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Officer to ASSESS the value of House property in Hongkong for the purpose of levying the Police, Water, Fire, and Lighting rates. This subject has been carefully considered during the past year by the Colonial Secretary and also by the Surveyor General, and the Treasurer; and the enclosed Memorandum sets forth recommendations which are fully concurred in by all those officers, and which have since been unanimously adopted by the Executive Council and by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council, which is prepared to vote the necessary expenditure.
It is shown in this Memorandum that these rates which in 1849 were estimated at £2500, rose in 1860 to £16,000, in 1890, to £36,000, and that at the present moment they amount to no less than $250,000, (equal to about £46,000), in spite of the very imperfect and unsatisfactory manner in which, owing to a want of technical knowledge of building-values, the assessments are now made. It is confidently anticipated that an increase of at least 20 per cent, by an