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Show Letters To The Editor WRITTEN BY WILLIAM HURST. In scanning over the report of W. T. Reid, accountant, as copied in your last issue from the Salt Lake Tribune, which is a brief report of his audit of the accounts of the Beaver County officers for the years 1928, 1929 and 1930, he seems to find some irregularities in the bookkeeping book-keeping methods that resulted in a shortage being shown in the office of the County Treasurer, but does not state in which of the several funds this occurred. j It seems to me that the purpose of an audit is to submit an expose of the books, so that in case irregularities irregu-larities are found that remedies can be provided therefor. But in this case he had a happy way of reconciling recon-ciling the discrepancies by taking an overplus from one fund and crediting credit-ing it to the other fund, but still leaving an overplus which he placed into the discard (the general fund.) He calls attention to the receipts of the various offices for the past three years which show clerk's fees $2,856.43, recorder's fees $4,405.- (Continued on back page) LETTER TO THE EDITOR WRTTEN BY WM. HURST (Continued from page one) 67, sheriff's fees $595.51, and treasurer's treas-urer's fees of $770.50. Commenting thereon he says: "That it is unusual for the recorder's record-er's fees to exceed the fees of the clerk," but also says that this is not Impossible. Just why he so far digressed to make this comment is not plain to me as a casual reader, unless he desires de-sires to Imply at the least that the clerk during the years 1928, 1929 and 1930 had either not turned In all of the fees collected In his office or had failed to do a lot of rustling. It Is a well known fact to all persons familiar with the county business that all the fees in such offices are obtained from filings made, and consequently con-sequently it follows if there are not many filings made in either office, there can not be a great amount of returns to be made to the county treasurer. It is also well known that since 1917 there has not been much business transacted in the District Court, while in the County Recorder's office the little mining flourries from time to time have augmented the receipts of this office, of-fice, and were it not for the mining business of filing locations there would not be much doing in the way of collecting fees. My Idea in this writing is to impress im-press the fact that the County officers offi-cers have not the power to control the receipts of their offices since they have nothing to sell, but only to be there according to the provisions provis-ions of our laws to care for the public pub-lic business as it is presented to them. As to his comment on the Tax Qeed business, it is. admitted that this line of work has been sadly neglected neg-lected in the1 past, but all the blame is not to be placed on the poor county coun-ty clerk alone, since he was only one spoke in the county wheel, and whatever discrepancies he found in this line were charageable not alone to the clerk but to the treasurer, clerk and county commissioners, since the county commissioners being be-ing appointed aa the supervisors of all the county officers should see to It that they all do up their business. The writer was called in a few years ago to assist in straightening up the tax deeds matter, when It was found that since the year 1903 the county had failed to report the unredeemed tax Bales and have the delinquent property deeded to the county as required by law, and then In May of the following year, following follow-ing the expiration of the redemption period of four years after sale, put up the- property for sale at public auction. My contention then being that in such cases where the county had failed to exercise Its legal remedy reme-dy as provided by law, that its lien had lapsed by limitation and any deeds that might be issued after the proper time would have been void, and easily and successfully attacked attack-ed and set aside by the record owner own-er of the property so conveyed. In closing it is at least discern-able discern-able from the report that the Beaver County officers had not followed the example set by the State, County and City officials in Salt Lake City as has been revealed by audits and the criminal proceedings following. |