Local Ordinance 12.F-3

Local Ordinance 12.F-3, formally titled Concerning the Disposal of Surplus Floors and the Registration of Premises That Have Not Yet Been Built, is a procedural instrument of the Ninth Recension governing the disposal, postponement, and prospective licensing of floor-sites within the Tower's vertical register. It is a short ordinance — four articles, two annexes, and a schedule of forms — but it has been amended eleven times, and the surviving commentary on it runs to nine volumes.

It is chiefly remembered for the doctrine set out in its third article: that a floor may be lawfully registered before it is built, and that a registration so made does not lapse if the floor is never built. The Librarians have never resolved whether this is a provision or an omission.

Background and enactment

Before 12.F-3, the disposal of a floor was a matter of custom and of the patience of the parties concerned. The Bureau of Vertical Accounts kept the floor-register, but the register recorded only what had a stairwell, and the definition of a stairwell was generous. Whole precincts existed on paper alone and were assessed for maintenance with the same regularity as occupied floors.

The ordinance was drafted by a clerk of that Bureau, Ordinate Meren Voss, whose grievance is unusually well documented. In the winter of the floor designated 41-Aleph Voss was issued a maintenance invoice for a floor-site to which no ascent had been opened, and which the Bureau's own ledger described as "holding, unbuilt, pending." The invoice covered heating. Voss paid it, then appealed it, then in the second year drafted the ordinance. The preamble is terse: "No charge shall be raised against a floor that is not, except where the floor is registered as not being, in which case the ordinary rates apply."

The ordinance was carried into the Ninth Recension by a majority the record does not quantify, and the Bureau of Vertical Accounts was named its administering office. It has since been read in harmony with Ordinance 412 and, at the seeking, with Ordinance 8871-C; the three are bound together in the working copies of the Metrological Spires, though no one claims the binding is an authority.

The unbuilt-premises provision

Article 3 provides that a premise may be registered in the floor-register at any point after the stairwell has been carried up to the landing, but before the floor above that landing has been built. The registered floor is then said to exist "by descent." It carries a number, a name, and a ledger entry. It carries no rooms. Inspectors of the Subbureau of Temporal Reconciliation are not permitted to enter it, on the grounds that there is nothing to enter, and the prohibition is printed on their warrants.

A floor registered by descent and never built does not become void. It becomes durable, which is the ordinance's word for a floor that has been owned for longer than anyone has attempted to claim it. The durable floor passes to the holder's successor, and the successor's successors, in a line that in at least two cases has been maintained for the better part of a century.

"A registered and unbuilt floor is a lawful floor. It is not a vacant one. It may not be used. It may not be built on without a fresh application. It may be walked past, quietly, and without comment."

— Local Ordinance 12.F-3, Article 3, clause 4

Conflicts with adjacent instruments

There is no small scholarly disagreement over whether the unbuilt-premises provision may be invoked where Local Ordinance 22.J-8 is in force. 22.J-8 governs the calibration and verification of measurement tools in areas of ontological drift and authorizes the establishment of Zones of Specified Instability; the Rite of Local Calibration proceeds within it by a register of thresholds and verification holds. It cannot be easy to verify that a site by descent is stable, because the site is not there. The Certification Board of the Floor-Register holds, following Third Concordance, Annex 6, that a registered floor without rooms is a valid reference surface, and that instruments resting on it will read the floor's recorded density rather than the air. The falsification desk maintains that they read the air. The Metric Recalibrators have obliged both by recording a separate reading for the site, kept in the back of the volume, and marked not for use.

The question was suspended in part by the Ordinance of Cessation 73-C, which suspended Local Ordinance 22.J-8 and, in the same article, Ordinance 1147-A — the latter a schedule of charges on the unbuilt floor, which has accordingly never been collected. The Suspension of Local Statute is the ordinary device for such interruptions, and it was used in this instance to the surprise of the parties who had paid the charge on the 41-Aleph site, who paid it before the suspension was read and have not been repaid.

12.F-3 is also, in an unusual and much noted arrangement, cross-referenced by Ordinance 8871-C, clause 3, without any indication of which ordinance governs which. The Concordance of Precedence of the Chancery of Stairwells declined to settle it and entered the question in the open roll. The roll has been open since.

Notable incidents

In the fourth year of the present Recension, the floor designated 12-F was registered by descent, its landing carried up, and the site named in the register. The applicant then received a licence to use the site for the Rite of Revision. The rite is recorded as having been interrupted by the appearance of the floor itself, built, or at least sufficiently built that the licensed holder was served with an ordinary invoice at the occupied rate. The applicant contested on the ground that the stairwell had not been carried up. The stairwell had, in fact, been carried up. It was made of a stone no one has been able to identify and no one has thought to remove.

The second incident concerns the receipt of the Bureau of Vertical Accounts, which was amended in the same year to read that applicants "shall not lean on the counter." Appeals on the grounds of leaning have been heard and dismissed, the Bureau's position being that an unbuilt floor is a lawful thing and a clerk's counter is not.

Copies of 12.F-3, the unamended text, the eleven amendments and the working register of the durable floors may be consulted at the desk of the Bureau of Vertical Accounts on the floor designated 41-Aleph. The desk is not open. It is expected to be open, the Bureau records, "pending."