$85,000 For City Purposes Besides Paving Expenditures
Did you ever stop to consider how much money was spent by the city of Ann Arbor last year?
The present administration say they have no money. Perhaps it would be well to know how much money they had to spend during the last year.
That is easily told and the figures cannot be disputed. Here are the figures of the amount received:
Tax levy for city funds ..... $50,000 00
Bridge, crosswalk and culvert fund ..... 18,000 00
Main sewer bond and interest ..... 2,700 00
Lateral sewer bonds and interest ..... 2,750 00
Total tax levy of last June ..... $73,450 00
Other city receipts ..... 11,553 85
Total city receipts ..... $85,003 85
All received and expended in one year, only $5,450 used to pay up bonded indebtedness and nothing expended on new pavements, for besides this vast sum of $85,003.85, money was received from the sale of bonds for paving purposes amounting to $38,000.00 and expended on the State and Ann street paving. In other words, the city has had $123,003.85 to expend during the past year and this does not include the school, county or state tax raised in the city.
It is not many years since the school tax far exceeded the city tax. But the city tax is far in excess now of the school tax. This should go a long ways towards disposing of the talk that this vast expenditure is justifiable because the city is so much larger than it used to be. If the argument was good, shouldn't the school expenditures have kept equal pace with the city expenditures?
The Argus has placed before itself the task of aiding in freeing Ann Arbor from all floating indebtedness, so that for no month next year will there be an overdraft, white labor will be paid what it justly earns and paid promptly and public improvements will be carried on. This can be done without increasing the tax over last year and without bonding the city for any more money.
Hence the Argus appeals to the democratic city convention tonight to place in nomination a man equipped to do this, for as it believes it can be done, it also believes that it will be the task of a democratic mayor to do it, if only the convention nominates a man whom the people will believe capable and willing to take upon himself this task.
The taxpayers are burdened sufficiently. It should now be the task of the city officials to put the city into good financial condition, without further increasing the burdens of taxation, present or future, and without stopping improvements.
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Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat