The City’s Legal Train Wreck
A ruling against Tacoma’s property tax scheme for street improvements threatens to bankrupt local progress, leaving the city in a legislative stalemate.
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.
Two years ago, when they began improving the streets of Tacoma, it was announced with a great flourish that the work was to be done on this plan: the cost of what was done in front of each piece of property would be paid wholly by that property. We were glowingly and repeatedly assured in the Ledger that it was so much better than the Seattle method. They were told at the time their method was wrong, that it had been tried here, and declared in the District and Supreme Courts illegal. It was continued for two years, and until the other day, when the question coming up, the Council asked the opinion of its Attorney. City Attorney O. Campbell submitted a scathing opinion, stating that the mode adopted by the city is neither uniform nor in accordance with the value of the property. The court held that the ordinance of the city making the cost of the grade in front of each lot a charge upon such lot is wholly inconsistent with the provisions of the Revised Statutes and is therefore void. So long as this decision continues to be the law of the Territory, the collection of assessments for street and sidewalk improvements made under the provisions of our city charter cannot, in my opinion, be enforced.
“The mode adopted by the city is neither uniform nor in accordance with the value... such a basis is unequal and unjust.”
The struggle over how to fund municipal infrastructure—and the tension between property owners and the city's growth machine—was as volatile in 1885 as it is in modern Seattle. This report highlights the persistent fragility of local government planning when confronted with judicial reality and tax-payer resistance.
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