USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Reading > Town of Reading Massachusetts annual report 1937 > Part 21
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4,379.55
$ 743,870.48
Less Estimated Receipts $ 142,214.95
Less Excise Tax
18,340.00
Less 3047 Polls @ $2.00
6,094.00
Less Available Funds
13,328.99
Less Over estimate State &
County Taxes, 1936
203.73 $ 180,181.67
Amount to be raised
$
563,688.81
Tax rate for 1937 (Amount to be raised divided by Total Taxable Valuation) is $34.00 per M.
Recapitulation
Real Estate Tax
$538,745.47
Personal Estate Tax
24,943.34
Poll Taxes
6,094.00
Excise Taxes
22,607.84
Moth Assessment
537.00
Betterments :
Sewer
395.57
Sidewalk & Curbing
715.53
Highway
1,300.35
Water
486.41
Additional Polls
54.00
December Commitment, 1937
179.35
$596,058.86
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Detail of State and County Taxes
State Tax
$ 27,945.00*
State Parks & Reservations
277.83
Metropolitan Sewerage Tax
9,924.51
Metropolitan Sewerage Tax 1936
155.74
Auditing Municipal Account
2,149.85
County Tax
24,696.00
Total State and County Tax for 1937
$ 65,148.93
Valuation Comparisons
1936
1937
Inc.
Dec
Val. of Bldgs. only
$11,988,065
$12,282,630
$ 294,565
Val. of Land only
3,575,155
3,562,825
$ 12,330
Val. of Personal Prop.
1,023,048
733,630
289,418
Val. of Town Property
1,448,345
1,461,060
14,715
Val. of Exempted Prop.
532,115
532,485
370
Val. of Excise Tax . . .
700,210
808,750
108,540
December Commitment
7,825
5,275
2,550
Total Town Val. . .
$19,274,763
$19,386,655
$ 418,190
$ 304,298
Net Change in Valuation
$
113,892
Miscellaneous Data
1936
1937
Inc.
Dec.
Num. of Persons, Partnerships
and Corporations Assessed
3,168
2,664
504
Number of Automobiles As-
sessed
3,325
3,440
115
Number of Polls
3,253
3,073
180
Number of Horses
31
41
10
Number of Cows
132
158
26
Number of Neat Cattle
19
1
18
Number of Swine
96
86
10.
Number of Dwelling Houses
2,586
2,641
55
Number of Acres Land
5,570
5,570
Number of Fowl
14,088
14,846
758
Population of 1935 Census
10,703
GEORGE E. HORROCKS, Chairman ARTHUR S. COOK EDGAR FROST
Board of Assessors ..
320
REPORT OF THE TREASURER For the Year Ended Dec. 31, 1937.
The transactions in the General Cash Account, in summary form, were as follows :
Balance January 1, 1937
$173,620.41
Receipts :
Grace V. Viall, Collector
$586,226.42
Municipal Light Department
359,288.31
Water Department
51,937.44
School Department
17,892.87
Cemetery Department
8,959.35
Tree Warden and Moth Departments
747.50
Library
460.58
Hearings, Licenses and Permits
1,061.34
Other Departmental Receipts
4,991.37
Old Age Assist. Grants and Refunds
38,508.28
Welfare and Soldiers' Relief Refunds
32,283.70
Aid to Dependent Child. Grants & Refunds
13,924.42
Temp. Loans-Anticipation of Revenue
450,000.00
Municipal Light Department Loan
60,000.00
Municipal Garage Loan
25,000.00
Municipal Relief Loan
22,000.00
Highway Construction Loan
21,200.00
Tax Title Loan
7,000.00
Com. of Massachusetts-Taxes
62,255.27
Com. of Massachusetts - Soldiers' Benefits
959.68
State and County for Highway
19,646.50
Redemption of Prop .; Taxes, Int.& Costs
41,407.59
Municipal Light Dept., Trans. of Income ..
22,000.00
Trust Funds Transfers
13,881.65
Trust Funds Income
4,254.72
Dividend and Interest-Closed Bank
1,661.61
Total Receipts
$1,878,597.96
$2,052,218.37
Disbursements :
Temporary Loans
$450,000.00
Funded Dept
41,500.00
Tax Title Loans
32,000.00
Highway Construction Loan
16,000.00
Filtration Plant Loan
15,000.00
Interest
12,198.39
State Taxes and Assessments
42,090.36
321
County Taxes 24,979.08 Other Disbursements
1,242,480.20
Total Disbursements $1,876,248.03
Balance December 31, 1937
$ 175,970.34
Funded Debt
Outstanding January 1, 1937 $295,100.00
Bonds and Notes Issued in 1937
107,000.00
$402,100.00
Bonds and Notes Paid in 1937
$ 41,500.00
Outstanding December 31, 1937
360,600.00
$402,100.00
(The above amounts do not include Tax Title Loans) Notes Issued in Anticipation of Revenue
Outstanding January 1, 1937
$250,000.00
Notes Issued in 1937 450,000.00
$700,000.00
Notes Paid in 1937
$450,000.00
Outstanding December 31, 1937
250,000.00
$700,000.00
Special Loans
Outstanding January 1, 1937
$ 56,000.00
Issued in 1937 :
Highway Const. Loan $ 21,200.00
Tax Title Loan
7,000.00 $ 28,200.00
$ 84,200.00
Paid in 1937 :
Filtration Plant Loan $ 15,000.00
Highway Const. Loan
16,000.00
Tax Title Loans
32,000.00 $ 63,000.00
Outstanding Dec. 31, 1937 :
Highway Const. Loan
$ 21,200.00
$ 84,200.00
A more detailed statement of receipts and disbursements and a statement of the Trust Funds are presented in the report of the Town Accountant.
PRESTON F. NICHOLS, Treasurer.
322
BOARD OF PUBLIC WELFARE
Elsewhere there will appear a detailed report of the work of the Welfare Department as submitted by the Superintendent. This is a brief statement of the policy of the Board.
When a man's personality is split so that it pulls in two directions psychiatrists call it schizophrenia. The hardest job a conscientious Wel- fare Board has is to avoid a kind of administrative schizophrenia. There is probably no Board in any town so subject to the pull of opposing forces as is the Welfare Board.
On the one hand is the obligation to husband every cent of the tax- payer's money. The Welfare Board is not performing a useful service to all the residents of Reading as is, for example, the Water Depart- ment ; it is not creating essential, substantial, and valuable public works for our own future generations as is the case with our streets and parks and public buildings. In such instances there may be merit in spending money and sometimes the more spent the better. That is never the case with welfare funds. It is to be deplored that any welfare money has to be spent. The Welfare Board acts as trustee of the taxpayer's money charged with the duty of spending just as little as possible. That is the basis on which the Board endeavors to administer the funds en- trusted to it.
On the other hand the Welfare Board everywhere sees cases of distress and desolation. It sees little children go supperless to bed and without shoes for school; it sees homes that are cheerless and cold; mothers who are worn and wan; fathers who are spiritless and despon- dent. There is no one, simple answer to these problems. For any but the most heartless, impulse cries out, "Help them." Any good neighbor would say, "Let's try to hold the home together, let's salvage something from the wreckage of these lives, let's make a future for these chil- dren, let's give hope where now there is no hope." But this means more than a bag of oatmeal and a pound of lard and a few sticks of firewood. It means medical care, it means vocational guidance it means constant friendly counsel and advise. It means spending money. Has the Board a right to spend money this way? Certainly there are defi- nite limits beyond which it should not go and the Board must set these limits. It believes it has set them at a place far short of where the citizens of Reading would want to set them if they had to see and decide on the cases themselves.
There is still another side to the picture. President Roosevelt has aptly put it, "Continued dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral degeneration fundamentally destructive to the moral fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." Mr. Harnden in his comprehensive and statesman-
323
like report to the Board has put it in another way. He says, "Men, remaining in contact for too long a time with any relief agency, tend to relax into a state of more or less comfortable unexpectancy." There are chisellers and the Board knows it. There are loafers and the un- worthy and the Board knows this too. But it also knows that the children are not to blame for the sins of their fathers and in many, many instances the fathers are not to blame for the condition in which they find themselves. And so once more comes this most difficult ques- tion of balance lest the Board be pulled too far one way or the other by these opposing, but in the large sense, equally valid considerations.
Relief should be administered on broad social principles but econo- my must be the watchword. Yet the easiest thing is to save at the spigot and lose at the bunghole. It is no trouble to cut off a quart of milk and find malnutrition and big medical expense waiting around the corner. The biggest savings are made where one unacquainted with welfare problems would never look for them. When the Transient Camp closed this year 31 men presented themselves for welfare relief in Reading. Not one of them is receiving it today nor ever received it for more than the few days necessary to arrange to get him out of town. That means hundreds of dollars saved by one rigidly applied administrative policy. The Welfare Department charged some $65,000 to places other than Reading last year and spent it here. This is a re- sult of meticulous bookkeeping. Notices must be sent to other towns and sent on time or thousands of dollars are lost. Frequently other thousands of dollars in the' aggregate depend on tracing a birth record or a former place of residence. One good job in fixing the responsibility for payment on some other town where it belongs will save Reading more money that paring a score of grocery orders. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this kind of administrative work which a good Board can and should do.
Elsewhere reference has been made to the reorganization of the visiting and case work of the Department. This is not revolutionary but has come as a matter of predetermined policy of the Board fixed on long ago and put into effect just as soon as it seemed reasonably feasible. It is not the purpose of the Board to remain static or smugly content in any matter of policy. It intends to keep on adopting pro- gressive, practical, and economical methods just as fast as it is possible to do so. It believes that its methods today are as progressive, practical and economical as they can be under the circumstances but it realizes that no program can be put into full operation at once.
The Board enjoys the fullest co-operation of the other boards of the town. For several years the Welfare Board has been trying to work out with these various boards a method for absorbing a ponderable part of the burden of local unemployment, absorbing it in a way which will
324
at the one time afford a living wage on the basis of self respect for the work and also result in actual dollar value for dollars spent of the taxpayer's money. It is believed that we are now on the threshold of working out such an arrangement in co-operation with the Board of Public Works, which naturally can use the most men, and to a lesser degree, with other equally co-operative boards. By the time this re- port is in print it is hoped that this policy, developed over a long period, will be sufficiently advanced to be reflected by a definite and substantial cut in welfare costs. The Welfare Board would be happy if these costs could entirely vanish. The fact that it knows that they cannot so long as we have the aged and crippled and widowed will afford no excuse to refrain from continuing to work earnestly to that end.
This report cannot be closed with any mere formal recital of appre- ciation for the work done during the year by those employed by the Department. No town employees work more faithfully, cheerfully, and intelligently than do these men and women. And, it should be added, none work longer hours nor for less pay. Of them it might be said as Herodotus said of the Persian couriers, "Not snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays them from the prompt completion of their appointed rounds."
Board of Public Welfare. ORVILLE S. POLAND, Chairman. HARRIETT L. ROONEY EDWARD F. PARKER
REPORT OF THE WELFARE SUPERINTENDENT
To the Board of Public Welfare :
The administration of Public Welfare, involving, as it does, direct contact with the social and economic affairs of more than thirteen hundred persons who live in Reading-about twelve per cent of the town's entire population-carries with it innumerable activities which cannot be marshalled into a formal report. Sickness, accident, lack of proper clothing for school children, imminent eviction from shelter, necessity for hospital treatment or for transportation to a hospital clinic, lack of food, fuel, or some other vital necessity, all these and countless other contingencies must be met with such action as will best relieve the situation and at the same time, if expense is involved, make the most judicious use of public funds.
The phrase "must be met", used in the previous sentence, is cor- rect, because, contrary to the belief of many, the obligation of a town to relieve distress falling upon any of its inhabitants is legal and not
325
moral. Strictly speaking, we do not furnish assistance to needy per- sons because we think we ought to. We do so because the Massachu- setts law, a very brief statute and a very old one which has existed practically without change for more than a century, says we must. The person in distress may not be a citizen, he may not even be deserv- ing of consideration from a moral standpoint; nevertheless, it is in- cumbent on the town wherein he is found in distress to relieve him. I believe if this aspect of the matter were thoroughly understood by everyone certain minor criticisms, mental or expressed, regarding public welfare administration might almost be answered before made.
Such information as can be arranged in a form conductive to a clear understanding of the matter are offered under the sub-headings pertaining to the three major divisions into which public welfare is classified.
These classifications are: General Aid, Aid to Dependent Children, and under a separate Bureau, Old Age Assistance.
GENERAL AID
This division, although it is only about half the picture, either from a standpoint of case load or expenditure, represents what is most com- monly thought of as "the welfare." There is nothing new about it whatever. The unpleasant features of it are aggravated and amplified by any long-continued period of economic unbalance which brings about unemployment and the evils which always accompany it. In the Read- ing town report for the year of 1866, for instance, we find that there were 8 persons at the "almshouse" during the year, with 19 cases of "poor out of the almshouse" and 112 persons assisted as "travellers." (It is rather startling to learn from this same report of 1866 that the total amount expended for aid to the poor exceeded the total amount spent for schools by about ten per cent.)
In 1937, under General Aid, this department assisted 283 cases, in- volving 978 persons. Of these 198 were family cases accounting for 893 persons and 85 were cases of single unattached persons.
As applied to the tax rate General Aid is the most expensive of the three relief classifications, but to get at its true cost it is necessary to bring into one schedule both the expenditures and the amounts which come into the town treasury as an offset. It is understood, of course, that assistance given to any person who has a legal settlement in Read- ing is a net expense. Such a person is one who has lived in Reading for a stated period of years, occupying himself for his own support and that of his family, and has contributed to the general progress of his community. When such a one falls in distress his burden is ours and ours alone.
326
In the case of persons who have no legal settlement in our town, not having lived here the required time without assistance and so not having made sufficient community contribution, one of two conditions exists : such person has a legal settlement in some other city or town in Massachusetts, not having been absent from his home town long enough to lose it; or he has no settlement at all, either never having gained one or losing it through absence from his place of settlement. In either case whatever we expend for his support or the support of those dependent on him can be recovered, from his place of settlement or, if he has no settlement, from the state.
While the whole matter of "settlement" is complicated and is, in- deed, one of the major features of administrative work, the above brief information is given for a better understanding of the statement of actual cost for General Aid submitted below :
Reading General Aid Cost-1937 283 Cases 978 Persons
Total Expended $ 61.471.10
Credits
Billed to State-Temporary Aid $ 13,384.58
Billed to State-Sick Poor 759.34
Billed other Cities and Towns
3,652.95
Miscellaneous Refunds and Credits
273.72
18,070.59
Net Cost of General Aid
$ 46,400.51
The various influences which bring about the necessity for giving relief from public funds are unpredictable for any material time in advance. When preparing for the year 1937 this department had no means of knowing, for instance, that W. P. A. employment would take the course it did. Starting in May the wages for W. P. A. in Reading went into a sharp deline which continued through the year. There was no compensating absorption of employment into industry and as a mat- ter of fact such limited employing industries as we have in Reading were forced to lay off men by the dozens in the fall.
W. P. A. wages dropped from $228,347.00 in 1936, to less than $100,000.00 in 1937, and when the lay-offs in local private employment were added to the W. P. A. shrinkage our case load took an upward swing which could not possibly have been forseen in the early part of the year. A case load schedule by months, with a comparable monthly scale of W. P. A. earnings, will show the situation somewhat and it will be noted that the rise in cases does not follow immediately when there are W. P. A. lay-offs. This indicates some ability to "coast" but there is also a very real disinclination in a large percentage of instances to apply for relief until there is no other way out.
327
General Aid Case Load by Months-1937
Cases
Persons W.P.A. Wages
January
142
597
$ 5,936.59
February
143
589
9,432.28
March
152
605
11,544.20
April
148
611
11,551.58
May
133
556
9,730.14
June
125
500
9,672.64
July
129
510
9,868.86
August
140
541
6,971.69
September
143
538
5,382.88
October
155
569
5,470.06
November
162
593
4,935.22
December
179
639
7,425.16
The total amount expended for General Aid, with a classification of amounts into the various forms of aid given, will be found under the report of the Town Accountant in his detailed schedule of expendi- tures for all town departments.
In all cases where there is a member of the family physically able the Welfare Department requires that work be performed in return for aid given. This work is practically all unskilled labor and the great bulk of it has been used in the felling, cutting, and delivering of fire- wood. This wood goes to welfare cases, soldier's relief cases, and to a few needy non-relief families who are unable to buy winter fuel. Dur- ing the spring and summer a welfare garden was operated, using wel- fare labor, and the product of this effort was distributed where most needed.
The potatoes, carrots, and beets were used to good advantage in November and December when there was a concurrence of financial stringency and an abnormal increase in relief needs. A tabulation of welfare work-hours may be of interest:
Welfare Labor Report for 1937
Department
Man-hours Value of Aid Given
Welfare-Wood Yard
38,156
$ 11,446.80
W. P. A .- Food Distribution
1,540
462.00
Sewing and Canning Project
240
72.00
Town Building
28
8.40
Cemetery
1,495
448.50
School
161
48.30
Welfare-Garden
6,012
1,803.60
47,632
$ 14,289.60
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The production of firewood was 389 cords. Forty families were moved during the year by the welfare truck. There were 74 trips to hospitals. A small shoe-repairing equipment has been set up for hand work and the year's production here was 748 pairs of shoes repaired, the cost for material averaging 30c a pair. The outfit will accommodate only one workman at a time but so far the needs have been met quite successfully.
At the present time special emphasis is being put into a concerted effort toward placing welfare recipients who are usefully employable on regular jobs where they can earn a subsistence wage. Other town de- partments have expressed willingness to give full co-operation, so far as their annual budgets and the by-laws of the town will permit, in working out this plan. It must be borne in mind that town depart- ments cannot hire aliens under ordinary conditions, and under federal ruling aliens cannot be put on W. P. A. Private employers are not un- der such restriction, however, and it should be solidly recognized that importation of help from other towns by Reading employers, when the very man for the job may be on the welfare list, is bad finance and worse sociology. Ever since communities existed they have been made up of the good, the bad, and the indifferent. This classification is just as pertinent to "Welfare" as to any other division of the community Really worthless people, a small minority, must, as always, be left out of any social calculation for better conditions. Those who are funda- mentally good and sound, and they comprise an encouraging percent- age-will do the best they can anyway, we need not worry overmuch about them. The indifferent, as we might classify them in this de- partment, are those tossed out of their routine employment through hard times, who cannot readily adapt themselves to unfamiliar tasks and who fail in the attempt to make a successful adjustment in living conditions.
Many such men, remaining in contact for too long a period with any relief agency, tend to relax into a state of more or less comfort- able unexpectancy. This is the most dangerous phase of the whole matter, to the man and to his community, and the solution is jobs- real jobs at useful productive work with living wages-and a complete severance of connection with any form of relief whatever. The man today who can create a job that will employ a worker and keep him employed has achieved the acme of patriotism.
Aid to Dependent Children
Strictly speaking, this is the first annual report to the Board under the heading of "Aid to Dependent Children." Practically, however, this form of assistance is a continuance of "Aid to Mothers With Depend- ent Children," more familiarly known as "Mother's Aid." Under the new statute which became effective January 1st, 1937, this assistance
329
was broadened to include families where any of the following could be considered in loco parentis: father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother, stepsister, uncle or aunt. The former law required the presence of the actual mother in the family with the children. In all cases the one standing as the parent in the case must be a person fit to bring up the children.
There is now a federal participation in the cost. The whole con- sideration of legal settlement is wiped out, the state reimbursing the town for one-third of the total expended; the federal reimbursement is. one-third of any amount up to eighteen dollars expended on account of the first child, and one-third of any amount up to twelve dollars on the amount expended for each additional child, this federal allotment apply- ing only to children under sixteen. Under both state and federal regu- lations all assistance furnished must be in the form of cash.
The amount of aid granted to a family is determined by the local board, due consideration being given to resources the family may have .. Conditions in cach case are treated respectively, so that the amount of assistance, in addition to all other income and support available, shall be sufficient to provide subsistence compatible with decency and health. The amount of assistance is subject to revision, up or down, to meet the variations in need as they occur in individual cases.
Starting under the new law, the cases in this class increased from 17 cases, as of December 31st, 1936, to 25 cases, in December of 1937, a. rise in cases of approximately fifty per cent. One difficulty in estimat- ing future appropriation for Aid to Dependent Children is the impos- sibility of determining whether a point of saturation under the broad- ening effect of the new legislation has been reached.
Assistance to dependent children, in these instances where the former bread-winner has been eliminated, is one of the most construc- tive efforts made under the modern social program. Bearing in mind, as noted above, that the assistance is given to the head of the family in the form of cash, the children are brought up in the atmosphere of a family which is, to the greatest extent possible under the circumstances, running its own affairs. By the ingenuity of the family itself the amount of income, which has been based administratively on the most careful consideration of the necessary budget, must be made to meet all the ordinary circumstances of life as lived by the family. Appreciation is gained of the value of a dollar in its application toward proper living. The whole aim is to engender self-reliance in the children as they come to an employable age and to eliminate reliance on outside agencies whenever confronted with the numberless exigencies, great and small, which are a part of every life.
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