The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1914-03-19
Corner Lot Assessments.

| Owners of corner lots in Iowa cit
! les and towns need not live in fear
of the corner lot assessment for
street paving any more, for the
paving law of Iowa was changed by
the last legislature providing that
the whole area of property within
a quarter of a block could be assess
ed for the benefits to be derived
from paving around the corner
from alley to corner and from COR
ner to alley. Heretofore the custom
has been to assess paving according
to the frontage, which placed four
times the burden upon a corner lot
that was assessed to the lot next to
it and that was called an assessment
according to benefit until the ques-
ton was successfully resisted in the
district courts at Marshalltown.
At Marshalltown several years ago
owners of forty corner lots appealed
to the district court from assess
ments made of their city council for
asphalt paving on the sides of said
lots when the front of the lots had
already been paved and the lots as
sessed therefor After, being tried
out in three courts before three diff
ferent district judges the judicial
opinion was unanimous that the cost
and long side of residence corner
the city was compelled to pay for 40
the long side.
in the supreme court for the city at
fn~ I,
three lower court decisions. Then
paving was agitated at Webster City
and the corner lot cases at Marshall
town were exploited in the Webster
City Freeman-Tribune for the bene-
fit of property owners there. Senator
Chase from Webster City was instru-
mental in writing into law the prin-
ciple of equity involved in the corner
lot decisions and we now have new
law stating that whenever property to
be assessed shall be according to
area rather than according to street
frontage and shall include half of
the property lying between the street
improvement and the next street.
This principle of area as the basis
of assessment rather than of 'front.'
age was laid down in Judge Brad !
shaws opinion in the Morgan case
at MarshalltOwn. He held that if a |
lot fronting on the side street had |
been plotted 60 feet wide and $50 !
deep extending across the back of |
three lots it would under the street |
frontage rule come in for the same |!
the front third of that |
lot 60x6O which he considered mani |
testify inequitable. Judge Bradshaw
said as to a corner lot:
''It is undoubtedly true that cor
ner lot, other things being equal, is
more valuable than an inside lot,
and that the special benefits to a
corner lot may be conceded to be
greater that the improvement in
front of an inside lot. But the court
is of the opinion that there is too
great a disproportion of discrimina-
lion in the assessment of the two
classes of property to be equitable
Dr. just"
This is what can be termed a COM
non sense rule of law and the city's
attorney was justified in settling
without a needless appeal to the SUI
,reme court. Senator Chase, himself
! lawyer, evidently saw the justice in
t and sought to write the principle !
nto the Iowa law by legislative en-
lctment without waiting for the SUI
oreme court to do it by judicial de-
rec. The Waterloo Reporter has
jailed attention rightly to the fact
hat this new statute has nothing
whatever to do with the paving of i,
street and alley intersections. A
separate bill to cover that failed to
,ass the legislature. The new law
overs only the paving abutting prop
'rty but it seeks to set up the total
lrea rule for measuring the bene-
It's instead of the street frontage
ule and this area is to include all
lying nearer to the street
than to any other street,
tut in no case more than three hun
lred feet distant. Council Bluffs {
lonpareil
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