The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-05-09
LETTERS TO EDITOR
INCREASING THE TAXES
To the Editor of The Age-Herald:

To the Editor of The Age-Herald:
 Accepting your invitation to give publicity to both sides of the proposed 3-mill tax and $7,000,000 bond issue, I am acking you to pub- fish the following:
 I will say first that I am firm believer in education; have always supported it. As evil dence of my belief, university gradu- ate with two and half years post graduate work.
 However, just now I believe that the time is nopportune to add to the burden of the tax payers (and by taxpayers I mean not only the direct or property owners, but also the Gin direct" or non-property holder), as the pres ent hard times and unemployment situation make it necessary that the economic or "where- with" side of the question must be considered
 During the war and since, almost every one supported all bond issues for patriotic and other reasons. In fact they have all passed so easily that "the powers that be" seem to have decided to put over" big one. Before the war our tax rate was $3.35 per $100. During that time this was raised to s 80 and valuation also greatly increased. Not much opposition was encountered as times and wages were good and everyone naturally expected that such matters would be readjusted when normal con- ditions returned. I know in my own case (and the same seems to hold for others I know) I am paying now $1. 60 for every $1 paid in taxes before the war. With such being the case we do not take kindly to having taxes fur ther raised to about $1. TO, especially as wages and salaries have been cut nearly in half, while cost of living is still much above pre-war level. In other words for every $1 the aver age worker received before the war, he now receives (if he is lucky) about S1 25, while the cost of rents, foodstuff and clothing are still about $1 45, as compared to $1 of pre-war scale As an illustration, suppose before the a home was assessed at $1,000, which at tax rate of $3. 35 means that the owner paid $33. 50 in taxes. If the bond and 3-m tax pass this will mean $33 50x1.7, or $57, he will be called upon to pay. Suppose his wages were $100 per month before the war, this would mean $125 now, but his dollar will buy only 69 cents worth as compared with pre-war times, so his real salary is only $86 in buying power. Yet his taxes will have been increased from $33. 50 to $57.
 This matter should be considered very care fully by the voter, because everybody pays taxes, either directly on property or indirectly in rentals, food and clothing. One trouble with the non-property owning voter has always been that he has fooled himself by thinking that it was only the property owner who paid taxes He surely cannot expect rents to be lowered If the landlords taxes are increased, or lower priced food and clothing if the merchants rents arc raised. If the $7,00000 bonds are voted we will have nearly SIS 1000 ,000 of bonded debt (nearly twice that of the state), which means that we will have to pay nearly $1,000000 in interest, or nearly one-third of the citys total revenue these bonds-sbefore we start to running the city government. It seems to me that we had better go little slow and while no doubts that we need more schools, we could surely get along without the municipal golf links etc. We voted $3,000,0 ,000 in bonds > ($1 100000 for Central Hgh) for schools d. most three years ago, and have no school yet; we voted $500,000 for an auditorium and have no auditorium yet. All we have is a very unde- sirable site, an architect expense of some $10,- 900 for an inadequate building, expense bills for architect and former city commissioners trip>of inspection" of northern cities and ex- pense bills for architect and present commis- sioners for similar trip recently.
 R. F. PITTMAN. Birmingham, 1918 Twenty eighth street, south,
 May 8, 1922
 
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