Worcester morning daily spy. (Worcester, Mass.) 1888-1898, 1898-02-11

ployed in treating the sewage at the
publication works.
J. Russell Marble presided, and intro.
| duced Mr. Otis, who at once plunged
into the middle of his subject and fol
nearly two hours held the close and in.
| terested attention of his audience. His
talk was of an informal nature but he
was so full of his subject that he had nc
need to rely upon notes, aud his inter-
ruptions were so frequent that after the
first quarters of an hour it as
sumed the form of question and answer,
in which Mr.. Otis appeared to excellent
advantage. No question seemed to
phase him, and some of his retorts
were so brilliant that they excited gen
aral applause.
Mr.. Otis began by explaining the
manner in which taxes were levied by
poll tax, tax on personal property, and
tax on real estate. The highest real es-
tate valuation in the city is given to
the land on Harrington corner, at the
junction of Main and Front streets. This
is placed by the assessors at $50 per
foot Running north on the east side
of Main street the valuation gradually
decreases to the Bay State house,
when it falls off very rapidly. The east
side of Main street north of Front street
is more valuable than the west side,
while south of Front street the re-
verse is true. Residential property
grows less in value as it's distance in
creases from the center of the city
The Salisbury land at the north end is
an exception to this rule, as property on
streets running north from Highland
street has higher valuation than the
real estate on streets running to the
south. The rule of the assessors is to
place an equal taxation per
foot on contiguous lots, whether they
are occupied by buildings or not. The
rule for measuring the value of build
ings is never to raise the valuation of a
building, once it is established right,
and never to tax repairs. such as paint
ing, shingltng, or the like. Additions,
like bay windows, piazzas, etc, which
make house more valuable, are taken
account OF by the assessors.
The chief trouble of the assessor
comes with the assessment of personal
property. Tangible property, like stock
in trade, teams, etc, can be valued, but
the intangible property makes the life of
the assessor a burden. The speaker
contended that every property owner
should bring into the assessors a, list of
his tangible property; then there would
be no inequality in taxation He would
have a law which would ohlige people
to make these statements. Contrary to
no right to doom man beyond the
knowledge which they possess as to his
property. They sometimes make mis-
takes, but they never make a reduction
in the amount of the tax, unless the
man who complains will make a state
ment. In this connection he told a story
of a man in this city who paid taxes
on $4,000 worth of personal property
one year. The next year he came to the
assessors and protested against being
assessed for the same amounts, saying
that he was not worth anything like ii.
The assessors told him to file a state
ment to that effect, and they would
abate the tax; but he said he could not
do that, as it would impair his credit.
Within year that man failed and
paid less than 30 cents on the dollar.
The local assessors have adopted the
custom of putting the valuation of per-
sonal property down in bulk because
they could see that it would frequently
work injustice to a taxpayer If the var
ious securities upon which he was taxed
were scheduled on the books in detail,
Assessor Otis turned his attention to
the report of the tax commission made
to this legislature, and was unsparing
in his criticism of many of its details
He was opposed to the abolition of the
tax on intangible personal property. to
the habitation tax, and to the inheri-
lance tax He regarded the habitation
tax, whereby man is taxed on the Pen
tai value of his real estate over $500 a
year as unjust and impracticable. He
said it would be impossible for the as
SCISSORS to get at the rentable value of
a piece of property For instance. there
is the house of Tomas G. Clark on Elm
street. 1t was taxed for $4,000 The adj
vocates of the proposed law say that
per cent is a fair rentable value of an
estate. Now per cent of s94, 900 is
$1,000, and nobody would contend that
the Clark mansion would rent for more