Arizona republican., 1913-07-08
COMMUNITY OPINION HELPS ASSESSOR
 ANALYSIS

CThis is the second of a series of articles by Walter W. Pollock of Cleveland, O., on scientific tax vaiu- ations of real estate. It shows how the people of any community may assist the assessor in his task of analysis of the value of street use- fulness.)
 Any twenty men who live in a given city or village will find upon comparing opinions, that they will practically agree upon a few funda- mental points affecting the value of the land in their home town, and their opinions may be easily tabu- lated by use of the SomeTs method. These points are:
 l. The best street {meaning there by the most used street).
 2. That this best street IS not best in all parts-that is there are some parts of this street better than other parts.
 3. The best cross street 4, The part Of the best street that is the best of that street.
 The disag agreements in opinion upon these points will be found to be neg Ggible, and can be easily harmonized. Yet the same twenty people who have in any given town agreed in their opinion as to the value of the use of the 1treets are likely to vary widely in their judgment of value expressed in terms of price for any given lot or parcel of land fronting or any one / the streets CT parts of streets that they had before agreed upon.
 It is this ignoring of what people know most about, and failure to utilize the knowledge of the mem hers of the community concerning what they lave most to do with in tteir activities in a community, that constitutes the tremendous lack of efficiency in the assessment of land values in centers of population. And m addition to this waste, there is an attempt to carry out the impossible, in attempting 10 appraise particular sites, over which there IS constant trd substantial disagreement, as in ine case of the twenty persc ms who cannot agree about the value of any particular site or any street in their town.
 Origin of Land Values.
 An analysis of the origin of what is usually called land value" as ap- piled to city sites, is absolutely necessary for the proper solution of any land appraisal problem With out access to the life and business of the community through the high ways, llot of ground in any com munity wo1ld be without usc-it would not be "worth" anything, as 1t would be expressed in common talk. It must be apparent that whatever ''value" a plot of ground may be said to have comes entirely from the accessibilit7 or possibility of ac- possibility that it has or may have in prospect through some street or public highway. This "value" varies ss between plots because the streets or highways through which various plots obtain their usefulness and therefore their value, vary in inn portance and in use; but be the "value" nigh or low, it comes en- tirely from the streets.
 Now let us analyze the effect of the streets upon the plots, varying as they do in size and shape We know first that . large plot is worth street-due entirely to the difference in area. We finG that two plots of the same area are sometimes of diff ferent value if they are of differing shapes. The one with the greatest accessibility to the street will be worth more than the one with less accessibility. But whatever the value is. it may be traceai ie back to the usefulness of the street
 When we come to corner lots and near-corner lots we find that the same street effects are to be found, only in a more complicated way. One corner lot is better than an- other when the streets making the corner are better in their combined effect than is a corner lot where the streets forming the corner are not so good in their combined effect. Consider Street Values.
 Having analysed this street effect thus far, it would appear to be the natural thing to do to consider the value of streets, regardless of the sites that are contiguous thereto In every community there is more knowledge about the usefulness of streets .har there is aho1t particu- lar sites. As in the illustration of the twenty pereons, most people in a community have very well-defned