The city has made notable improvements in the fire department, thus placing it on a high standard of efficiency. First and foremost is the purchase of [a] new pumper, auxiliary truck and other much-needed equipment, and scarcely less important is the building of a new fire hall just on the edge of the business district, costing approximately $15,000. This new fire hall will be modern in all particulars, with the ground space allotted to firefighting equipment and a repair shop, and with provision in the second story for quarters for the fire chief, a dormitory for regular members and volunteers, a recreation hall, shower baths, etc. There is also provided extra vacant lots and a drill towers where necessary fire drills can be put on without interfering with traffic.
    Another important improvement to the city is the building of the new city hall costing $60,000, which was authorized by vote of the people in order to move the courthouse to Medford. It is furnished free to Jackson County for five years, at the end of which time it will return to the city for use as a city hall. This new building is located at Fifth Street, just one block from one of the main business streets, is ideally located as a new city hall, is of concrete construction, three stories high, and while it will shortly be inadequate for use as a county courthouse it will be adequate for many years to come to house the city offices.
    Quite a bit of the cost of this building will be paid for by savings made by the citizens and the city itself in not having to go to Jacksonville on all city and council business. Provision was also made that when the old city hall is sold the money received is to be used in taking up the new bonds, with the result that with these two sources available very little, if any, of the cost of the city hall will be reflected in increased taxes.
    A new warehouse, used jointly by the water department and the street department, is another much-needed improvement. An up-to-date building of concrete, it houses all of the city equipment. This building cost much less than the others, only some $10,000, and is paid for by the sale of a couple of vacant lots which the city owned on South Riverside Avenue which, due to the growth of that section of the town, had increased materially in value.
    Among other improvements during recent years has been the opening up of Sixth Street as a major traffic artery; nicely paved with concrete, it will increase the values all along the thoroughfare. More recently a movement has been started for a modern lighting system, and bids will be let at the first meeting of the new year for its first installation, thus in a few short months transforming Sixth Street from a non-important closed thoroughfare to a major business artery.
    It might be thought that the above enumeration is quite a sufficient recital of recent improvements, but they are not all.
    The city purchased the Jacksonville railroad, in order to hold it for railroad developments and a possible sawmill; has dredged Bear Creek for some four or five blocks in order to remove the menace of flood danger, and purchased a grader and street roller which the city sadly needed in order to grade and repair its streets, this latter equipment being purchased without cost to the taxpayers out of the city's part of the county road money which it obtained for the first time this year.
    In the past year or more the city has laid four miles of water mains, three and a quarter miles of sewers, graded and graveled four miles of streets and paved, either with concrete or asphalt, about three miles of street, a total improvement of approximately $200,000, one-half of which has been for paving. Compared with the vast amount of work done in 1910 to 1912, the recent paving program has been less than 10 percent, but sewer improvements have been approximately one-third of those in former years, while the water mains recently laid have been more than equal to the amount laid in the former years, due to the laying of a new distributing system in connection with the new Big Butte water system.
    Building permits during the past four years [have] held up remarkably well, showing practically no decrease for 1926 over 1925 when they were $779,000, and only an approximate $100,000 decrease for each of the years 1927-1928, running well over a half million dollars for the year just passed.
    Not a little of the building has been due to the policy of the city in selling off the city lots taken over by it for delinquent assessments, on convenient terms that could be met by its citizens and at reasonable prices. For the first time in ten years the year just past saw the city with its shelves cleaned of practically all of its paved lots.
    While it still has a few, and a good many lots off the pavement which it has had to take over, yet compared with something more than 2,000 lots that were originally delinquent, a great part of which it actually had to take over, the assessment problem is well on its way to solution, after many years of the most arduous work on the part of former mayors, councilmen and city employees.
    It is estimated that [with] another year or two of continued growth, the city will have cleaned up all of the lots, marking the completion of ten years of work in clearing up this most difficult problem.
    One might go in for another column if one were to relate all of the improvements which have come to Medford in the past little while, but suffice it to say that all these improvements show a big growth of our city, and not only growth but hard work and intelligent efforts of the recent administrations and of the various mayors, councilmen, water commissioners and city officials who have had these tasks in charge.