The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-29

laCJ.
 It is a peculiar condition when the council will net face the fact that reforms are patently needed. The city is broke, and if the pre- sent council will not do anything thoy will simply do all in their power to make that bankruptcy permanent.
 By judicious policy at the pre- sent time, such as apparently has the approval of the mayor, but fails for lack of support, the city can be placed upon sound basis when the warrants will be worth at leagt their face value Moreover nothing is more certain than this that eveu- tu2l.y what the council cannot muster B. courage 10 do will haze to he done. Men will eventually have to face the inevitable and comre, reform where now cyerg effort f~ made to eyade ii where evasion is tt all possible
 It certainly would not be diff cult, fl they would rid themselves of that ridiculous superstition as 10 hampcring the efficiency Of the de- partment which is when all si said and done more or less a myth and a thing existing from frequent repetition only in the minds of the aldermen, 10 face the situation as it must eventually be faced and get down to the basis of cold facts.
 The city treasury has been pretty well mixed. It is now dry What with an expensive establishment that cost no man knows how much, it is the height of nonsense not to realize where the city is at, and to i insist upon maintaining the same extravagant expenditures in the po- sition in which it now finds itself
 Do the councilmen so eager for the tax payers in business imagine | thct when the annual assessment roll is prepared there will be an cf- fort made to appraise personal pro- perty at it's actul figure or that the business interests would pay those taxes if they did any such thing.
 If this council insists upon it's present policy of maintaining the expensive establishment is it now stands they arc bound in duty to the rest of the people to see that the personal property owners are taxed to the proper values which | they own. It is their bounden duty to sec that they pay in proportion to their values as the miner pays | for his cabin. If they did do this and went through with it, they might reasonably do as they are now doing. But the probabilities are that they will do no such thing and if past experience is any guide they most certainly will not.
 Yet there iS no reason why they do not. Year after year they place an assessed value upon homes and cabins that the owners would cheerfully accept from the first buyer that offered within ten per cent of that amount and the same time they balk at coming within long shot of the actual stock of the business men.
 And it is because year after year delinquent property is sold because the taxes are impossible and the proper taxes are not collected on personal property, the city has now the balance in the red and must stop work on streets while the streets are in many places unpass- able by the very persons who have been mulcted of taxes over and above the value of the property that they live in, the Fire Depart ment is now thc subject of conside- ration when only those are consid- cred who arc baking perpetually about paying their taxes.
 Yet it is up to the council. If they continue to fail in proper appraisement of the property of the merchants and insist upon maintaining the same extravagant establishment they have been asked to consider, it means simply that they have not the courage or the lbackbone to do their duty in either