The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190Riggs, Henry Earle
General
The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190
The 1900 appraisal averages show country land after fixed charges
and percentages are added.
The tables given herewith are summarized from a very large mass of
information introduced as evidence in a suit of Michigan Central
Railroad _et al._ _vs._ Powers (The Michigan Tax Cases), and are
selected as average examples of conditions throughout the Southern
Peninsula.
It is evident from the figures in Table 2 that no such naked land values
as those used in 1900 were considered by the farmers in placing values
on their lands, as the sales covered in that table do not involve any
large element of damages. All transfers are of a strip a rod or more in
width adjoining an existing right of way.
_II._—It is true that in some sections of Michigan there are large
tracts of barren or low-priced land. In 1900 barren land prices were
used, and were much lower than farm land; in the poorer parts of the
State large percentages of barren land were used. This fact brought the
average per acre of country land, as applied in the appraisal, very low
in many of the counties, and justified the appraiser in using the
average country price of 1900 as the base price for a re-valuation.
Generally, the 1900 appraisal averages for country lands were fair
indices of the difference in actual value in different parts of the
State.
In the 1900 appraisal, the Michigan Central was credited with having, in
Jackson County, 309.1 acres of farm land (naked value, $38, average rate
$93.30), and 34.35 acres of barren land at $5 per acre. The field
inspectors reported that part of the district between Parma and Albion,
in the vicinity of Bath Mills, was waste or barren land. The Jackson and
Battle Creek Traction Company parallels and adjoins the Michigan Central
Railroad right of way from Parma to Bath Mills. An investigation of
records of deeds showed that they bought 25.02 acres of land in this
district at $65.79 per acre, and that the average price of all their
land in the county was $239.52 per acre.
While there was a marked difference in the rates of different grades of
country land, no one would be justified in putting any land south of a
line drawn from Saginaw to Muskegon at prices as low as $2 to $10 per
acre. An average based on the 1900 classification of lands would
probably eliminate all waste land classifications, without doing any
injustice.
TABLE 3.—AVERAGE VALUES PER ACRE OF COUNTRY LANDS, OF THE 1900
APPRAISAL, OF THE JACKSON, LANSING AND SAGINAW RAILROAD, AFTER
ALL THE PERCENTAGES AND FIXED CHARGES WERE ADDED.
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