A tax official with 23 years of service to Duval County proposed a 5 percent across-the-board general sales, use and transaction tax with no exemptions as a substitute for real and personal property taxes.
While the sales tax would offer no fast solution to the county’s mounting tax problems, such as funding public education, “it is a plan we can work on,” said John Strickland, supervisor of bookkeeping and accounting for Duval County Tax Collector Clyde Simpson.
Strickland said the 5 percent tax would include the existing 3 percent state sales tax and the increase would allow the additional 2 percent to remain in the county.
In an address to the Exchange Club of Jacksonville, he said since 1955, the general consensus was ad valorem taxation was outmoded and should be replaced by a sales tax, but politicians were reluctant to even discuss the issue.
“With 23 years of county service putting me in retirement position, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m not running for any office,” said Strickland.
He charged that ad valorem taxes were inflationary, unfair, inequitable and unjust.
“They contribute to the rising cost of living by forcing food, drug and clothing merchants to increase prices to offset additional taxes,” Strickland said.
The method was inequitable, he contended, because it was impossible to establish a fair or just value for real estate or personal property.
Local tree farmers also were concerned about ad valorem taxes.
In his annual report to the commission, Farm Forester Frank Hill said real estate taxes were at the point of destroying profitable investment for timber growers.
“They are not so much concerned with either valuation or millage as they are with the combination of the two, which determines the annual expense per acre,” he said.
• The Jacksonville Police Department ordered 37 new air-conditioned cars at a cost of $76,000, but it wasn’t certain there would be enough officers on the force to drive them.
Purchase of the vehicles was authorized by the City Commission despite being advised recruitment of new officers was not very promising.
Assistant Police Chief Robert Hobbs said the department was asking the Civil Service Board for a new entrance examination for patrol officers scheduled to be administered in January.
Hobbs said in a recent statewide bid for police recruits, the city received 85 applications, with only 10 from outside the county.
Of the total, 74 showed up for the examination, including three from outside Duval County. Of the 74, only 16 met the 110 IQ requirement, and of those, only nine passed the agility test.
The result was only nine candidates took the written and oral examinations. All scored high enough to qualify, but still had to pass a physical examination and security screening where some could be disqualified, said Hobbs.
He said as of Jan. 1, the department would be short 28 officers.
In other police news, a line item for a $4,600 salary was found in the department’s $4 million budget for Joshua Hillman, a “temporary research helper” who resigned in August after working for the department for five years.
It was noted when Hillman resigned after questions were asked about what he did in the department, no one would admit knowing what his duties comprised.
Hobbs said the job was abolished and listing Hillman on the 1965-66 payroll was “just one of those oversights that creep into a multimillion-dollar budget.”
• Clearance for a portion of a new bridge over the Arlington River was 1 foot, 8.4 inches short of specifications, according to a survey report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The $765,000 bridge was being built by Soule Construction Co. of Pensacola for the State Road Department.
The permit granted to the state for construction of the new bridge specified the vertical clearance above the main channel be 18.5 feet above the mean high-water mark.
The permit further stated vertical clearance over an auxiliary channel to be used by owners of small boats had to be at least 8.2 feet above the mean high-water mark. The survey showed the auxiliary channel pilings were 1.7 feet too short.
Since the survey determined the design specifications were not met, the bridge was unacceptable to the Corps, which would require the state to seek permission to increase the height of the piers.
If that proved to be not feasible, the existing pilings would have to be removed and new pilings constructed.
• What were described as “the nation’s newest and most modern” oceanographic research vessels — The Discoverer and the Oceanographer — were nearing completion.
The vessels were being built for the Coast and Geodetic Survey by Jacksonville Shipyards under the supervision of the Maritime Administration. The combined cost of the 303-foot, 3,600-ton ships was $14 million.
The Oceanographer was scheduled to be ready for sea trials in January.
• Franklyn Johnson, former president of Jacksonville University, was named head of the national Job Corps program under the federal Office of Economic Opportunity.
Johnson arrived at Jacksonville University in 1956 when it was a junior college. When it became a university shortly after he became president, Johnson, at 34, was considered the nation’s youngest university president.
He left Jacksonville in 1963 to become president of California State College in Los Angeles.
Johnson was scheduled to take over the $28,500-a-year Job Corps post in January.
• Season tickets for concerts by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra went on sale at the symphony office at 46 W. Duval St. Good seats were available in most sections of the Civic Auditorium, said Mrs. C.L.G. Ashby, season ticket chair.
Seats also were being sold for the “Symphony Special,” a bus that would operate from the Roosevelt Mall near Ortega and the auditorium and back on concert nights.
A Southside bus leaving Lakewood Shopping Center would be provided if enough passengers signed up for the monthly trips, said Ashby.
• Reddi-Arts, the art supply store along Hendricks Avenue, was heavily damaged in a two-alarm fire.
Fortunately, thousands of dollars’ worth of paintings had been shipped the previous week to art shows and thus escaped damage, said Jack Bear, who owned the store.
Several paintings owned by customers sustained an undetermined amount of damage, according to firefighters.
“If this fire had occurred Saturday or Sunday, the loss would have been much, much greater than that,” Bear said.
The blaze gutted the rear storerooms in the building and flames shot through the roof at one point. Two firefighters were overcome by smoke and treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital.
• Peter Paul Gushanas, manager of The River Club, was elected president of the Sunshine State Chapter, Club Managers Association of America, at a meeting of the group in Orlando.
A graduate of the Lewis Hotel Training School in Washington, D.C., he previously served as vice president of the organization.