OUR LOW TAX RATE.
Some facts about Buffalo’s tax rate are fitting at this time. In a carefully written article from the pen of the Hon. Charles F. Bishop, Mayor of Buffalo, and printed in the Sunday Express of April 3, 1892, the following facts are given:
“Property in Buffalo is assessed at much less than its real value, and its tax rate has for many years, for all purposes (State, County and City) except local improvements, averaged about two dollars per hundred on the assessment. At first thought this may seem high, but a careful examination of the reports of other cities shows that the rate elsewhere is generally much higher. In New York it is $1.95; in Chicago $5.00; in Brooklyn $2.57; in Cleveland it is $2.79; in Cincinnati $2.85. And this reasonable rate of taxation is not obtained by rapid increase of our bonded indebtedness except for acquiring valuable property for permanent use, or the extension of great public improvements.
“Indeed, so careful has the increase of indebtedness been guarded that now with an indebtedness of $11,464,531 the city is the owner of real estate valued, in 1890, at $7,804,267 and personal property valued at $6,828,765. Surely this statement shows a due regard for the tax-payers’ interests; and coupled with the fact that Buffalo maintains school facilities as good as those of any city, police and fire departments that for efficiency are unsurpassed, and furnishes a water supply that for purity and cheapness is unequaled, it presents a very well-grounded claim for municipal economy.
“The total of assessments annually shows a gratifying increase of wealth, and of necessity the expenses of the city must also increase with greater population to serve and more extended public improvements to maintain. I am sanguine, however, that in a few years the increase in values will create a noticeable decrease of tax rate.”