Palisadian., 1924-02-29
FINDS AN OFFICIAL FOR
EVERY TWELVE FAMILIES

Appearing before the Ber-
gen County Civic Forum at
Hackensack Tuesday to speak
on the existing high tax rate,
former Surrogate Robert A.
Sibbald said the only solution
he could offer was the incor-
poration of the county into the
city of Bergen to bring things
back to normal conditions.
Less than a week ago
Lawyer Patrick Henry Maley
suggested, in a speech at River
Edge, the consolidation of sew
eral towns with a greater Hack
ensack, and a greater Engle-
wood, ETC., in the hope that the
ever-increasing overhead ex-
penses could be kept down.
"The City of Bergen"
Greater Englewoods, Greater Hack
ensacks or Greater Rutherfords are
not the answer to Bergen county's alb
normally high tax rates, or the COM
plexities of its toy municipalities. The
answer is in the Incorporation of the
county of Bergen as the city of Ber-
gen, or whatever you please to call Ii,
standing as the third city of the state
with a population of quarter of a
million, and substituting for its seven
ty governments one mayor and one
council, or preferably, to take the city
out of the realm of politics, a Walsh
Commission government, with the ini-
tiative, the referendum and the re-
CALL" said Mr. Sibbald in the course
of his address.
Time to Cast Around
when we see tax rates $6.46 staring
the people of one municiality in the
county in the face, and twelve others
with over 5 per cent. and the tendency
still upward, it is time to cast around
and ascertain if consolidation viii not
bring us back to normal conditions.
1T is a fact that in some of the
municipalities of the county the tax
rate has approached to close to confis-
cation, with the burden of local assess
ments thrown in, that corporations
lending money on bond and mortgage
have shut down on them and that
others are on the ragged edge"
Prohibitive Tax Rate
Mr.. Sibbald went into an exhaustive
analysis of the conditions obtaining
in the 20 municipalities in the county,
showing how their activities overlap
ped, how each, at prohibitive tax
rate, or the approach thereto, was en-
deavoring to install metropolitan con-
veniences in order to attract the New
Yorker, and by that very act was re-
pelling him because of the high tax
rate and high assessments involved,
causing high rentals and high selling
prices.
you remember the time, not many
years ago, when a six room house
could be rented for S25 month. To-
day there are towns in the county
where the taxes alone, to say nothing
of street, sewer and sidewalk assess
NETS, amount to that much. How can
the New Yorker be expected to bite
on proposition of that kind?
Sewer Problems
Each municipality is contemplating
or attempting to work out sewer sys-
TEN of its own, inasmuch as it may not
pollute the potable or tidal waters.
Adjoining municipalities, which, in the
nature of things, must provide the site
of disposal plant, are vigorously OBJ
jecting. Plants are being installed at
the smallest possible cost which will
be obsolete and must be scrapped in a
few years. Given the city of Bergen,
and the answer is three trunk sewers
running north and south, with laterals
feelings into them, at probably one
quarter of the cost or less.
Overlapping educational systems.
each running on its own hook, and
many of them unduly costly and some
of them undoubtedly mediocre, are
costing, on the average, S165 of the
tax rate, which in much maligned
Hudson county, with its splendid sys-
tenn, the rate is half-S4 cents. The
average for the state is $1.04 and Ber-
gen has the third highest rate in the
state. A city government with one
board of education would straighten
out these costly kinks and give us bet
ter educational facilities for much less
money"
Officials Aplenty
The county. it was pointed out. has