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Mr.' W. ft. House 14 April 1, 1952 "While a number of courts have takes the view that public utilities operated by a mu­nicipal corporation for compensation, such as waterworks or gasworks or an eleetrie light plant, are taxable, upon the theory that the implied exemption of publicly owned property extends only to property used for government­al, and not merely for public purposes, the majority rule is that property owned by a mu­nicipal corporation is exempt if it is devot­ed to public purposes, whether these purposes are governmental or primarily for the benefit of Ita own citizens, and accordingly, that mu­nicipally owned power and light plant®, as wa­terworks , gasworks, transit systems, and other public utilities distributing commodities and services to the public for compensation, which are for a public, although not for a govern­mental, use, are included within the meaning of statutes exempting the property of munici­pal subdivisions, the feet that a city sup­plies water to a soldiers * home lying partly within and partly without the city limits does not alter the nature of its waterworks as pub­lic property devoted to a public use, within the meaning of constitutional and statutory provisions exempting property so used from taxation. In this connection it has basn pointed out that a 'municipal purpose1 with­in the meaning of a constitutional provision for exemption from taxation of property used exclusively for municipal purposes is no long­er restricted to such enterprises as are strict­ly governmental, but comprehends all activities essential to the health, morals, protection,and welfare of the municipality.* An annotation on the subject of "Distinction between governmental and proprietary functions of state or its a-gency as affecting taxation* in 155 A.L.H. 423 discusses this problem end refers to a number of related annotations in A dealing with the subject of tax exemption. An­other helpful set of annotations which are referred to in the preceding annotation are the annotations in 3 A.L.H.,