City Council Loses Tax Assessment Battle
A blunder by city officials leads to a court dismissal of tax collection suits, forcing the city to start the assessment process from scratch.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On the three assessment cases of the city against Pearson, Johnson and Finch, the city attorney reported the Superior Court had non-suited the city in all the cases. The facts are the city had no basis upon which to rest its case, as the assessments were not properly made, the records were faulty, and no notice given. These were test cases, and the city can now make a new assessment and collect these taxes. Upon motion of Hood, the city attorney was instructed to prepare an ordinance for the re-assessing of Heron street from Alder to Washington streets.
“The facts are the city had no basis upon which to rest its case, as the assessments were not properly made, the records were faulty, and no notice given.”
Bureaucratic mismanagement of property assessments and the subsequent legal struggles to re-collect funds remain a foundational, if tedious, aspect of local city hall governance in Aberdeen.
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