Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1891 — Jasper and Newton Comities Assessments. [ARTICLE]

Jasper and Newton Comities Assessments.

The Kentland Enterprise is much dissntified with tße assessments as fixed by the State Board. Newton county was reduced 5 per cent, and Jasper county increased 10 pier cent, but still the Enterprise is not happy. county is now assessed very much too high but that Benton and Jasper are comparatively too low. It says: “It does not look reasonable that Jasper cour.ty with 100.000 acres more land lhan Newton and 2382 more population should have a gross assesment of a half million dollars less than Newton county. As returned by the county Board, Newton was $900,000 ahead of Jasper, and after the correction of the state Board is still over $500,000 ahead of Jasper in total valuation. This result was brought about by a general disregard of the principles of the tax law, and was confirmed by the State Board, acting on the well pressed plea of poverty and a worthless soil.* Whatever merit there may or may not be in our disgruntled contemporary’s claim that it is not reasonable that Jasper county’s total assessment should now be lower than that of Newton county, the assertion that the State Board was influenced by “the well pressed plea of poverty and a worthless soil” is incorrect, for the original proposition of the Board, before any “pleas” of any kind had been made, was to increase the as* sessment 10 per cent., and this in tention they carried out, regardless of whatever was urged against it. Furthermore, we think that our Newton County friends Should see that the trouble is not that Jasper County is assessed too low- but that Newton County is too high. Sure it is that Jasper County land is assessed twice as high as it was last year, and there are in fact, thousands and thousands of acres in this county which the owners thereof would gladly sell for the amount per acre at which it is assessed. One man well posted in Jasper County real-estate values, offers several hundred acres of his own land at the assessed value and agrees to find ten thousand acres more, that its owners will sell on the same basis.