The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1925-02-05
may take an entirely different posi-

Il
them.
We swell up with pride over the
good roads which have been built, and
entirely ignore the fact that the great
er part of the construction on the
trunk highways has been paid for
with county reimbursement bonds
and that we still owe for those bonds.
We adopted a constitutional amend
ment to tax automomlles Tor the pen-
Eft of the road fund at an average
rate of S18, per car, and we nave MOI
even kept the contract with ourselves,
hut have kept reducing that tax until
it is now but little over Sl5 car.
We are paying less taxes on our
cars than if they were taxed as per-
sonal property. La -
We have the lowest automobile tax
in the country.
We adopted another constitutional
amendment to tax gasoline tor tne
benefit of the road fund, well know
mo that foreign cars would pay a con-
siderable share of that tax, and now
we want to further reduce the auto
tax.
Yet we kick on the dirt roads that
are not gravelled, we kick on the
"washboard" gravel roads that ought
to be paved.
We continue to buy cars, and pay
for them because we have toy but
want someone else to pay for the
roads that these cars wear out.
We kid ourselves into the notion
that the automobile tax is building
and maintaining the trunk highway
system, when as matter of fact, a
large share of that expense has been
met by issuing bonds, plus the fed
eral aid Now we want the tourist
to contribute through the gas tax
Always we want someone else to dc
the paying.
Some $33, 100000 of county bonds
have gone into the building of the
trunk highways, and the pinch that
is coming in road money is because
no more county bonds are to be is
sued, and the county bond sinking
fund, is beginning to take all the road
money after maintenance is taken
care of.
It's time we started buying roads
instead of just borrowing them.
"Buying' roads means paying some
real honest-to-gosh automobile tax
es to pay for the same.
But it is a misnomer to call an
automobile license tax. In any prop
er sense, it should be considered as
part of the purchase price OF an au-
tomobile. The road under car is
lust as necessary as the car itself or
the gasoline and oil.
The present law contemplates that
not a cent will be spent on trunk
highways except the money that the
automobiles spend. Not cent is
charged to the revenue fund of the
state, and if faith is kept, never will
be.
Putting it another way, our trans
portation plant consists of roads, mo-
tor vehicles and gasoline. We tax
the cars and the gas of theindlvldual
drivers to keep up the roads that are
used in common.
Every man can determine the
amount of tax that he shall pay Tor
himself. If he owns no car, he pays
not one penny. If he elects to buy a
cheap car, he knows beforehand that
the tax will cost him one dollar a
motnhs (and certainly that is little
enough.) If he elects to buy big
ger car, he can name his own tax
by the size of the car he chooses to
buy.
When the gasoline tax is levied, ne
can pay just as much or just as ut
tie tax as he pleases. If he drives
only 100 miles, his tax will be ten
or fifteen cents, if he drives 1O,OOO
miles, his tax will be one hundred
times as much.
A consideration of these funda-
mentals should clarity the mooted
questions regarding auto taxes and
road bonds. Since all road revenue
is going to come from the automo..
biles, why should the automobiles OF
today be allowed to wear out the
roads faster than they are supplying
funds to build roads?
The youngest child living today will
never see the trunk highway system
completed. Long before the last mile
is constructed many other miles will
have been reconstructed, and all the
while maintenance will have to be
provided for. Where 100000 auto
mobiles are now wearing out the
roads, a round million will be ham,
mering away on them in just a few
years, and long stretches of road will
be going to pieces under the heavy
traffic. When all is said there isn't
any road but reinforced concrete and
no one can tell how long that is going
to last.
( What, then, is a just automobile
and gasoline tax? Theoretically, it
should be an amount sufficient to
pay maintenance, plus construction
fund, plus depreciation, plus, obso-
lesence, plus margin of safety.
Twenty-Five years from now, the
total of these items could be figured
out to a nicely. Today we can only
take a rough guess at it. We have
been poor guesses and the result is
that today we are $33, 000,0OO in the
hole. To bond for $40, 600, 900 more
would be like taking dope, in the
present state of the public conscience
on this matter. To rebond to avoid
stopping of all work may be debat-
able, but not as pernicious as addi-
tional bonding.
But bonding is not the real ques-
ton. 1t makes little difference wheth-
err road construction halts now or two
years from now or five years from
now, because halt it is going to until