A. The organization of a district shall be initiated by a petition filed in the office of the clerk of the district court in a county in which all or a part of the real property in the proposed district is located. The petition shall be signed by qualified electors of the proposed district numbering not less than ten percent of those voting in the preceding general election in the state in voting precincts partially or wholly included in the area of the proposed district. The petition and all other instruments relating to the formation of the district shall be filed with the county clerk of the county in which there is the court that accepted the petition. Any municipality or county in which all or a portion of the proposed district is located may, upon proper action of its governing body alone, file the petition required by this section.

B. The petition shall set forth:

(1) the name of the proposed district, consisting of a chosen name preceding the words "flood control district";

(2) a general description of the facilities to be acquired or improved within and for the district;

(3) a general description of the boundaries of the district, with such certainty as to enable a property owner to determine whether the owner's property is within the proposed district; and

(4) a prayer for the organization of the district.

C. No petition with the requisite number of valid signatures shall be declared void on account of alleged defects, but the court may at any time permit the petition to be amended to conform to the facts by correcting any errors in the description of the territory or in any other particular. Similar petitions or duplicate copies of the same petition for the organization of the same district may be filed and shall together be regarded as one petition. All petitions filed before the hearing on the first petition filed shall be considered by the court the same as though filed with the first petition.

History: Laws 1981, ch. 377, § 5; 2019, ch. 212, § 239.

The 2019 amendment, effective April 3, 2019; in Subsection A, after "qualified", deleted "registered".