Tips For Tax-Payers

New York, 1895

STRIKING THINGS GLEANED FROM THE SUPERVISORS' AUDIT.

Some Comparative Figures That Show Why Taxes are on the Increase — The Poorhouse vs. The County Jail — A Specimen of Extortion.

We direct the attention of tax-payers to some striking things that appear in the annual audit of the board of Supervisors.

The victuals served to 961 town and county paupers at Barnum Island for one year cost $5,587.03.

For the victuals served to the prisoners in the county jail for one year the county paid the Sheriff $29,153.13, a difference of $23,565.50.

The shoes, leather and findings supplied to the paupers at Barnum Island cost $829.76.

The shoes provided for the prisoners in the county jail cost $1,125.

The total sum expended for the support of the paupers at Barnum Island, for their clothing and shoes, and for salaries of officers, live stock, fertilizers and seeds, in fact, everything, was $18,789.43.

For the more bread and meat supplied to the prisoners in the county jail the county paid the Sheriff $29,153.13 — being $10,363.70 more than the total cost of the town and county poor.

It is no wonder the tax-payers are kicking.

It costs 85 cents a week to keep a prisoner. The county is paying $3 per week.

The number of prisoners in jail now are costing the county $1,140 a week. That is at the rate of $59,280 for the year.

Tax-payers cannot be blamed if they contemplate this with a shudder.

Long Island City's bonded debt is $2,767,000.

The bonded debt of the village of Flushing is $380,000.

Seeds, manure and fertilizers for the farm at Barnum Island cost $946.15. The produce sold from the farm fetched $1,529.21.

The superintendents expended more money for family relief in Jamaica than in any other town.

Even Long Island City, with its 35,000 population, falls behind Jamaica $538.

It cost over $2,000 last year for the services of jurors at coroners' inquests.

The stationery for District Attorney Noble's office last year cost the people more than for four years of District Attorney Fleming's term.

Mr. Noble's New York printer is charging the county 200 per cent more than the printers who did Mr. Fleming's work charged. The Supervisors should sit down very hard on this extortion.

It cost $23,953.05 to carry on the circuit and county courts last year.

The salaries paid out for the year amount to $29,550.

The "county detective" sinecure cost the county $2,274.71, instead of $1,800, as stated last week.

There is in the treasury to the credit of the macadam road commissioners of Jamaica the sum of $25,447.61.


For a New School Building

By an almost unanimous vote at a special school meeting Monday night, the people of Valley stream decided to erect a new public school building at a cost of $10,000. The building will be a frame structure.


As Everybody Sees It

The Island, Senator Childs' newspaper, says: "It is a gross outrage upon the tax-payers that an army of tramps are maintained in quite or nearly absolute idleness at our county jail at the expense of the public."

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 22, 1895, p. 1.