New York Daily Tribune

Collection of Taxes.

To the Editor of the Tribune:

Mr. Elyer: On looking over the published proceedings of the Board of Assistant Aldermen of Thursday evening, I regretted seeing the passage of a Resolution appointing a Committee to inquire into the expediency of abolishing the Ward Collectors, and appointing a City Collector and Deputies in their places. What necessity there exists for such a change I don't know: but it seems to me an unsafe plan. Now the taxes are collected with facility, and the accounts settled by the Collectors without any loss to tax payers. If the Collector's office be abolished, and the citizens be compelled to pay at the Hall, it will be troublesome and inconvenient, and one Clerk for each Ward must certainly be appointed. The citizens of each Ward, in electing their own Collectors, have especial regard to his honesty, knowing that if he proves a defaulter the loss falls on them, and not on the city, and this accounts for the fact that while Collectors of city revenue, unpaid taxes, &c., like your Lloyds and Stevensons, have proven defaulters to a large amount, Ward Collectors have uniformly attended to their duties honestly. As to its being any saving to the city, I cannot see how. You abolish one office in each Ward, and then appoint a general Collector with one Deputy from each Ward, who hold their places just as long as a partisan Common Council think proper. Besides this, you make us, tax payers, go down to the Hall to pay our taxes, whereas we now can in a few minutes' wait upon our Ward Collector at his residence, or he calls on us, and the matter is settled. If the Common Council wish to economise, there are many ways in which they can safely do it without tinkering with the tax law, to the injury and inconvenience of every
TAX PAYER.