by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As we press on with our look at the 1904 report of the Los Angeles City Auditor, it comes as no surprise that another major part of municipal operations concerned the work done in the burgeoning metropolis by the Street Department. Superintendent James Hanley, in his report to the City Council, listed the expenses as over $161,000, with two-thirds coming from the three biggest ticket items, being, in order, water used for street sprinkling (this was 35% of all costs on its own), oil for sprinkling and the use of machines for sweeping. The use of lumber and gravel for projects amounted to about 7% of expenditures.
Under salaries, the costs totaled almost $454,000, with the largest amount being from street sprinkling (14%), laborers (10%), extra labor (8.5%), teamsters and hand sweeping (each at 7.5%) and extra teams (6.5%). Staff salaries, including that of Hanley, his deputies, inspectors, the assessment clerk, bookkeeper and foreman involved under 5% of the expenditures. Receipts totaled just above $45,000, with permits issued for excavations (including to the gas and water companies), building, sidewalks, sewers and house moving and fees for engineering and printing being among the items listed.
Hanley noted that there 185 improved streets and sewers accepted by his department, 166 contracts signed by it, and 2,352 bridges, crosswalks and culverts built during the previous year, while under state legislation passed in 1903, the department levied and collected assessments for street openings. Tables listed projects that were handled by bond and cash funding, showing how many linear feet of grading, cement and redwood curbs, gutters (sometimes expressed by square feet), square feet of cement walks and number of culverts were involved as well as the cost.
By far the most expensive project involved Sunset Boulevard from near Elysian Park about two miles past Silver Lake towards East Hollywood and costing north of $102,000, with the next largest being work done on Central Avenue from 1st to 12th streets and involving above $60,000. A project on Main from Alameda north to near the Los Angeles River was about $46,000 and there were a few more in the $30,000-$40,000 range. With sewer projects, the locations, linear feet and cost (all with cash) were provided, with a few costing between $6,000-$7,000 and most under $1,000.
Under the provisions of an 1885 street act passed at Sacramento, work done with graveled roadways totaled about $480,000, almost a quarter with cash, while those paved with asphalt comprised about $185,000, nearly two-thirds in cash and sewers totaled $64,000. From a general street law, close to three quarters of a million dollars in street work was done. For the year, not quite 5 miles of asphalt streets were completed, while 19 of gravel were finished; also listed were the linear and square feet amounts of sidewalks, curbs, gutters, crosswalks, and culverts built, as well as about 9.5 miles of sewers laid.
As mentioned in the blog on several occasions, the city treasurer from 1901 to 1907, comprising three terms, was William H. Workman, who served several terms on what was called the Common Council in the 1860s and 1870s, was mayor in 1887 and 1888 during the peak years of the Boom of the Eighties as well as a member of the park commission during the last half of the Nineties. A rare Democrat to be elected to municipal offices during this period, Workman issued the briefest of statements, merely providing a table of expenditures with the balance as of 30 November 1903, monies paid out, funds coming in, transfers and apportionments debited and credit and the balance at the end of the reporting year.
The totals for the city coffers showed a starting balance of just under $1.42 million, but a year-end total of $2.35, because revenues were almost $5 million with expenditures not far over $4 million. Tax receipts were broken out under “Old City,” meaning the area embraced under the limits of the “pueblo grant” from the Spanish period, and the annexations of 1896 and 1899 (there were to be a great many more in subsequent years as the Angel City expanded dramatically). For 1903-1904, this involved about $670,000 and this leapt to around $897,000 for the 1904-1905 year, while water revenue was at $768,000—these being the most significant sources of revenue.
With respect to demands paid out, the water system involved $625,000 while the water works bond fund comprised another $337,000 and school bond payments were $260,000. The largest of the department expenditures were from the police department at $222,000; the fire department at $207,000; the schools at $160,000; street sprinkling at $155,000 and other street-related expenses at $148,000. The parks delineated by specific locations totaled $106,000, while demands for cash and salaries were $182,000 and $145,000, respectively, and franchises involved another $158,000. Other bond payments for bridges, storm drains and sewers and the construction of Los Angeles Polytechnic (now Francis Poly in Sun Valley) totaled around $245,000.
Tax Collector E.E. Johnson reported that totals for the “old city” of $1.44 million and of the 1896 ($163,000) and 1899 ($20,000) annexes, along with a few thousand dollars of 10% penalties, while total collections were $1.04 million ($921,000 in the “old city” and $104,000 and $15,000 in the respective annexes), leaving an uncollected amount of $587,000. It was observed that the fiscal tax year began the first Monday in March and that, by the first Monday in July, the city assessor was to complete the assessment rolls of real and personal property for the city clerk to give notice for the city council’s meetings as the board of equalization from mid-July to mid-August and determine the levy.
The clerk then worked on tax computations and referred these to the collector before mid-September with receipts provided to the city auditor. The collector had five days to publicly notify taxpayers of their due and payable amounts, with all of the personal and half of the real property levies due by the last Monday of November and the remainder of the latter due the last Monday of April—late payments were subject to levies of 10% and 5% for those periods.
The third Monday of June brought publication of the delinquent tax list and, after three weeks, property subject to unpaid taxes was to be sold to the city, with provisions for redemption within five years with payment of 10-100% fees with 7% annual interest attached. Five years from the sale date, the collector was to deed the unredeemed property to the city. License fees charged constituted some $435,000 with $36,000 of this cancelled. As to department expenses, salaries were well below $19,000 and books and printing were around $850.
Needless to say, the Board of Water Commissioners comprised an integral part of municipal affairs and two of its members were powerful figures in Los Angeles: Moses H. Sherman, a transportation and railroad magnate, and banker John M. Elliott, president of First National Bank and, later, owner of a large avocado grove at North Whittier (Hacienda) Heights, just south of the Homestead. The superintendent was William Mulholland, who would soon achieve national fame for his oversight of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, and subsequent related projects until the failure of the St. Francis Dam in April 1928 brought an ignominious end to his long career.
The board report began with the statement that
it is only necessary to call attention to the fact that 5,145 consumers were added during the year to those already supplied by the system, to show the extreme effort that had to be made to keep pace with the phenomenal growth of the city.
Nearly 38 miles of street mains, two reservoirs for distribution and pumping equipment and plants associated with 16 new wells also demonstrated how “the revenue of the Department, great as it may seem, was taxed to the limit to cover the unusually pressing expenditures.”
Another major event of the reporting year was the City’s acquisition of the West Los Angeles Water Company, which was unable to meet the demands of explosive growth and sold for $337,500, although an appraisal figure was given of just north of a half million dollars. Also part of the deal was the acknowledgment of the water company of its fault in taking water from the San Fernando Valley, which led to the municipality filing suit, as was an arrangement for the city to fill a reservoir on Franklin Avenue and the company, in turn, to pump that water into the city’s mains from its pumping station on Jefferson Street.
While the city grew by leaps and bounds and the local source of water was known to be limited, there was also the problem of supply from rain and snowmelt and, as has been pointed on this blog several time, there were several drought years in the 1890s and the winter of 1903-1904 was also one of low precipitation and the board duly noted,
The question of water supply owing to the lack of rainfall of last winter, following the great average deficiency of the past ten years, has reached an acute stage . . . This condition is further aggravated by the fact that the supply afforded by the San Fernando Watershed is being greatly diminished by the pumping plants in the valley recently installed by farmers.
The report observed that “almost the sole reason for the existence of the City of Los Angeles . . . was the never failing flow of the Los Angeles River” as without this source “there would have been no Los Angeles” whether as a town surrounded by “its surrounding productive agricultural settlement, or its present [status] as a busy modern city.” Previously, almost all of the river’s waters were controlled by the City with surplus often sold to landowners downstream to the south and it was fortunate that gravel deposits in the San Fernando Valley provided natural storage.
Yet, farmers began tapping these sources without legal claims to the water and this led to the City initiating legal action. Referring to San Francisco’s efforts to bring water from the Tuolumne River at a projected cost of some $40 million, the board could not see a similar effort being conducted by the Angel City and it continued “we know of no reliable streams within a reasonable distance of this city that remain unappropriated.” There were suggestions of drilling deep wells in the river bed north of the city, but it proved a failure and, while “no doubt a series of wet winters would serve to restore the yield of the valley to its former condition,” history demonstrated that a reliance of weather was uncertain. The hope was that a successful outcome of the suit would go a long way toward keeping a reasonable level of supply along with drilling wells south of the city.
Referring the City Council to the detailed report of Mulholland for more information, the board concluded that “the successful management of the Water Works in all practical details,” along with many improvements, “should be credited” to the man called “The Chief” by his subordinates and “who has been assiduous and able, and constantly alert for the good of the Department.”
For his part, Mulholland reiterated the sense of urgency that confronted the department, telling the board that “as is well known to you, so rapid has been the city’s growth that it has been as much as the resources of the Department could do to provide for the bare needs of the great influx of population that has come to our city in the past three years.” With regard to the “west side purchase,” the superintendent observed that the intense development in that area was such that the effort to “obviate a water famine there” and that “there still remains much heavy and expensive work” in what he characterized as “an ambitiously ornate manner” of current development.
Also discussed was a main conduit to the proposed Ivanhoe Reservoir just to the north of the Silver Lake Reservoir and how this was part of a program to upgrade the system through exposing “many weak places in what was left of the old pipe system.” While this “proved disastrous to much of the old plumbing,” the result was “not wholly an evil” because there would have been substandard components “permitted to remain in a state of drolling senility and wastefulness.”
Mulholland also referred to the Elysian Reservoir, on land acquired from surveyor Alfred Solano next to what had been a reservoir built by ex-mayor Prudent Beaudry when he was developing what became Bunker Hill and, to the south, Bellevue Terrace, while the Angeleno Reservoir was abandoned with the completion of the Elysian. He also briefly mentioned the Garvanza Reservoir, now covered, as well as discussed some 38 miles of new pipe, beyond that acquired from the West Los Angeles company or “the many miles of temporary pipe of small size that was laid to supply the great number of outlying tracts recently subdivided” and which required “hasty means of supplying water” before the Department could afford better pipes.
Concerning water supply, Mulholland reiterated that much of his two prior reports addressed mounting concerns, though it was hoped that the San Fernando Valley suit would be ruled in the City’s favor and that there would be “a resumption of the usual [whatever that meant since official records only went back to 1877—a point he subsequently made in his report] rainfall after the remarkable period of drought we have experienced since the winter of 1892-3.” He characterized the question of rights to river water from Valley farmers, claiming that they could draw from where the watercourse visibly flows as “a good example of the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.”
Noting that, the summer of 1904 found three instances in which “the city’s water supply reached a dangerous point,” the superintendent added that it was only through exhortation of residents and businesses to conserve “that we were enabled to weather through.” Previously, during “such heated terms,” surplus water reserved for irrigation could be withheld, “but the whole flow of the stream is now devoted to domestic use, and the Zanja system abandoned.” Mulholland remarked that the Los Angeles River “is certainly a noble stream to be found running in a semi-arid country after a long succession of dry years” and praised it “for its constancy and reliability as a source of municipal supply.”
He then noted that
There are but two other streams on this side of the mountains that can at all compare with it, but it would cost many millions to purchase either of them, as their waters have been used from time immemorial to water the rich agricultural sections created by such use.
The time has come, however, when we shall have to supplement its flow from some other source. This does not, of course, mean its abandonment . . .
What Mulholland meant with the “two other streams” were the San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers and the mere contemplation of a purchase or one or the other seems fantastical at best, but it reveals some of the desperation animating the minds of Angel City officials as they contemplated a near future of running out of supply. Even allowing for “panicky droughts” and the fact that there was no water to fill park lakes, “The Chief” noted that there were ways to impound water so that they “can be kept fresh even for domestic use indefinitely” and, if this was applied in Los Angeles, “the lakes need not be sacrificed.”
As for “future supply,” Mulholland noted that, if rainfall returned to “normal,” and the lawsuit settled in the city’s favor, there would be ample water for the next year, while two well projects, one at the city boundary near Compton Avenue and the other four miles south at “Narrows Gallery,” could yield 9 million gallons daily, but these would represent nearly “the limit” of what the department could do locally. He pointed out that well-intended suggestions to tap mountain sources were ill-informed because these were already appropriated and were also the first to run dry during drought. Moreover, water was being taken from these sources faster than they could be replenished even during seasons with the heaviest of rains.
Mulholland added that, in a semi-arid environment with low rainfall, Los Angeles needed a much larger drainage basin than was extant to support its unflagging growth and he observed that
as this city takes her rank among the large cities of the United States (and many believe that it is her destiny to do so), the per capita cost of her water works will necessarily exceed that of any of her sisters, due to her geographical position . . . In curious contrast to this is the fact that her present works have in all probability cost her citizens less in proportion to population than any city in the United States.
Even though use dropped 35% in two years, consumption was still excessive and he was hoping for another 40% decline in usage, because this would mean “our last summer’s supply,” low as it was, “would be sufficient for a population of 275,000.” Nowhere was the idea mentioned of pursuing abundant water sources well above 200 miles away from the Owens Valley of eastern California, but Mulholland and Fred Eaton made trips there and began acquiring land and water rights in 1905 for the aqueduct project that assured far greater levels of growth than existed in 1904 and before.
A good deal of statistical data was then presented by the superintendent, including about meters, water pipe laid, the number of fire hydrants in the city (861), and total services (nearly 40,000). Department Auditor L.M. Anderson noted that income was $773,000, 90% of its from customer billings, while about $5,000 in excess was expended, two thirds from additions and improvements and an eighth from operations, while another 20% was from interest and the sinking fund (money set aside to pay debt) on bonds. Anderson provided monthly totals for receipts and disbursements, as well and, for the three years since February 1902, noted that revenues climbed by 70%, but expenses were almost double that—still there was a small balance of $18,000 overall.
There is a small section at the end of the report dedicated to describing the Angel City’s history, population growth, climate, banks, railways, and other information, so we’ll conclude with a part twelve soon. We hope you’ll check that out when it is posted.