Minutes 03/14/1933 - Laserfiche WebLink

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.I work of the Oolleotor's office. The Manager is not, having been associated in an official capacity for so short a time end having visited the office during its rush tax period on only a few occasions. He has no idea the volume of mail that pours in.- It would be impossible to post it all on Nov. 30th. ]~any people take the last day to mail a check. Why shouldn't they? The law gives them that right. Ne receive much mail from out of town. Many eheck~ arrive af- ter Dec. 1st, of course without the penalty. Should I return these because they did not reach me before Dec. lst? Mailed on time, yet received after the date prescribed by law. Ny judg- ment told me to take the check and send the man his.~eceipt. Now then, that involves another group. Should the out of town man who uses the mails receive more consideration than the home-owning citizen of our .own community? I thought not, and ac as long as I honored checks by mail for the first few days in December I always extended equal courtesy to Portsmouth local tax payers. And I confess to you that if a local man came into the office and gave me what seemed to me a logical, good reason why he had not been in during November, maybe the money that he was waz~no for did not come in when he ex- pected it, maybe he borrowed e~ud had not been able to get it before. I have even had them to come and tell me that illness had prevented their prompt payment. Reasons too n~uerous to mention, s~ad which to you, who are al~ men of good sound business judgement, would be tiring to enumerate. No citizen of Portsmouth can truthfully say that he ever o~me to me at any time, whether his account was large or small, whether he was black or white, my friend .or otherwise, that he did not at all times find me anxious to cooperate with hLm, but always upholding the best interests of the Oityo If~he came with a good reason for penalty relief, I do not deny that Mr. ~xterson can show you the stub Which does not bear the extra cost. Keeping records of tax assessments, transfers, etc. is no small job. Sometimes errors of that kind held up a man's payment even when on some occasions he had tried to set- tle his account. There have been .times when it has been brought to my atten~on by the taxpayer that because of some q~zestion in his title or questions of similar character, in other words fc~ reasons beyond his control. I confess to you that I habe accepted payments even months later without the additional costs. Never at any time, Have I picked those whom I thus considered, those tickets speak for themselves. I have simply tried to work with a tax-paying pnblio, that part of it who were con- scientiously striving to pay their bills. If this consideration of Portsmouth 0itizens, rich and poor, large and small, black and whi~e, be the crLme of which 0ity Eanager H.B. Anderson accuses me, then I am here .to plead guilty. Aud now we come to another g~oup. The .1..argot taxpayer. It is needless for me to try to tell you business conditions. You know them as well as I. Tou know that unusual con- ditions exist all over the country. Nt~merous cities have s.een fit to Zi£t their penalties entirely for certain periods. Norfolk, as you know; anything to work with their people ~nd at the same time bring money into the common treasury. Ask any Portsmouth larger taxpayer, I could name them for you, how many of them are permitting tenants to live in their property, never even hoping to get their rent, simply to keep the property from going to pieces. Inquire how many pieces of vacant property, lying ab- solutely dead, a liability on its owners' hands. Some of these owners are merchants. Ooupled with property which has not been revenue-producing for several years there is the fact that business has seen a slnmp. These men of whom I speak, are all good taxpayers. They dread the thought of their taxes going delinquent. I 'defy. Er. Anderson to pick a name from among that list that is not a good taxpaying citizen of Portsmouth. It is true that when these men gave me their checks they were usually drawn on funds they hoped to collect. The greatest number of them were given be- fore Nov. 3Oth and held by me until the dates on Mr. Anderson' s stu-os. And I can truthfully say that I have never losZ~ a single check thus given me in faith, and I sincerely believe that many delinquencies have been avoided that would otherwise have occurred. I can very readily see why this side of Portsmouth's problems would not be realis- tic to our Oity Manager. From what I can tu%derstand he has never been in our Oity's business life, knows nothing of the problems of her merchants and of course does not realize the bu~- dens of a Portsmouth real estate o~ner, s,~inoe he is not one himself. But again I repeat~, that if tryi%ng to work with the large, already overburdened real estate owner, if tr. ying.to help him kee~p up his standard of a paid-up tax account in these strenuous times, zf thzs be the crime ef which I am accused, then again, I am guilty: Again, the Oity Manager alleges that he could not go further in his seeroh regard- ing penalties because the records and duplicate tax receipts had been burned '. So misleading was this statement that even one of the Oouncilmen to whom the Manager was making his report is quoted by the Portsmouth Star as saying, "If I lost my receipt and the office receipt was burned I could be made to pay my bill again." May I assure you members of Portsmouth city council as well as you taxpaying citi- zens that no such vital records have been bun~ed '. That there still remains, or did remain when I left on Jan. 31st, permanent, stamped land books, records of you~ taxes paid. That-you need~ have no fear of ever being called upon to pay again any tax ticket bearing a paid stamp of ~na E. Hutcheson: - What Mr. ~nderson was reporting to you and what he was not so careful to explain, was that in his recent audit of my accounts, made after I was out and after my successor had been in charge of the office for about three weeks, what the Oity Manager was reporting was that he did not find the office copy of stubs for the years preceding Jan. 1st, 1932. That is true. What he did not report that he did find was a land book from the Oommi~sioner of the Revenue carryihg name~ location, value and tax of.all real estate and a corresponding per- sonal property book, embracing my total charge of levy. What he did not report was that each piece of property paid is stamoed accordingly, with the date paid. What he did not report was that my daily collections of p~nalty, interest and advertising are made on form o--~--daily port, one to treasurer, with bank deposit slip, one remains in Ool!eotor's office and one ac- companied by deposit slip is filed and I am sure still remains in the &uditor's Office, care- preserved, just as are the 0ollector's records.