a marine engineer, one member of the board shall be a man holding a license as a chief engineer of steam vessels, issued by the United States, operating a steam plant in the city of Buffalo); to prohibit or regulate the keeping and conveying of gunpowder and other explosive substances, and other dangerous fluid or material, and to provide for the inspection, forfeiture and destruction of the same; to require that the telegraph, telephone, or electric light wires or cables, or other appliances for conducting electricity and the poles thereof heretofore erected in any street, alley or public ground, be removed from overhead in the street, alley or public ground or any part thereof within reasonable time, not less than six months after the enactment of such ordinance and a compliance of such ordinance in respect to the removal of poles, wires, cables, and other appliances of conducting electricity from the streets, alleys, and public grounds, may be enforced by mandamus by any court of competent jurisdiction upon the application of the city as relator. Any company, corporation or individual may place its wires and electrical conductors in conduits under the surface