Death on Taxes

Forty-eight hours after he moved up to manage Esso's sprawling oil refinery at Bayonne, N.J. on New Year's Day, mild-mannered Dr. David F. Edwards, 54, sent the city an ultimatum. Bayonne, which was threatening to raise Esso's taxes another $400,000 a year, must give up any idea of increased taxes, instead cut its operating budget by 10% within two weeks. If it did not, Esso would cancel its $2,000,000 modernization program at the Bayonne plant, and very likely move out altogether--just as Tidewater Oil Co. did two years ago. The Esso plant pays one-fourth of the tax bill of Bayonne (pop. 81,500), has a $1,000,000 monthly payroll for its 1,800 workers. Said Mississippi-born Edwards: "If we pull out and shift the tax load to other industries, a number of these other industries will also pull out. The city would go bankrupt."

Frantic city fathers, merchants and clergymen called hand-wringing emergency town meetings. Manager Edwards appeared at many of the sessions, waving a pocket slide rule. He argued that Bayonne was living too high off the hog; e.g., it has 13.3 municipal employees per 1,000 residents, against a national average of 10.4 per 1,000.

As the deadline drew near last week, Edwards won his point. The city commissioners agreed to a budget of $7,237,861, $1,234,143 below the proposed 1957 figure. To do it, the city slashed the $2,000 Memorial Day Parade Fund to $500, dropped plans to raise the pay of its 1,084 city employees, ordered policemen and firemen to buy their own uniforms, decided not to fill vacancies in many city jobs, ^ and fired 44 municipal employees. The first to go: the mayor's brother, City Bus Supervisor James DiDomenico.

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