The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1871-04-08
A Word about Assessments.

Now that the town elections are over and q
new set of assessors has been elected, We pro-
pose to throw out few thoughts for their
consideration. The revenue laws of this state
require, in express terms, that all property
shall 1e assessed at its actual cash value; yet
the auditor has told us frequently, and the
state board of equalization acts on the as
sumption.-even the supreme court, in Its de-
cisionS, takes it for granted as settled fact
that the real and personal property Of the
people of this state is assessed at about one
third its actual cash value. Assessors through
pretended to go upon this basis in point of
fact, however the One-third in the country
towns of this county has dwindled down to
about one-tith. The matter operates, then, in
Ottawa, &C., where the value OF real estate is
definitely known and fixed, the assessor puts
it down at one-th;rd its actual cash value but
in the country, we find the best farms assessed
at from S. to SIS per acre, yet we often see
these farms sold at from $50 to $50 an acre.
1t is evident the actual rate of country assess
ments is seldom higher than one fifth The
state board of equalization meets and puts the
whole county up 65 per cent. to raise it to one.
third. Now this would be equitable enough
if it only affected the lands that have been
rated at one-ifth ; but with the country the
cities go up also, SO that last year the assess.
ment of Ottawa was fully one.half and much
of the property still higher, while the country
around paid on only one-third.
But do the assessors of country towns in La
Sale county habitually assess property lower
thanthey do IN the middle andsouthern coun-
ties ofthe state Every year La Sale, with most
of the northern counties, Is raised from IS to
65 per cent, while the assessment of the mid
die and southern counties remains untouched
The trouble is not all with our assessors Their
rates are, inpoint of TACT about as high as in the
middle and southern counties but the trouble
Is, that La Sale county, at least, has had
no representative in the state board of equal
izaton that understood her situation In the
state board, all the land in La Sale county,
outside OF the cites, is looked upon as rich
farm land. The truth is that Onethlrd of the |
Hand in this county is scrubby timber, not
worth third as much as the farm land. So |
the assessor goes upon farm of l6O acres, of |
which 40 are this scrubby timber He puts
down the arabic land at $40 to SIS an acre,
(werth $40 or 500 and the timber at about
S., for in point of fact it is worth nothing to
the farmer except to serve as very poor pas-
ture But the state board thinks it is all good
farm land and insists on assessing all at $40
to SIS an acre.
Our conclusion from the whole would be first,
that our city assessments must be lower, and
our country assessments must be higher to be
equitable all around and secondly, that the
state board of equalization is both a useless
and expensive piece of machinery, and a great
humbug. All the attempts to patch UP as
sessments by counties have been miserable
failures and in most cases have resulted in
gross wrong and outrage.