Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/71

 prosperous times, to purchase their lands at or near the top prices. Many such land owners will continue to pay taxes on their little holdings for many years and will decline to sell them at the prevailing market price if it does not show a profit above the cost of the land. If there should prove to be only a moderate number of such cases, the usual procedure of condemnation might reasonably be followed, leaving the juries to determine the real market value of the land; but where these cases are very numerous, and where the amounts to be paid out would be likely to be very large in the aggregate, it may be advisable to proceed more cautiously. If there be no legal or moral objections against it, it would seem to be business-like for the officials of the city to approach these land owners, and if possible obtain from them a written statement of the price at which they would sell their holdings. If this price be considered to be more than a fair market value, let the assessors pursue the policy of raising the assessed valuation of these properties to somewhere near the values claimed for them by their owners. The increased taxes thus secured may be set aside as a special fund for the purchase of these lands. The increased burden of taxation will gradually bring more and more of these owners to a realization of the uselessness of continuing to pay taxes on lands which have proved to be unsaleable at the prices they may have desired to obtain for them. In that case some may conclude to sell to the city at a reasonable price, and others may even, before many years, let the properties be sold for taxes, in which case the city may bid them in, paying for them from the special funds above referred to. There may be some cases where it would not be wise to delay the purchase of lands for some years, lest they be occupied by more or less expensive improvements. This is likely to occur in the vicinity of electric railways, in the neighborhood of already settled districts, and in the case of lands owned or managed by particularly enthusiastic and pushing real estate dealers and agents. Another danger to the beauty of these lands still more to be feared is that owners will cut the wild woods upon them, or permit them to be destroyed by fires. It should be made the duty of someone (presumably one of the Park Commissioners) to keep careful watch of all wooded lands intended to be taken as part of the park system, so that the city may act with the utmost promptness to prevent such destruction. It might even be arranged so that condemnation proceedings could be begun, and injunctions served on the owners of such lands with extraordinary promptness. Usually this prompt action will effect the desired purpose, and the owner can then be negotiated with and often the case could be settled out of court.

Aside from the steep lands which have been mentioned as desirable to be taken for the hillside parkways, or in connection with these parkways, there are considerable areas of exceedingly steep and