156 STATION BULLETIN 346 



APPENDIX 11 



SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 



1. Although the state law requires that all taxable property 

 shall be appraised at its full and true value, assessors generally fail 

 to comply with these regulations. Errors in assessment are known 

 to exist between properties of a single class as well a? between proper- 

 ties of different classes. These errors are evidences of common 

 tendencies among tax assessors. For instance, there is the tendency 

 of assessing poor land for top much and good land for too little, and 

 then there is a tendency toward fixed values, a tendency popularly re- 

 ferred to as "copying the assessment rolls." This whole problem of 

 assessment and equalization merits investigation and subsequent pub- 

 licity. 



2. The largest single community expense is for public schools. 

 The variations in expenditures of rural school districts, including state 

 aid money, should be analyzed and related to the quality and effec- 

 tiveness of the services rendered. Transportation costs need examin- 

 ing and standard formulas established for computmg normal costs 

 and for making fair contracts. An investigation of ihe fiscal problems 

 of public schools surely should be suj^plemented by numerous case 

 studies of the potential issues that would be involved as a result of 

 combining schools and of organizing joint districts. 



3. Highway maintenance is the largest single expense of the 

 town and warrants the attention of the investigator of local govern- 

 ment. Such an investigator must seek the cooperation of the state 

 department and must assemble and summarize the existing data, in- 

 cluding particularly land-use studies and the highway planning sur- 

 vey conducted by the State Highway Department in cooperation with 

 the Public Roads Administration. The project should be sufficiently 

 comprehensive to embody related long-time social and economic prob- 

 lems as well as those of a purely fiscal sort. It should examine the 

 feasibility of organizing voluntary highway districts, involving sev- 

 eral towns in some instances, whereby the wealthier towns might 

 make more efficient use of their equipment and the poorer towns 

 might enjoy better roads without excessive costs. 



4. The administrative arrangements concerned with public wel- 

 fare are of such a nature that, for a unit of study, research in this field 

 might well embrace a single county and all the towns within its 

 borders. A direct survey is essential in order that the investigator 

 might contact numerous officials of the governmental units involved. 

 Variance in the local practices and attitudes of officials is an inijiortant 

 phase of the social and economic problems implicated. Case studies 

 of selected towns should supplement the more general survey in order 

 to augment the points in question. 



5. It is a generally accepted theory that as population moves 

 out of a rural area, the costs of public services become more burden- 

 some on those who remain. Taxable wealth per capita is, commonly. 



