Chap. 257.—An ACT to Amend and Re-enact the 58th Section of the Road
Law.

Approved March 29, 1871.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly, That the fifty-
eighth section of the act known as the road law, be amended
and re-enacted so as to read as follows :

‘“§ 58. Whenever a bridge or causeway is necessary in any
township, and it is impracticable for the overseer of the dis-
trict to make or repair it out of his ordinary road tax, the
township board, after having proceeded in the same manner
required of a county court in case of building or repairing a
bridge by the county, may contract for building or repairing
the same in the same manner that a county court may contract
for the building or repairing of a county bridge, and the bond
and the contract shall, from the time the same is approved and
filed in the township records, bind both the township and the
contractor; and the township board shall, for the purpose of
building a bridge or causeway under this section, have poWer
to ratify a contract, involving the payment of a greater sum
than three hundred dollars, without submitting the same to a
vote of the township; but any ten freeholders of the town-
ship, shall have the right to appeal from the action of the town-
ship board to the county court of the county, in any case
involving an expenditure of a greater sum than three hundred
dollars, whether auch action be in favor of or against such ex-
penditure, in which case the same proceedings shall be had as
under the fifty-sixth section. Such appeal shall be heard by
the county court after notice thereof shall have been posted at
the township headquarters for at least twenty days, and deter-
mined in a summary way without pleadings in writing, and
shall be decided by said court upon such testimony as may be
brought before it upon the very merits of the case. The
township board shall, at its next annual meeting in July, levy
a tax to meet its, liabilities upon such contract, which shall be
collected as other township levies are collected, but shall not
be paid to the contractor until his work shall have been re-
calves by the township board, unless the contract otherwise
specify.

2. This act shall be in force from its passage.