The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-09-16
The county, court pet in Judge Bishop,s

Inc county court net In Judge Bishops
Office yesterday and transacted large rou-
tine of business. Selectman Fred Foy, who
has been experimenting the work on the
building Of the new wagon road to the La
Plata mines, was expected to be present
and make report, but for some reason he
tailed to make his appearance. Judge Cross
was selected committee of one to go out
TO the scene of operations to-day and view
the work going on and make report to the
court.
The salary Of the county treasurer was
liked at $500 per annum.
Judge Cross got the supervision over all
roeds north of the Ogden river aud west of
the Wasatch mountains.
Considerable trouble has been expert
enced in collecting the taxes of Weber
county this year, as in former years, and
the court took up the subject for discus
slon with view of setting the ball rolling
with hopes that a general reform move
ulent may be inaugurated in the present
rotten system of taxation in the comm g
session of the territorial legislature.
BY the present method all property is
assessed to individuals, and what the court
wishes to see done is TO have each parcel of
land in the city and county assessed by de-
scription, as is done in almost every state
in the east. AS it is, people depend too
much upon the notices that are sent out
each year to learn what their taxes are,
and many times the proper parties do not
receive the accustomed slip. For instance,
suppose John Jones owns piece of land on
the lst day of January and IL is assessed to
him, and he Is the man to whom this notice
is addressed. If he sells the land to some
other party, the second man is not notified
but Jones is. The same land might change
hands dozen times perhaps, as was the
very frequent case in the time of the real
estate boom, and still Jones would be the
only man that would receive notice
what the taxes on the piece were,
Suppose, again, that the last party
10 whom the land came into possession,
knowing his taxes were not paid. wished
TO do so. He might go to the tax collec-
tors office and enquire what the amount IS,
and before he could get the desired infor-
nation it would be necessary for him to get
out bis abstract or go to the books in the
county recorders office and trace the mat
ter down to find out who was in possession
Of the land on the first day of January, or
the party to whom the land was assessed,
before he could find a description of his
property. Now If the land was assessed
by description and not to individuals, all
this amount of bother and work could be
saved. No matter who owns the property
or how many times it might have changed
hands, the property could be referred to in
a moments time on the books of the tax
collector.
The present method of collecting taxes
is fearfully expensive way, and in the
case of Weber county where the revenues
are all of $4,000, it costs from SO, 900 to
$4,000 to collect them, or on an average of
ID to 20 per cent.
As it is it takes twice as much work and
even more than that to collect revenues
each year as it would for the same amount
in the east where the descriptive system is
in force. Here the tax books in the hands
of the city officials are the same as those of
the county, and 1t takes Just as many men
10 collect the revenues of the city as it does
Tor the county, thus mourning double ex-
pense. While in places where tax levies
are not to individuals-for example take
Des Moines, Ia, city of close to seventy
thousand people and the county of Polk, a
thlckly populated county, one man with an
assistant does all the collecting for the city
and county-the official who attends to such
duties is elected by the voters of the county
and when he collects the taxes he turns
over TO the different cities within their
jurisdiction their proportions.
Another thing, in case that an assess
ment was made to a wrong party in Utah
and the land was sold at a tax sale. the
rlghtful owner could come in and swear
that the assessment was made wrong, and
demand recourse from the county In a
case of that kind the county would be
obliged to make an appropriation to recon-
pense the owner of the land and also pay
the costs of the tax sale. While in the
other case when the levy is made upon the
land itself, there is no possible way of
making mistake in assessments-that is
to wrong party.
pJudges Bishop and Cross were appointed
as committee to go to Salt Lake and visit
the officials of the county and city there
and endeavor to induce them to co-operate
with them, and with the assistance of the
officials from other counties, call terrific
rial convention to discuss the matter thor
oughly, and TO draw up such resolutions as
they deem best for presentation TO the
next legislature. The member of the
court feel that this is one of the ways in
which economy can be used to an advan-
fana