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Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association
*Ulf AM lax
In the annual budget levied in 1908 there was incorpo-
rated a provision for a half mill tax for park purposes.
This tax was again levied in 1909 and seems now to be a
regular established item of municipal expenditure. The
amount realized in 1909 was $12,460 and the amount this
year will be $14,750. The time has gone by when it is nec-
essary to advance any arguments to the tax payers of Madi-
son in favor of a reasonable expenditure for park purposes.
The parks of Madison are their own best advocates. It is
believed that the tax payers generally pay willingly to 50
cents which is thus levied for park purposes on each $1,000
of the assessed valuation of their property.
£rthob of #ttrming Oubsrriptono
Anyone who has had anything to do with circulating sub-
scription papers knows the enormous labor involved in se-
curing subscriptions from a membership the size of ours.
Owing to the fact that the subscribers are scattered all over
the city, that many of them have no regular places of busi-
ness, that many of them are liable to be out of the city or
otherwise absent when the solicitor calls on them, it is nec-
essary to go over the city repeatedly and to spend many
valuable hours in the fruitless endeavor to make a thor-
ough canvass. To meet these conditions some way had to
be devised to lessen the work of securing the subscriptions.
The plan of postal card subscriptions has been in success-
ful operation for several years. This year the method was
as follows: In the latter part of January, the directors in-
vited a number of representative citizens to meet with them
and go over the list of subscribers for the past year and to
add to it persons who had not been subscribers. The com-
mittee then decided what in their judgment would be a