Bennett v. Board of Review of Little Sioux Tp., Woodbury County
| Decision Date | 07 March 1944 |
| Docket Number | 46422. |
| Parties | BENNETT v. BOARD OF REVIEW OF LITTLE SIOUX TP., WOODBURY COUNTY, et al. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Robert B. Pike and Larned F. Brown, both of Sioux City, for appellants.
Oliver P. Bennett, J. T. Slattery, and John Fletcher, all of Mapleton, and A. H. Bolton, of Sioux City, for appellee.
The consolidated appeals here presented bring to this court the question of the correctness of the 1941 assessments of certain farm lands owned by Oliver P. Bennett Marie C. Wetzel, Marie Bauer, Margaret D. Gibson and E. S Gaynor Lumber Company. The land is all located in Little Sioux Township of Woodbury County, Iowa, and the complainants filed written objections with the township board of review to the assessment made by the assessor January 1, 1941. The board made a blanket reduction of $10 per acre on land valued at $80 per acre and $5 per acre on all other land in the township. But the board adjourned without taking any action on the filed objections of the five complainants. The complainants appealed to the district court and that court by separate decrees, ordered a reduction in the total assessment against each taxpayer. The board has appealed from these decrees.
These appeals are triable de novo in this court and therefore a somewhat extended review of the evidence of the various witnesses regarding the value of each farm is necessary. For convenience we will review the value testimony with regard to each farm separately. Only farm land is involved. The complainants state that they make no complaint as to the assessment placed on buildings or improvements. The only question is whether the assessment is more than 60% of actual value. Complainants admit that there was no attempt to show discrimination as between lands of complainants and other lands in the township.
Oliver P. Bennett Farm.
This is 560 acres of unimproved farm land. It consists of 14 forties. After making deductions for highways, railroads and ditches applicable to each forty, 496 acres out of the 560 were placed on the assessor's rolls. The evidence showed that the owner and the assessor went over the property and agreed upon the proper amount of acreage that should be assessed in the various forties. And Bennett testified that there is no complaint with regard to the assessor's figures as to the assessable acreage. Out of the 496 acres, 434 acres were considered by the assessor to be crop acres and 62 acres were considered not in cultivation as they were timber and waste land along the Little Sioux River. The assessed value placed by the board on the Bennett farm was $29,407. The district court held the 496 assessable acres to have an assessed value of $23,808. The assessor testified in detail concerning the value of each separate forty in the Bennett farm and the amount of his assessment thereon. Of the 14 forties, eight were assessed at $70 per acre, two at $60 per acre, one at $55 per acre, two at $35 per acre and one at $20 per acre. The assessor was a farmer who had lived in the township since 1921 and he was first elected assessor in 1929. He stated that he had been on all the tracts from time to time and was familiar with the productivity of the different tracts. He stated: In regard to the 8 forties assessed at $70 per acre the assessor testified that approximately $120 an acre was the fair actual value and that he did not know of sand or gravel on this land but that the Charlie Johnson farm that joins this on the north will sometimes burn out in a dry year. He considered the Charlie Johnson land similar and of the same actual value or $120 per acre, but the Bennett farm would produce better in a dry year to the extent of $15 per acre, but because of the point and diagonal rows on the Bennett farm he put the two on the same basis. In regard to the two forties assessed at $60 an acre he stated that he took into consideration that there was a low place in this tract and it is more or less wet and not worth as much as the 8 forty tract. These two forties were put in at $100 per acre actual value because of the slough. In regard to the forty assessed at $55 per acre the evidence showed that 17.5 acres of this forty were taken out for railroad and highways. In regard to the two forties assessed at $35 an acre he stated there was less timber and more farm land in these two forties and the actual value was $60 per acre. In regard to the forty assessed at $20 an acre he stated that he assessed this at $20 an acre because of the timber and winding river. He gave Bennett credit for 80 acres in his computation of acreage for farm land.
Two members of the Board, Chilton and Blankenhorn, testified in support of the assessed valuations. They were both farmers who had lived on their farms in Little Sioux Township for 30 or 40 years. A third member of the board, Holzman, appointed to fill a vacancy, and the township clerk, Corey, both farmers and farm owners in this township for many years, also testified in support of the assessments. Besides testifying to approximately the same valuations for each forty, these witnesses testified in detail that:
Corey, who had been a Triple-A committee man and who had checked all these farms stated: "I know the Bennett farm is one of the best producing farms between Sioux City and Denison." One board member testified that the timber land when cleared will produce more than any land Bennett has and he had seen comparable land sell for $40 an acre in the timber and that price would be cheap.
Two neighboring landowners also testified in support of the assessment. Charles Johnson, a former member of the board of supervisors of Woodbury County and a resident of Little Sioux Township and the owner of the farm north of the Bennett land and adjacent to the tier of forties assessed at $70 per acre, testified that he was thoroughly familiar with the Bennett land. He stated the Bennett farm was black loam soil that raises good crops. He thought the average value per acre of the entire Bennett farm on January 1, 1941 was $95 per acre. He testified that there were more than 200 acres of the Bennett land that will produce similar to his. In 1940, which was a little dry, they both got 45 to 50 bushels of corn per acre.
J. A. Baxter, a resident of Sioux City, who had long been engaged in the business of renting, buying, selling and managing real estate in Woodbury County, testified in support of the assessment. He stated that he owned land comparable to the Bennett land in Little Sioux Township; that he had been through and over the Bennett land and that some forties would be worth more than others but that it seemed to him the 496 acres should be worth $100 an acre. His land, which compared to the tier of forties on the Bennett farm assessed at $70 an acre, was also assessed at $70 an acre and he stated that he was not complaining of his assessment.
Hal H. Lang, a Sioux City resident, testified as an expert on farm valuations in support of the assessment. He had been engaged in the real estate business for 25 years and represented two Sioux City banks and one foreign insurance company in the making of farm loans. He had also been an inheritance tax appraiser for Woodbury County for five years. He had been over the Bennett farm thoroughly in connection with the renewal of an insurance company loan about ten years before. The loan that had been renewed ten or twelve years ago was $38,000. During the trial he again looked the land over and he was of the opinion that the value of the land on January 1, 1941 was $100 per acre.
Mr. Bennett gave no opinion as to the actual value of the land owned by him, either by forties or on average for the whole 560 acres in his farm. He stated that he was a practicing lawyer at Mapleton. He had presented his own objections to the assessment before the board and he was attorney for the other complainants in the matter of their objections to their assessments, and he prepared and served all the respective notices of appeal to the district court. He testified in detail about most of the tracts and described the inconvenience and the diagonal rows caused by the highways, railways, ditch and river that cut across the farm. He stated that he had owned the property since 1937 and part of the land was swampy; that the soil was black loam but part...
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