Fitzgerald Enterprise

Excessive Tax Assessments

There is an issue between the City Council and the city Tax Assessors as to the rights of each in the matter of assessments of property for city taxes, but that is not the main issue.

The main issue is between the taxpayers and the officers who collect and disburse the taxes.

The tax assessments are too high; they have been too high for several years, and the time has come to call a halt.

It matters little what becomes of the injunction proceedings, so far as the final results are concerned, the taxpayers will not submit to outrageous taxation.

We care but little about the questions of authority that have arisen between the council and the assessors, we protest here in the name of people who have been tax-ridden too long, against the unreasonable valuations put on property.

The question of unequal valuations is one that appeals to every just mind, and it is of the highest importance that the burden should not bear unevenly on any taxpayer, but the real question is beyond that- excessive valuations for tax purposes is a crime.

The climax has been reached and we believe that Fitzgerald is faced the other way, and that out of the present wrangle will come a sane adjustment of equal valuations and reasonable valuations.

The claim that we must have so much tax money is not a sufficient answer to the protest against excessive taxation. The charter limits the rate to one per cent., as it does in most well-governed cities, and ought in every American community, and the city government should bring the expenditures down to that limit -one per cent. on reasonable tax valuations.

But they tell us the expensive city pay roll can not be limited under the charter.

Don't believe that, dear reader. that is the subterfuge of the man who either wants to protect some particular graft or wants to bring the charter into disfavor.

However defective the charter may be, the men who, without a shadow of law, created offices and paid out salaries month after month and year after year would not, if they were so disposed, hesitate to leave vacant some office that is provided for under the charter. Men who pay out the people's money without the warrant of law, could, if they would, take the chances on saving the people's money by simply failing to fill an office and pay a salary that is not necessary, but for which the charter provides.

The cry they raise against the new charter is a vain effort to shift the responsibility for mismanagement.