Letter from H. I. Bettis (Los Angeles) to J. Ross Clark, October 17, 1906

Maintenance water system Las Vegas. Los Angeles, Cal., October 17,1906. Mr. J.Ross Clark, Second Vice President, B u i l d i n g . Dear Sir: This acknowledges receipt of your letter written on line, October 14th and enclosing copy of letter from Mr. Bancroft dated October 2nd, relative to maintenance of Las Vegas water system. As I stated to you verbally some time last month, when the Las Vegas Land & Water Company was organized I had a talk with Chief Engineer Hood, of the Southern Pacific, who at that time dictated a memorandum for me setting forth the manner in which this would have been handled were it a Southern Pacific matter, and which was in effect about as follows: The Land and Water Company would reimburse the Railroad Com-pany for i t s total expenditure for lands, water, e t c . ; the Land & Water Company would pay the entire cost of constructing the pipe line from the springs and the cost of distributing pipe line in the town, exclusive of the cost of tank and the local pipe line used purely for railroad purposes; that the Railroad Company would receive all the water i t might require for s t r i c t l y railroad purposes forever and free of charge, and that its right-of-way and i t s station grounds would have cost nothing. To me the above plan seems to be the best for all parties concerned. The Las Vegas Land & Water Company paid $50,000.00 for i t s property and about $12,000.00 for i t s water system, and in ad-dition to this it spent approximately $50,000.00 for street work, and, yet, were all its outstanding contracts for lots to be cancelled to-day and no further money be received from the sale of l o t s , its balance sheet would s t i l l show a profit of $100,000.00. It can, therefore, well afford to pay for the pipe line, and i f thought ad-visable pay the Railroad Company some additional compensation for the land, including the water, on the west side of the track, which has not, as yet, been transferred to i t . As the matter now stands the Land & Water Company has loaned to the Railroad Company nearly $90,000.00, upon which the Railroad Company should pay the Land & Water Company interest,unless the directors of the Land & Water Company were to hold a meeting and declare a dividend. It seems to me that it would be very much better that the Land & Water Company should not have such an enormous pro-f i t and that it should not pay dividends. The earnings from the sale of water since January 1, 1906, have been as follows: Earnings, $1167.95 Amount unpaid, 97.00 Net receipts, $1070.95 Yours truly, (Signed) H.I.Bettis, Auditor.