Proposed Assessments

* In your May 25 article, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. President Joel Fox is quoted as saying that a property assessment to pay for increased police protection would be “illegal” on the purported ground that “you can’t make the nexus between property and police services.”

That is ridiculous. It is obvious that land values increase as police protection improves, and decrease as police protection diminishes.

Fox should read Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), which states: “Every improvement in the circumstances of society tends to raise the real rent of land, to increase the wealth of the landlord.”

DAVID F. O’BRIEN

Tustin

* Again, our City Council smirks at the San Fernando Valley.

These elected officials are trying to emulate God and call us downtown to City Hall to present our feelings on the proposed assessments.

I have to travel over 60 miles one way, pay very high parking fees and lose a day’s work to speak before City Council members who wish again to tap the people of Los Angeles for more monies. If we from the Valley do not show up, how much easier it would be to assess us again.

How much trouble would it be for these “public servants” to actually meet the people and hold hearings in the east and west Valley, and to hold these hearings at night?

All the City Council and mayor are doing is driving a larger and larger wedge between the Valley and the city.

GILBERT SMITH

Encino

* Does anyone remember: Prior to Prop. 13, our former assessor, Philip Watson, proposed a 2% cap on the real property tax rate and was just about run out of town by the politicians and bureaucrats. If they had bought into Watson’s idea, there would have been no Howard Jarvis, no Prop. 13 and little in the way of fiscal problems. It is about time we reevaluated the tax rate, and not have our leaders sneak around with new add-ons.

E. J. PARRISH

Los Angeles