| Show THE SCHOOL TAX REVERSAL notwithstanding that judge anderson prepared a somewhat elaborate opinion to justify the injustice which under his decision would have been inflicted upon a great many taxpayers in this city the persons aggrieved in the several districts who joined in the organized movements which were made to resist the collection of opples sive taxes were not converted by its reasoning the result obtained in the territorial supreme court last saturday in the shape of a reversal of judge A s decision amply repays the effort and 40 expense of taking the appeal the opinion was rendered by judge blackburn in the case cam appealed by the taxpayers tax papers of the old eleventh district but it was made to cover the cum cases of the seventh and fifteenth districts although each of the three involved questions of law and fact peculiar to itself they all embraced the two principles upon which the decision turns namely the injustice of extending the tax on the roll ot of 1890 on which boom valuations appeared instead of the roll of 1889 which the taxpayers had in mind when they voted the tax and the further injustice of compelling one district to pay into a common fund a much larger sum in proportion to the value of its property than another the estimate of the sum to be raised was made in 1889 upon the valuations of that year and the levy was ordered in that year and it is obvious that the intention of the taxpayers was to place a burden upon themselves correspond lug to the needs and valuations of that year hence the decision says they wanted and they 1 intended n to levy that amount and th oy voted a levy of one per cent because computed on the assessment roll of 1889 that would raise the amount needed they had bad not in mind the assessment boll roll or of 1890 if that intention can be carried out by a reasonable construction of the statute authorizing the levy without doing violence to its wording we think it to be done this language states the common sense equities of the ease case and as it is the function of equity to so bend the law thata that justice instead of its opposite willbe will be meted out the position taken by the court in the above quotation and in its final conclusion is justifiable under the rules of equity practice suppose that at the meeting of taxpayers at which the levy was ordered a resolution had been adopted directing that the levy be made on the valuations of 1889 would such action have been invalid the law gave to the taxpayers of a school district the right to fix the extent of their own burdens to designate the amount they desired and intended to devote to school purposes and it would have been nothing more than the exercise of this right had such a resolution been adopted true this was not done in form but it was in essence the sum to be raised was stated and that sum meant a given percentage of the valuations of 1889 and there is no more doubt as to the meaning of the taxpayers than would have existed had bad they passed such a resolution it does not follow from this decision that the wheels of the public school system mastbe stopped for a year or that a year must be skipped 10 without a tax levy giving to the decision its most moet rigid application it will merely require a tax to be on the valuations atlow of the year in which it is ia levied but the collection may be made as heretofore in the succeeding year ff 11 under the school law as it now stands such a case came as aa those affected by this deci decision siou could arise on only when the taxpayers of a district decide to raise funds to purchase a school site or improve the same fame or to purchase build rent repair or furnish school houses in future taxes so ordered must be collected on the valuations of the year in which the levy was made instead of those 0 of f the succeeding year this to is the only change from that which has prevailed heretofore and it is difficult how it can work injustice to any one or any injury to the schools if we considered it true that this decision deprived the public schools of revenue to which they were entitled or which the taxpayers had intended should be given them we would object to it with an emphasis proportioned to the degree in which it did so from the above it does not follow that we endorse the reasoning of the court by which it is made to appear that the legislature may have intended that special taxes should be extended on the roll of the year in which they were levied we do think however that the circumstances connected with these cases were such as to authorize a courton court of equity to order that the collection be made on the valuations ot of 1889 instead of 1890 and like justice miner our views are in accord with the result without necessarily sustaining the entire proem process of reasoning by which it was reached in our view the conclusion of the court has sufficient support on the single grou ground nd that the tax ought not to have been collected because it was not equal in burdens and benefits and was therefore of the fundamental I 1 rule upon which the validity of all tax laws depends |
