Omaha daily bee., 1889-08-22
TIME TO CALL A HALT.


Some people never know when they
are well treated, more especially when
such people are granted valuable fran
chises. This is strikingly illustrated
by the hoggishness OF our street car
companies.
Under the city charters Of 1885 and
1887 street railway companies were re-
quired to pay their proportion OF street
paving between tho rails. but the street
railway company managed some how to
keep most of its tracks on unpaved
streets. AS soon as the streets had
been paved and the assessments made
against the abutting property, the street
railways were planted without contrib
uting n dollar to the cost of paving.
Thus it was with the cable road on
Tenth street, which was paved at cost
of four dollars yard to property own
ers, and the same is true of the horse
car and motor railways on Douglas,
Fourteenth, Twelfth, Howard an1 q
dozen other streets. On some of these
streets the paving blocks were carried
away by the street railway companies
and appropriated to their own use
without paying a dollar of paving tax.
When the legislature last winter in
serted a provision into the charter re-
quiring street railways to pay for
the pavement between their tracks, a
protest was entered by the street car
managers and the lobby finally sue
ceeded in staving off for two years the
requirement to pay for the
paved space between outside rails
compel them to pay for paving between
the rails.
This provision applies to streets paved
before tracks are laid, as we'll as those
on which paving is done after the tracks
are laid. Under this provision property
owners who had paid for paving the
entire street before the tracks were
laid, have right to expect that the
| money paid in by the street car COM
panles would be refunded in pro-
portion to the front feet, or
where only part payment had
been made, the owners of abutting
property would be credited to then on
their next insrallment of paving tax.
For a few weeks the street railway
companies complied with the charter
provision and paid some forty thou
sand dollars into the paving fund. To
cover their designs upon the city treas
ury they paid this tax under protest.
Then they followed it up by another
raid upon the council by and with the
useful assistance of the city attorney,
who is also the regularly employed at
torney of tho consolidated street rail-
way.
The upshot was another concession by
the council in the shape of an ordl-
nance which relieves the street railway
companies from the paving tax and
allows them what the charter never
contemplated, the right to repave by
their own employees streets that they
have torn up and occupied.
Emboldened by their success the rival
street car lines have pooled issues for
the most high-handed raid upon the
city treasury that has ever been at
tempted in Omaha since the Holly job.
An ordinance is being framed by
which they are to be permitted
to take out of the city treasury the forty
thousand and odd dollars they have
paid into the paving fund. This of
course is to be done by and with the ad-
vice OF the city attorney, who is also the
attorney of the consolidated.
The BEE has been disposed to accord
liberal treatment of the street car COM
panies in order to encourage the extern
sion Of their lines. But these people do
not seem to know where to stop in their
selfish efforts to get the upper hand of
the city. They do not appear to realize
that they have been given fran
chises without cost which they them
selves advertise as worth hundreds
of thousands OF dollars. They have
tampered with our counciimen, so o. ten
and so audaciously, that they have be-
come emboldened to attempt almost any
thing. The time has come now for call
ing halt.