The diamond drill. (Crystal Falls, Iron County, Mich.) 1887-1996, 1916-03-11

! ing 70 the amount or labor involved
In subsequent tables dealing with our
school population we shall include
Crystal Falls township as we'll as city
for the reason that the two are includ-
ed in the school district
Our tables this week deal with val
nations. For the purpose OF compari-
son we have taken period OF eight
years, four years prior 10 the apprais-
al BY the tax commission and four
years including the year Of appraisal
since that time.
We have taken two groups OF local
property. one consisting Of residences
that have remained practically the
same throughout the eight year period
and a group OF business buildings that
have remained the same and will com
pare them with three mining proper
ties that have been on the rolls for the
same period under like conditions
The residences chosen are those Of
Frank w. Noyes. p. 5. Grattan, vii
liam Holmes. Chas. III Watson and
Herman Holmes. The buildings on
Superior avenue which We have chosen
are the Ross building, the Scadden
building. tie Justified building and
the Diamond Drill building. This
group OF residences and also the group
of business buildings are selected with
an eye TO location as well as value SO
thar the comparison may be had under
the same conditions. The group OF
mines include the Great Western,
Kimball and Bristol.
The years chosen are from 1908 TO
1915 both inclusive. The tables show
up as may be seen below
IL must be remembered that In 1911
the state tax commission came into
this county and fixed the value of the
mining property and OH the following
year. 1912, the commission came here
and fixed the value of the other pro-
perty. Whatever may be ones person
al opinion as 10 the correctness of the
figures OF the commission one thing is
certain and that IL the figures are as
fair on one kind of property as upon
another and so the unit OF comparison
will be the value as fixed by the com
mission upon each group and all other
totals will be compared with the totals
OF those years.
Thus il will be seen that after care
ful review the tax commission consid-
cred the three mining properties to be
worth $t,357.700OO. The figures fixed
by Finlay were much higher: the
figures that were finally put upon the
tax roll were but about half OF the
Finlay figures
The commission fixed the value OF
the group OF residences at $40 300 and
the business blocks at $4,000. BY
looking at the figures OF the year just
prior 10 the work Of the commission i'm
each case IL will be sen that in 1910 the
group of mines was assessed at s240.-
10000. the residences 0n l91D at
$1,000 and the business blocks at Si4,-
700. Thus I'm the case of the mines the
commission found that they were being
assessed al about 20 per cent of their
value while the residences and bust
ness property al not quite fifty per
cent which means that for the four
year period the local property has
paid about 80 per cent more taxes
than the mining property.
Reduction Justified
AS may be seen from glance al the
table the mining property received
cut each year while the local property
stayed al the figures set by the tax
commission for two years and then.
owing 10 the slump i'm business and the
consequent depreciation in the value of
local property. the local tax payers
went before the board OF review aud
asked for a reduction Of 20 per cent
Il was claimed by some OF the mining
companies that this reduction IN local
property values was mol justified that
the reduction Ia mining property was
not as great
Let's look AZ that claim a minute
Taking the local property for the four
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