Section 23 of Delaware City Charter (Emergency loosely defined)

SEC. 23. EMERGENCY MEASURES GENERALLY.

No ordinance or resolution shall be passed or adopted as an emergency measure unless it shall have been introduced as such and unless it shall set forth in the final section thereof a declaration of the circumstances constituting the emergency which exists, necessitating the immediate going into effect of the ordinance or resolution in order to provide for the preservation of the public peace, property, health, safety, or welfare from an immediate danger, or to provide for the usual daily operation of a department or an office of the City. A separate roll call vote shall be had upon such emergency declaration after the third reading and before the final vote upon the passage or adoption of the measure, and if five members of Council affirmatively so vote, the emergency declaration shall stand as part of the measure, and the affirmative votes of five members of Council shall be required for its passage or adoption. If fewer than five members of Council vote in favor of the emergency declaration it shall not thereafter stand as part of the measure; and the measure as it then stands shall have the same status as though introduced without an emergency declaration. No measure making or amending a grant, renewal, or extension of a franchise or other special privilege, or regulating or fixing the rate or rates to be charged for its service by any public utility, shall ever be passed as an emergency measure.