ON UNIMPROVED VALUE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 71, 21 September 1933, Page 6

ON UNIMPROVED VALUE

ANOMALIES CREATED

One big drawback to the system, of rating on the unimproved value basis is that it gave the control1 of spending to the people who even in the aggregate owned the smallest stake in the community, said Mr. H. H. Miller at the annual meeting of tlie Wellington Ratepayers' Association, last . night; Moreover, many of .the owners of big city blocks were apathetic because even the* high rates they now paid would be less than, if 'their properties were rated upon tho "annual value," but hundreds of home owners and shop property owners who occupied their ownpremises in the city or its immediate environs were paying • top heavily for tho services they obtained.

To his mind rating exclusively on the unimproved value system created niany anomalies in a city that was highly developed. The voting'power was un-, fairly distributed, and the people who used the services most often paid an inadequate return in rates as compared with others who had the same area of land but not* so much drainage; etc. It was a moot point whether the water and drainage rate should not be levied on sonio other basis than that of unimproved land values. Owners of large city blocks and those" who possessed the ■larger surburban' homes would take Si greater interest in civic affairs if they had to pay to a greater extent than they did now towards the mistakes , and extravagances of civic administration.