of sixteen assessors as herein provided for, the mayor of the city of Brooklyn, immediately after the passage of this act, shall appoint two suitable persons to be assessors of said city in addition to the fourteen assessors holding office at the time of the passage of this act, which two said assessors shall take office immediately upon their appointment and qualification. The term of office of the said two additional assessors shall expire on the first day of September, nineteen hundred and one, and their successors shall be appointed and shall hold office for the same term as the successors of the other assessors in the city of Brooklyn. Any money required to pay the salaries for the year eighteen hundred and ninety-six of the two additional assessors hereby authorized, shall be taken from the revenue fund. [Thus amended by Laws 1896, chap. 543.]

§ 2. The president shall be the head of the said department; he shall preside at all meetings of the board, and in his absence the assessors may appoint a president pro tempore.

§ 3. The said assessors shall make out the assessment-lists and rolls for local improvements and taxes, and perform such other duties as may be required of them under the direction of the president. Said board of assessors shall have power, and it shall be their duty, to make all assessments for taxes and local improvements except for sewers, in the city of Brooklyn, in the manner by this act or other laws provided, and all provisions of law now applicable to the assessors of Brooklyn, or towns in this State, in relation to assessments for taxes in said city, are hereby declared to apply to the assessors to be appointed under this act. The ward maps made, or to be made, shall continue to be in the custody of said board of assessors, and all assessments shall refer to said maps, except in cases where they do not exist; and where a portion of any lot of land laid down on said maps shall be taken for any improvement, the residue shall be deemed liable to be assessed for such improvement; and land occupied by a person other than the reputed owner may be assessed in the name of the occupant. Where two or more lots shown upon said maps are improved as one parcel, they may be assessed together. No tax, assessment or water rate, and no amount by way of tax, assessment and water rate, heretofore levied or fixed, adjusted, determined, and certified with reference to any property situated within the city of Brooklyn, and no pending proceeding for the sale or pending sale or notice of the sale of any such property for the nonpayment of any such tax, assessment, water rate or amount, shall be held or declared to be invalid or ineffectual by reason of the fact that two or more lots shown on said maps, whether vacant or improved, have been valued or assessed as one parcel, or by reason of the fact that such tax,

assessment, water rate or amount has been levied or fixed, adjusted, determined and certified upon two or more such lots tied together as one parcel, but all such taxes, assessments, water rates and amounts so levied or fixed, adjusted, determined and certified, and all such pending proceedings are hereby ratified, made valid and effectual in the law. [Thus amended by Laws 1895, chap. 1015.]

§ 4. In all assessments of lands and tenements hereafter to be made, whether for benefits from local improvements, or the opening, widening, and extending of streets, avenues, squares, parks and places, also for water rates, in addition to the known street numbers, if there be any, the same ward or block numbers shall be used to designate the lots as are or may be used to designate them in assessments for taxes, and o other numbers shall be necessary, except where no ward or block numbers exist. In case ward maps do not exist for any ward or wards, or portions thereof, the common council shall as soon as they shall deem it advisable, cause the same to be made. In every assessment for a local improvement, there shall be added two per cent. for assessors' fees for the benefit of the city.

§ 5. There shall be ruled in the yearly assessment-rolls for taxes in each ward, six additional columns, which shall be headed, respectively, as follows: "amounts received," "cashbook," "volume, folio," "reductions and cancellations," "notices," arrears," assessments due." These columns shall be used in the manner and for the purposes specified in this act. [Thus amended by Laws 1889, chap. 368.]

99 66

§ 6. There shall be included in every assessment for local improvements hereafter made and confirmed, such amount as may be necessary to reimburse to the city the interest upon all advances made in executing such improvements; such interest always to be computed to dates three months subsequent to the times of confirmation of such assessments respectively, and the amounts so included in assessments for interest, as well as the amounts collected for interest on assessments, shall be appropriated and applied to the payment of interest on the city bonds issued, on account of the improvements for which such assessments were levied, and it shall be the duty of the board of assessors within three months after the amount of an assess ment shall have been determined, to apportion the same upon the property benefited, and to return the list thereof to the com mon council for confirmation.

§ 7. In determining value of personal property to be assessed for taxes, the assessors shall have the power to examine, upon oath, every person whom they shall believe ought to be assessed

for such property, and shall also have power to examine, under oath, such other persons, as witnesses, in relation thereto, as they may deem proper, and for that purpose may administer oaths and issue process to compel the attendance of witnesses before them. Any person who shall refuse to make under oath, a full disclosure of all the facts necessary to enable the assessors to make a fair and just assessment of his or her personal property, when duly called upon by the assessors to do so, or to answer such questions as may be put to him or her in relation thereto, shall be assessed a gross sum, which in their judgment will be to the full amount of his personal estate, and shall forfeit for one year all the rights and privileges given by this act, or by the laws for the assessment and collection of taxes to persons aggrieved by erroneous or excessive assessments. It shall be the duty of the board of assessors to cause circular notices to be sent through the post-office, or otherwise, to all persons and corporations assessed by them for personal property, stating therein the amount assessed, also the time during which, and the place where applications may be made for the correction of such assessments, if the same be erroneous. All such notices shall have printed on them the provisions of this act relating to assessments of personal property.

§ 8. They shall make up and complete, by the first of June, in each year, their valuations of taxable property in the several wards as estimated and assessed by them, and the assessed valuations of real and personal estate so made shall be entered in detail in books kept by said board, called "annual record of the assessed valuations of real and personal estate," which books shall be kept open for examination and correction until the first day of July, when they shall be closed. During the time said books shall be open, said assessors shall give due notice thereof as required by law, and during that time, application may be made by any person aggrieved by the assessed valuation of his or her real or personal estate, to have the same corrected. In case such application be made in relation to the valuation of real estate, it must be in writing stating the ground of objection thereto. If in relation to personal property, the applicant shall be examined upon oath.

§ 9. It shall be the duty of the said assessors to attend during such examination, and review and to make corrections in the descriptions of property and in the assessed valuations thereof, if in their judgment the same are erroneous. The said assessors shall cause to be prepared from the said " books of annual record," after the same shall have been duly corrected, assessment-rolls or tax books for each ward of said city respectively, which shall be duly sworn to by at least two of the assessors, according to

oath provided by law in regard to assessment-rolls in the different towns of this State, and further to the effect that they have together personally examined, within the year past, each and every lot or parcel of land, house, building or other accessible property, and such assessment-rolls or tax book shall, on or before the first day of August, be delivered to the board of supervisors of Kings county, which board shall proceed thereon in the manner required by law for the laying and collection of No tax levied and confirmed, or attempted to be levied and confirmed, upon the various lots, pieces and parcels of land in the several wards, except the twenty-sixth ward, in the city of Brooklyn, since the year eighteen hundred and sixty-one, shall be held or declared to be invalid by reason of the failure or omission of the assessors of said city, or of two of them to swear to the corrected assessment-rolls or books of each or of any of the wards of said city, or to write or indorse upon said rolls an affidavit for the several years since the year aforesaid, or for any such years, to the effect that they have together personally examined within the past year each and every lot or parcel of land, house, building or other accessible property within the ward; or to the effect that they have together personally examined within the year past each and every lot or parcel of land, house, building or other accessible property. The taxes, so far as the same remain unpaid, which were levied and confirmed, or attempted to be levied and confirmed, by the supervisors of the county of Kings upon the various lots, pieces and parcels of land in the several wards of the city of Brooklyn for each and every year since the year eighteen hundred and sixty-one, as the same appear and were carried out on the several assessmentrolls or books of said several wards for each and every of said years, are hereby in all respects and for all purposes made and declared good and valid and effectual in law; and the acts of the said supervisors, in each of said years, in apportioning, levying and confirming the taxes upon the various lots, pieces and parcels of land designated upon said rolls or books, and in issuing and delivering warrants for the collection of such taxes, are hereby ratified and confirmed and made valid and effectual, and the said taxes remaining unpaid, shall be payable with interest at the rate of nine per cent. per annum, from the date of such original confirmation, except as otherwise provided in section three of title eight of this act.

§ 10. The board of assessors shall have power to rectify any errors committed in the laying of any tax or assessment, as well for general purposes as for any local improvement, only in the following cases:

1. When the error is entirely clerical.

2. When there is a mistake in the name of the party taxed or assessed.

3. When the quantity of the real estate, or nature of the buildings and improvements thereon shall be erroneously given.

4. When the personal estate shall be overestimated, and the party assessed shall have been prevented from inspecting the assessment-rolls, by sickness or absence from the city, during the said time the same were open for examination and correction.

5. When property has been assessed that was by law exempt from tax at the time the assessment was laid. Such power shall be exercised only upon satisfactory proof of error, but no correction shall be valid until it shall have been certified to by the comptroller, and the collector of taxes and assessments, and duly entered, in red ink, in the assessment-list or lists of money in the department of collection.

§ 11. If a sum of money in gross has been or shall be taxed for general purposes, or assessed for any city improvement upon any lands or premises, any person or persons claiming to be interested in any divided or undivided part thereof, may pay such part of the said sum, also of the interest and charges due or charged thereon, as the board of assessors may deem and certify to be just and equitable, and the remainder of the sum of money, so taxed or assessed, together with the interest and charges, shall be a lien upon the residue of the lands and premises only, which may be sold according to law to satisfy the residue of such assessment, tax, interest and charges, in the same manner as though the residue of said assessment and tax has been imposed upon the residue of said lands or premises. It shall be the duty of the said board of assessors, to make any such apportionment upon application by any person interested, accompanied by a diagram of the property, showing the true limits and extent of the interest of such applicant, and all such apportionments shall be recorded in the office of said board, and also noted in red ink on the assessment-rolls or assessment registers in the department of collection or in the department of arrears.

§ 12. Any person, who shall, by reason of any mistake by himself or his agent, pay a tax, or assessment for water rates, or for benefit, upon real estate belonging to another person or persons, shall have a right of action to recover in any court having jurisdiction, from the party owning the real estate at the time of levying such tax or assessment, the sum which he shall have paid erroneously as aforesaid, with interest thereon; but he shall have no claim upon or recourse to the city for such erroneous payment.