The legislative authority of a municipal corporation may prescribe, by ordinance, for the laying down of gas pipes in highways about to be paved, macadamized, or otherwise permanently improved, and for the assessment of the cost and expense thereof upon the lots or parcels of land adjoining or abutting upon the highways in which they are laid. In no case, excepting as a sanitary measure, shall the legislative authority require house connections to be built further from the main pipe than the outer line of the curbstone.
R.C. §743.37