The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-29
\ QUESTION OF TAXES.

The evident intention of the city council to retrench is, it may be recognized brought about by req son of the fact that the city is broke.
 It cannot redeem outstanding pa per. and while it is very evident that when the taxes come later to the treasury what is outstanding may be redeemed, there will from now on be an increase in general indebtness. It is a very remark able thing that the opposition to this policy comes from the business interests of the city. and they themselves or at least a great many of eaam iu-.st HDou maintaining the Tire Department intact as a ueces- s.Gy proloc,.aa.
 The Fir. Department maintained aft a fi.u .fate of efficiency is mo doubt q great thing in a place like Nome, but if it is 70 be maintained at it's present cost of up-keep then the business interests of the city ought to blow through with taeir taxes and accept the assessment ot their property at it's actual value.
 Every man. woman and child in Nome knows that if the personal property in this town was valued at the same rate as the miners cabin within the city limits, there would he money to spare and more for the payment of the Fire Depart meut. Nor would it be necessary 10 leave some of the streets unat- tended to, especially when the resi- dents thereon have paid their taxes without a murmur.
 But it is peculiar state Of things if to protect merchants stock not assessed at their proper proportion&te value, and hence upon which taxes remain unpaid, the Fire Department is maintained at a metropolitan scale while all other departments are to be unat- tcnded to or are to experience the pruning hook of the retrcnchment policy.
 Councilman Ross in objecting to any policy might affect the Fire Department because the taxpayers would object. should have recalled the bitter and animated contest against paying taE-s which was maintained by some of those for whom he spoke. And if they are unwilling to pay into the city trea- sury the funds required to keep the expenditures going, the city has no right whatever to keep them going when plunging the city into debt and maintaining a larger and larger balance in the red, and hay ing it's paper not worth the ink written upon it,
 The councilmen are simply mort gazing the future to pay for a pre- cent time extravaganza and they have achieved that wonderful con dition when the city thinks so little of it's own warrants that it will not take in payment of taxes it's own paper.
 The timidity over recognizing the fire department upon a moor economic basis amounts to a super stition where such superstition is not directly plain politics.
 The city council simply refuses to see that it is not able to pay its way, to perform necessary work requiring on other streets than Front St. to do many things that are urgently required and all sim ply to give merchants fire protec- ton more mythical than anything else.
 There never was a serious fire, and the councilmen know it, when the services of volunteers were not required to aid in quonching it, and often enough those volunteers worked ss hard and performed as effective service as those who were placed permanently upon the sala- Tied list.
 To intimate then, that the pre- sent system which is simply no sy- stem at all, is absolutely necessary for the proper protection of the city is to intimate what is not