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ISSUES IN SYLVAN SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1739
1916 TO 1930

To save the estimated one hundred dollars that the work would cost if contracted, the three trustees and five other ratepayers did it on a volunteer basis. To cover the cost of transporting the children, the mother was offered a dollar a day in the form of a two month advance to buy a horse, provided she found the harness and buggy, an offer she accepted. Much to the board's consternation however, she changed her mind and refused to allow the eldest child, a boy of thirteen, to drive the horse and wanted instead to have the children boarded and lodged at Lac Ste. Anne. Despite Street's protests to the Deputy Minister of Education at the expense involved (ten dollars per week) not to mention the trouble taken to repair the road, the children were sent to Lac Ste. Anne.⁹ Fortunately for the district's bank account, the lady took advantage of this arrangement for only eight days after which she and her family moved out of the area.¹⁰
By the end of 1920 the situation began to change in the Sylvan S.D. The war had been over for two years and the unemployment resulting from the returning soldiers combined with post-war inflation to make subsistence farming preferable to out-right starvation in the cities, and so families began to filter back into the district. As a result, it became obvious that a school would have to be established to serve the growing number of children. The original school which had closed in 1915 now lay outside the boundaries of the district (the borders having been redrawn in 1919). Once it was decided to open a school, the furnishings were moved to a vacant house owned by a Mrs. C.B. Walker on SE36 Tp53 R4 W5th and school was carried on there in the spring of 1921 until a new building was put up. This undertaking involved for Sylvan and for many other small districts, a considerable sacrifice of both money and labour. In March of 1921 a tax rate of eleven cents per acre was introduced to assist in funding. This represented about seven hundred dollars assuming all taxes were paid (an unlikely occurence).¹¹ Even before this money was forthcoming though, a building was purchased in the nearby Hamlet of Wabamun for the sum of three hundred and twenty-five dollars and seventy-five cents. Seventy-five dollars was paid to have it pulled apart and a William Watts was contracted to build a combined school and teacher's residence for two hundred dollars on the SW36 Tp53 R4 W5th. Again, to save money, much work was done by the ratepayers on a strictly voluntary basis.

Our Chairman (Mr. A.E. Allen) in order to help our poor
district had, himself, hauled up the hills, the many loads
of materials from the Wabamun house.¹²

This same benefactor also donated three acres of land on which the school was to be built.
Thus, by the fall of 1921 the new school was finished and opened its' doors to eight children on September twelfth, free and clear of all encumbrances "even to the last nail and the paint."¹³ The effort had impoverished the community though and, since taxes were not due until the following April, the Board was forced to borrow three hundred dollars to cover the teacher's salary of eighty-four dollars a month until school closed for the winter near the end of November.

FINANCES

The problem of finding sufficient funds for operating was of paramount importance for most Boards during the period from 1916 to 1930. Schools and roads had to be built and money for this to a large extent had to come from taxes levied on the ratepayers. Unfortunately, the inflation caused by the war boom, the unemployment that resulted soon after, and poor prices for farm produce in the late Twenties all conspired to make cash a scarce commodity. Thus, when it came to cutting financial corners it was usually the property taxes which went unpaid, particularly if one did not live in the district and therefore did not have to face the board. While a district had the right to declare lands forfeit against which property taxes were in arrears and could sell them for taxes, there was little point in going through the complicated seizure process. Street summarized the situation in a letter to the Deputy Minister in 1922:

The Tax Enforcement Act is no benefit to us
for when a farm is offerd by auction there is
no bidder so we not only do not get the
arrears but the farm ceases to be taxable.¹⁴

The only other solution was to try and pry the money out of the miscreants by direct confrontation or through the services of a collection agency.¹⁵ This procedure was further complicated by the passage of the Tax Arrears Act by the Alberta legislature in 1919. Essentially, it allowed the consolidation of all tax arrears up until December of 1918 into eight equal instalments of blended principal and interest to be paid annually.¹⁶ The result was that back taxes, instead of being immediately payable, could be prorated over eight years, much to the consternation of boards who were chronically short of immediate cash.

In Sylvan tax arrears were a constant bane for the Board of Trustees throughout this period. In 1916 a list of delinquents turned over to the Great West Agency for collection indicated twelve ratepayers in arrears for a total of $384.22.¹⁷ One of these accounts dated back to 1908, eight years previous. Fourteen years later in 1930 the tax roll for the district showed thirteen owners in arrears in the audit in an amount totalling $500.50 while the assessable area rose by some 1,288 acres in the period. Nevertheless, this five hundred dollars represented sixty-nine percent of the $721.02 in taxes due that year.¹⁸
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⁹ Letter; September 2, 1920
¹⁰ Correspondence; p.66.
¹¹Ibid; p. 73.
¹² Ibid; p. 82.
¹³ Ibid; p. 83.
¹⁴ Ibid; p. 90.
¹⁵ Ibid; p. 8.
¹⁶ Statutes of Alberta 1919
¹⁷ Correspondence; p.8.
¹⁸ Tax Roll of Sylvan School District No. 1739.

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Sylvan School History