People v. Morse

By the Court,

Belcher, J.: This is an action for the collection of delinquent taxes for the year 1871.

By the Act of the 18th of March, 1868, to provide for the government of the County of San Diego, the Board of Supervisors was required on the first Monday of April in each year to levy an annual tax of two dollars on every one hundred dollars valuation of real and personal property within the county, “which shall be collected in the manner prescribed by law, and when paid into the County Treasury shall be distributed as follows: * * * Seventeen and one half per cent into an Interest Tax Fund to be used in the payment of the interest on the funded debt of the county; * * * seventeen and one half per cent into a Floating Debt Redemption Fund, to be used in the payment of the unfunded indebtedness of the county outstanding on the 1st day of April, A. D. 1868; and twelve and one half per cent into a Funded Debt Redemption Fund, which shall be used for the redemption of the funded debt of the county in the manner in this Act provided.”

By the same Act a Board of Commissioners was appointed whose duty it was to carefully examine into the legality or illegality of all the unfunded indebtedness of the county [537]which might remain outstanding on the 1st day of April, 1868, and to allow or reject, in whole or in part, any or all of such indebtedness, as might appear in the judgment of the Board a legal and just claim against the county or otherwise. Upon the allowance of any such indebtedness the Board was directed to issue to the rightful owner and holder thereof a warrant for the amount found to be a legal and just claim against the county, which was made payable without interest, in the manner, and out of the Floating Debt Redemption Fund, provided for in the Act.

It was also provided that whenever the Floating Debt Redemption Fund should contain the sum of two hundred dollars or more, and whenever th'e Funded Debt Redemption Fund should contain the sum of five hundred dollars or more, the County Treasurer should give notice that he would at a time named receive sealed bids for the surrender of warrants drawn by the Board of Commissioners, and to be paid out of the first named Fund, and of county bonds which were to be paid out of the last named Fund; that at the time named he should, in public and in the presence of the President of the Board of Supervisors, open the proposals and accept the lowest bid or bids for the surrender of such warrants or bonds, provided that no bid for the surrender of warrants should be accepted for more than thirty-five cents upon the dollar, and no bid for the surrender of bonds should be accepted for more than fifty cents upon the dollar of the face value thereof, exclusive of interest.