The Boom's Bill Comes Due: Chehalis County Taxpayers Foot the Cost

When the taxpayers discovered that they were paying over one hundred thousand dollars per annum to run this county they jumped pell mell upon the assessor and commissioners; but when they discovered that hundred thousand dollars they overlooked more than as much more which they are also paying. The facts are the people of this county are paying in one way or another more than two hundred thousand dollars of taxes this year. There is hardly a taxpayer but what is paying either a special school or road tax, and these added to the $127,722.23 county levy, $27,014 for state purposes, and the municipal taxes of the various towns of the county will run the total close up to a quarter of a million dollars.

Are the assessor and commissioners the only ones to blame? Nearly $25,000 of this is to pay interest on county and municipal indebtedness, incurred largely during the boom times by real estate speculators who went up and down with petitions for fool improvements whereby they might sell waste land at fabulous prices for town lots, and then by means of trivial technicalities evaded payment and saddled the debt on the community, and some of these men are today asking support from the community.

But that the taxpayers may be aided in their efforts, and may have a better idea as to what the assessor ought to do for his part in order to make our portion of the state tax more equitable as compared with other counties, we have reduced the apportionment of several of them, especially those adjacent or similar as to town population, to a per capita basis. While of course population does not form a basis for an accurate estimate of values, yet in ordinary communities in the same state it is a pretty fair basis.

The table is as follows: County Pop. State Tax Per Cap. Chehalis 9,797 $27,014 $2.75 Clarke 11,509 $18,432 $1.60 Jefferson 13,776 — $2.15 Klickitat 5,256 $5,311 $1.01 Lewis 13,942 $21,605 $1.54 Mason 3,536 $5,614 $1.56 Pacific 5,179 $8,624 $1.66 Thurston 16,178 $25,006 $1.99

Only in the counties of Walla Walla and Whitman does the per capita tax come anywhere near being as high as in this, being $2.77 in the former and $2.54 in the latter, but these are the old settled counties with the big farms. The total assessment for the state is $835,185; the population is about 400,000, making the per capita for the state $2.10. Assessor Bunn has stated that in his opinion the assessment could be reduced this year to nearly $6,000,000, which would correspond to the general average for the state. Then if the commissioners, school directors, road supervisors, and, last but not least, the legislature shall do equally as well we shall be able to cut our quarter of a million dollars taxes down nearly one-half.