The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-05-07
The Martin Act Sales.


Board have secured by forcing the sale
of parcels in arrears for more than two
years. When the present series of sales
was announced, there was over $4,000
worth of liens embraced in Schedule NO
l. BY the time this was formally adj
vertised, the amount had been reduced
to about s2s.o 900. When the day of sale
arrived only a little over 5000 was left,
and the city received bona fde bids for
about half that amount.
If this is not success, we do not know
what success means. But, it appears,
there is some danger of collapse in the
whole fabric because the city officials are
unable to agree as to how they will
carry out the last stages of the coercive
process.
1t is plain that the big realization was
the result of a genuine fear on the part
of the property owners that the property
this fear away and they will snap their
fingers at the announcement of the sales
as a mere bluff on the part of the city.
But if the city is not prepared to buy
in and take title to the parcels for which
there is no outside purchaser, the sale
becomes indeed nothing more than a
bluff, and its force as a means of col
lection will in a very short time become
nil. The speculative market will soon be
glutted. Bidders will grow scarce and
at each successive sale the number of
lots for which no buyer can be secured
viii grow larger and larger. OF course,
this would not matter if the city stood
ready to act on its own account; but
at the sale just held Comptroller Hough
refused to bid in any parcels because
he felt no assurance that the city would
provide the means of completing the
sale.
The system has been for the city to buy
in lots for which there was no bidder
at the amount of the lien. Money was
then borrowed on temporary bonds, sup
posed to be secured by the property, and
the sale was completed by the Comptrol-
Ter paying the Collector in actual cash.
The money thus paid presently found its
way into the Sinking Fund, where it was
credited to any bonds that might nave
been issued in anticipation of the years
taxes for which the property was sold.
Thus, the friends of the system claim,
while a new debt was created an old one
was wiped out and the city was neither
better nor worse off in cash than before.
but it was ahead in that it owned the
property with an indefeasable title.
Then came the process of turning the
property into cash. This is done through
the so-called absolute sales which Mr..
Frank Stevens has been conducting. The
,eneHfes of the old system point out that
at these only a fraction of the sum bid
at the first sale by the city is realized
60 per cent. on the average, some say it
is. Therefore at the close of the entire
transaction, the city is unable to pay the
fun face of the temporary loan bond
through which the purchase money was
raised, and a portion of the same is add
ed to the permanent debt of the city.
To prevent this, they think, the city
should make its purchase at the first sale
~-;+.o,,+ ~.r raoI >, - a1 .io,,1r
by an exchange of warrants and a series
of entries on the city's books. But in re-
joinder. to this the friends of the old sys-
tenn point out that the loss on the final
sale would remain exactly the same as it
IS now, only the loss would be on the
original bonds issued in anticipation of
taxes, instead of on the purchase money
bonds.
We are inclined, ourselves, to think
that the difference between the two sys-
TENS to the city treasury is precisely the
difference between tweedledum and twee-
dledee. There is the advantage in the
old system that, if a case should ever be
brought into court on a test OF title, 1t
constitutes a real and not a merely for
NAL transaction. But, whatever the
faults or the merits of either system may
be, there can be no two ways of think
ing as to the d-isasfrousness of having no
system-of simply refusing to do any
thing when there is no genuine bidder at
hand to buy the property. Mr.. Hough
and the Mayor and the Finance Board
members and Corporation Counsel Allan
L. McDermott, who is understood to be
opposed to the old method, should get
together without delay and devise a
scheme by which the work of collection
can be pushed in solid earnest, and the
city placed In sound financial condition
through the collection of its tax levy ur
to the same ratio hat prevails in well
administered cities
The Greater Jersey City Commission
For some reason best known to itself,
the Evening Journal has undertaken
to fnter5ect politics into the Greater Jer.