A friend in California, Harry Pollard, a longtime teacher of Georgist ideas, tells a story I’d like to share about assessing land value. It predates the advent of computers, of computer assisted mass assessment (CAMA), which is a very effective and efficient tool. Talking to a contemporary audience, he clarifies that the assessments should be made on a square foot or square yard basis, rather than by lot, so that people can readily compare their own assessment with those of others. Harry points out that publishing the assessment is a good way to make both corruption and mistakes clearly evident. (My own town puts all assessments online, though not with tools for easy analysis.)

Here’s the story:

The Weston, Ontario, Peanut Assessment *

Just before World War I, the people in the little Canadian town of Weston decided to value its land.

So, they held a meeting in the town hall where on the stage was a map of Weston. The chair of the meeting asked the first question.

“If you had a peanut stand, where in Weston would you be able to sell the most peanuts?”

The citizens had no trouble answering - it would be on the southwest corner of King and Rosemount.

The chair wrote 100% on the map.

“How about the other corners of King and Rosemount?”

“Pretty good,” said the townspeople, “but not as good as the southwest corner.”

The chair wrote 95% on the other three corners.

The questions continued.

“How about a block away from King and Rosemount?”

“Would you sell many peanuts in the middle of the block?”

By the end of the meeting, the map of Weston was covered with percentages out to the edge of town which received 0%.

The following week, the citizens held another town meeting. The owner of the southwest corner of King and Rosemount was present and was angry. He wanted some changes made and after discussion, the map was modified and the people of Weston had valued their land.

A couple of years later – probably when Weston officially became a town in 1914 – they hired professional valuers to assess the land value. When the valuers had finished, their map was very close to the ‘peanut valuation’ map!

Perhaps nobody would suggest that assessors today should use the peanut method of valuation but it did illustrate an important factor in the assessment of land.

**Land values relate to each other. In a city street, improvement values might very considerably. A high-rise might be next to a two-story building which is next to a vacant lot. Improvement values would need separate assessment with much calculation and much room for error.

Yet, it is probable that the land value of each site is the same. The Danish system of “street valuations” in which every lot on a street has the same value is now used everywhere. When land values increase in response to an advancing economy, the modern assessor is likely to handle the changes with a few mouse clicks on his computer.**

Without the help of a computer, the people of Weston combined an understanding of relative land values with local knowledge of their town to produce a commendable assessment.

Didn’t cost much either!

Harry Pollard

* The town of Weston has now been swallowed by Metropolitan Toronto.