Board of Ed. of Caldwell County v. Lewis
| Decision Date | 04 June 1954 |
| Citation | 269 S.W.2d 193 |
| Parties | BOARD OF EDUCATION OF CALDWELL COUNTY v. LEWIS. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF CITY OF PRINCETON v. LEWIS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
Edward H. Johnstone, Princeton, for appellant.
Alvin Lisanby, Princeton, for appellee.
CULLEN, Commissioner.
The sheriff of Caldwell County, being of the opinion that an amount equal to four percent of the school taxes collected by him for the Board of Education of Caldwell County and for the Board of Education of the City of Princeton represented the reasonable cost of collection, withheld that amount from the tax collections for the year 1950. In actions brought by the boards of education, for a declaration as to what was the reasonable cost of collection, and for recovery of the difference between the reasonable cost and the amount withheld by the sheriff, judgments were entered allowing the sheriff the amount withheld by him. The boards appeal from those judgments.
The school tax collections amounted to $167,838.38, constituting 61.76 percent of the total tax collections from all sources. The sheriff's evidence was that the cost of collecting all taxes was $7,439.90. This figure was reached by adding together the following items:
Sheriff's own time $4,000.00
Full-time deputy for 10 months 2,280.90
Part-time deputies 540.00
Accountant 500.00
Advertising 119.00
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$7,439.90
The item for the sheriff's own time was computed by valuing his time at $600 per month, and allotting two-thirds of his time for ten months to tax collection work.
Apportioning 61.76 of the total cost of tax collection work to school tax collections, the cost of collecting the school taxes, according to the sheriff's evidence, was $4,594.89.
Notwithstanding that the sheriff's own evidence showed a maximum cost of $4,594.89, the lower court allowed a fee of four percent, or $6,713.53, on the theory that the sheriff was entitled to earn the maximum constitutional compensation of $7,200 a year from some source, and since his income from other sources was utilized in paying the expenses of his office, his compensation should be paid out of the school money. This theory is so completely fallacious as not to warrant serious consideration. A similar theory was rejected in Bd. of Ed. of Lawrence County v. Workman, Ky., 256 S.W.2d 528.
The school boards maintain that...
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