Taxation Report by Wayland B. Waters

TEN YEARS OF TAXATION IN THE TOWN OF MENTOR
by Wayland B. Waters, Madison, Wisconsin, January, 1941

The Town of Mentor is one of the thirty-four in Clark County, the eighth largest County in Wisconsin. It is located in the West-central part of the state, on gently rolling land, is drained by the Chippewa and Wisconsin River systems, and it still has vestiges of its primeval timberland, with medium-sized pine and hardwood on the many ridges which are to be found where the border of the driftless area extends athwart the South-western townships. It was the timber which brought the first permanent settlements to this territory.

In 1836, French and Canadian trappers and fur traders had encamped along the Black River. They found most of the tribal Indian settlements disbanded, although groups of Chippewa and Winnebago braves still ranged the territory. In1837 their nations relinquished all claims to the Clark County region, but some continued to live in the County, as their descendants do today.

Four years later, the Mormons came to cut logs for their tabernacles, and stayed until they were called to migrate West in 1846.

In that year, while Wisconsin was yet a territory, most of Clark County was surveyed, from the Fourth Principle Meridian, which extends through Clark County. Mentor Township, Number 24, Range 4 West, was surveyed in 1853 by Edgar Sears, and in that year Clark County was organized. Settlements were soon increased.

The first school was founded in 1855, when women and children began to follow the men by ox team into the lumber camps. From 1860 until 1890, lumbering was the prime enterprise for the entire region. Mentor was organized as a town in 1866, comprising at the time, three Congressional Townships, Numbers 24, 25, and 26, Range 4 West. The village of Humbird was platted and laid out in 1869, as a shipping terminus for the mills to the North and East, and as a station of the stagecoach route from Sparta to the Twin Cities. In the ‘seventies, Carters Saw Mill was started in Mentor, and in the ‘eighties James Waters (my grandfather) set up a similar mill at Humbird. Much of the timber in the town was burned clear in the disastrous conflagrations of the ‘sixties and the north woods burned for six consecutive weeks in the summer of 1864. But logging and lumber sawing and shipping continued to dominate life in mentor, spurred for a time by the building boom in Chicago after the fire of 1871.

With the decline of the lumbering industry at the turn of the century, farming and dairying rose into prominence. Much of the good arable land in Mentor was taken by Swiss immigrants, who have developed a thriving countryside with characteristic diligence and thrift. A cheese factory and creamery, a canning company and a grain rolling mill were established at Humbird, and for a time a brewery was in operation. Humbird is still the only village in the Town, although it has remained unincorporated, and retains its status on the map mainly as a railway station and the seat of the high school. It is the trade and marketing center for the agricultural interests of the surrounding area, and is the site of the town hall. It was declining commercially since the World War.

The town officers are usually farmers or retired farmers, and are elected each April. They include the Town Board (Chairman and two Supervisors), Treasurer, Clerk, Assessor, Justice of the Peace, Constable, Pound-master, Weed Commissioner and health Officer. The annual Town Meeting is held at the same time as the April election of officers.

Until about 1875, Clark County finances were on an insecure basis. There was little actual cash in circulation, and most of that little was spent outside the County for supplies. For all claims against the county, county orders were issued, which circulated as the ordinary medium of exchange at varying discounts of 25 to 50 percent. Dealing in county orders became an established and sometimes profitable business, although the county would not accept them in payment for any but county taxes.

Central administration was also very ineffectual. Officers spent little time in the first Court House, and most business was transacted at their homes or places of business. Citizens wanting to examine the records did not trouble the officers, but went to the Court House and found what they were looking for. If the door had been locked, (though it seldom was), the windows were unfastened, and the books and record were found “strewn about promiscuously on tables, chairs, and floors.”

The first tax sale was held in April of 1857. Its roll of delinquent taxes listed 1,380 descriptions, and cost $250.80 to publish. The rolls of the next years sometimes had 3,000 and 4,000 descriptions, mostly of land tracts that had been logged and abandoned, or had been bought for speculation. Most of the tax certificates were unsalable and were held by the treasurers or clerk. The entire administration of taxation was ill-organized and unsatisfactory. The townships were fewer and larger, making assessment so burdensome that the township assessors made no returns at all in some years. Towns were receiving appropriations in tax certificates, and county orders were accepted at par in payment for tax certificates. The uncertain records permitted land that was not legally subject to taxation to be place on the assessment list, and to be certified and sold for unpaid taxes. Sometimes the same thing occurred with land upon which taxes had been paid, and for which receipts had been issued. Throughout the ‘sixties these abuses were very slowly rectified by sundry and repetitious measures, but many people were unjustifiably aggrieved or benefited by the faulty supervision of assessment, levy, and collection.

Thus in 1870, several suits were brought against the county for such irregularities. The case of Marsh and Others Vs., the Board of Supervisors of Clark County and Another, (42 Wisconsin, 502), appealed from A District Court judgment in favor of the defendants, to the State Supreme Court, affirmed:

Equity will restrain the issue of a deed upon a sale of land as for a delinquent tax, where there has been no valid assessment, without requiring other proof of injury to the plaintiff from the pretended tax.

Such court decisions introduced more order into the system, but it was not nearly adjusted until the introduction of county supervision in 1901, and the advent of more effectual state administration in 1911, which ended many more mal- and mis-practices. And the recent affidavit law has brought about a definite improvement in the delinquency situation.

The county has assumed $240,000 of unsalable over-cropped and marshy land, and has $2,000 in good farm land, worth 95¢ on the dollar. Tax delinquency runs to about $75,000 a year, but is cyclical rather than cumulative, and not a serious proportion of the $800,000 in annual tax receipts. The county has established a financial reserve sufficient to allow for the operation of the deferment under the affidavit law.

The Assessor for the Town of Mentor for the past six years has been William Aebersold, a local farmer and stock dealer. He is a native of Mentor, and is thoroughly acquainted with all land and other real property in the town. His appraisals are rated as excellent by the supervisor of Assessments. He finishes his assessment in forty to fifty days, is employed and paid by the day, and receives from $160.00 to $190.00 for his work. He is supervised from the District Headquarters at Sparta, which has twenty other Western Wisconsin counties, and he attends the Spring Assessors Meeting each year. It last met on April 6, 1940, in Clark County.

Graph # I in the appendix shows the profiles of the several assessment categories for the past decade in the Town of Mentor. The average downward tendency of valuation is quite apparent in all classifications, as well as the precipitous decline of aggregate or total valuation. The farming and country land, (shown in red on the graph), seems to be the most stable. The agricultural land is the biggest class, and is least subject to fluctuation. The cut-over country and the small residue of timberland have been too swampy and inaccessible to be worth much to begin with, and so had little value to lose. It is mostly contiguous with the Clark County Forest Crop Land, which has comprised much of the two easternmost and the northernmost ranges of sections, since its introduction under the present administration. The Town receives an annual income from the state for the Forest Crop Land. (cf. item June 19, 1939, treasurer’s account of receipts in the report of the Town Board of Audit, in the appendix); The Residential, Mercantile and Manufacturing property, (shown in blue), comprises but a minor part of the assessment, for Mentor is a rural, farming town. Personal Property, (shown in yellow), is also only of a minor status, being valued even under the cut-over and marsh land in the years of most extreme depression.

The entire general property tax base has never been actually assessed at over a million dollars, even in the affluent years of the late twenties. It’s ratio to the entire county has ranged between 2.277:100 in 1928, to 1.760:100 in 1940, and shows a consistent decrease between those dates, and indicates that the valuation of Mentor has been falling more rapidly than that of the county as a whole. The county itself, although one of the largest, is assessed at about $40,000,000, less than a hundredth part of the valuation of the state.

The Town Board of Review sits in June, upon completion of the assessment. It includes the Town Chairman, Supervisors, assessor and Clark. Recourse to this Board has not been frequent, and few alterations of assessment have been made.

Graph # II in the appendix shows the operation of equalization or central assessment during the decade, in the two constituent categories of the general property tax. Equalization of the assessment is done by a seven man Equalization Committee, one the twenty-two standing committees of the County Board.

The great disparity indicated in 1928 between the assessed valuations (solid lines) and the equalized values (dotted lines), was the resultant of two extra-ordinary circumstances. The equalization had tended to be high as a salutary precaution since 1923, when a notorious and suspicious underassessment instigated at re-assessment and consequent re-apportionment. And just previous to the commencement of this chart, the northern two townships, numbers 25 and 26, seceded and formed a new town, and the re-adjustments incident to its re-incorporation appeared in the assessment before the equalization. Most of the great disproportion was borne by real estate and land, (shown in red), although it was not absent from the personal property schedules, (shown in blue).

Since that most immemorial year, equalization has come tumbling down with the depression, and soon approximated the assessment figures. But in no year has the local assessment exceeded the central assessment. This might, and no doubt does, indicate a persistent under-assessment, although the property is scarce which would not fetch on the market a price compatible with its assessment valuation.

Graph # III of the appendix is an analysis of the town tax rolls for the past decade. Of first order of notice is the great drop – of better than fifty percent – in the aggregate tax roll between 1931 and 1933. Although part of a general decline, its prime components are the special assessment, (drainage) tax, (shown in yellow), the school taxes, (shown in green), the state property tax, which was not levied in these years, and therefore was a factor by its absence. The diminutions of the county and town taxes tended to accent the trend and make the drop more pronounced.

Of next interest is the drainage tax rise in 1931, when it exceeded every other tax in the town. It was decided in that year by the Town Board to drain and reclaim to cultivation many of the marshy land tracts in the Eastern and Northern sections. This was to be an ill-starred venture, however, for most of the land did not respond to the restorative treatment. The project was then abandoned, bringing a prompt and welcome reduction of taxes.

The county tax shown on the graph is a composition of the “County Taxes and County Special Charges” as shown on the County Clerk’s Apportionment of Taxes and Special Charges. The 1939 statement is annexed in the appendix. The County School Tax has been its biggest item. The Roads Tax was next in rank until it was superseded from 1933 to 1935, and 1939 and 1940, by the Mothers’ Pension and Poor Relief Categories. The old Age Pension, of about the same order, appears first as an item in 1935. Then follow: County Bridge Aid, County School Superintendent’s Expenses, and Soldiers and Sailors Relief. Until 1938, the sinking fund of the County Asylum at Owen was the item of second importance. The County Tax is payable on or before March 22.

The State Tax, since its reappearance in 1933, is a resultant of the “State Taxes and State Special Charges” shown on the same Apportionment tabulation. It includes a small general tax, a special charge for penal and charitable institutions, and school district loans. It is payable on or before the first Monday in March, and is of minor consideration in the entire structure.

The Town Tax has risen nearly back to normal since its nadir in 1933. A recently published report of the Town Board of Audit is included in the appendix to show the nature of the other receipts of the town, and the disbursements.

The Town of Mentor includes four school districts, as is diagrammed in the appendix on map # V. District Number 1 is a full district; the others are joint districts, which encroach into two other townships, both in another county. Joint districts Number 2 and 5 are to the West, with the Town of Cleveland; Joint District Number 3 to the south, with the Town of Alma. The mean valuation of the Districts for the decade is as follows:

Joint Districts 2 and 3 are valued at roughly ten percent, and Joint District 5 at seven percent of District 1.

Their comparative tax levies payable to the Town of Mentor are diagramed on graph # IV. The amounts from Numbers 2, 3, and 5 are inconsiderable in comparison with that from Number 1, as is indicated by the latter’s approximation of the total.

The rapid decline in the tax roll for Number 1 is accounted by the completion, in 1933, of the few last payments on a state trust fund loan, incurred in 1915 for the construction of the present brick grade appears missing words.

This investigation has confirmed my conviction that those who administer even the least units in our tax structure should be required to present minimum qualifications for candidacy to their offices. Alternatively by education, experience, or examination, they should make mandatory demonstrations of a certain basic competency for their work. The reports of the town clerks, with certain notable exceptions, are returned very incompletely and inaccurately filled, and cause inexcusable confusion and delay for county officers who must compile them, as well as working injustices on some of their taxpayers. Certainly the gross and deplorable sacrifice of efficiency at this point is carrying democracy to the point of anarchy.

County Clerk’s Apportionment of State and County Property Taxes, 1928 – 1940

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