A South End Street Would Cost More Than Everything on It Is Worth
Residents of the Sixth Addition want South L Street graded. The city engineer says bridging the Northern Pacific tracks would run $30,000 past the value of the abutting property.
Some time ago the residents of the Sixth addition started a movement to have South L street between South Forty-eighth and Center streets graded, and a petition signed by Joseph Ziegran was presented to the council to this effect. Today City Engineer Davis, in a communication to the commissioner of public works, states that the cost of grading this street would exceed the assessed valuation of the abutting property by $30,000. The cost is made excessively heavy owing to the fact that a large bridge would have to be built over the Northern Pacific tracks in the gulch and a deep cut made.
“The cost of grading this street would exceed the assessed valuation of the abutting property by $30,000.”
Then as now the fight was never about whether a street needed building — it was about who pays, and whether the property along it could carry the bill. Tacoma still does this arithmetic every time a road must cross a rail corridor, and abutting owners still show up at council meetings with petitions.
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