'FOOLISH SYSTEM.'

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 56, 7 March 1934, Page 5

'FOOLISH SYSTEM.'

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

TOO MANY PUBLIC BODIES.

MAYOR'S CAUSTIC COMMENTS,

Some caustic comments on the present system —or want of system of local government, were made by the Mayor of Lower Hutt, Mr. J. W. Andrews, on Monday evening, states "The Pest." "I want to say just a word or two concerning the job you have given me to do," he said at a public meeting. "I want to tell you that I am doing my very best to serve you well, but existing conditions take almost all the stuffing out of one. I believe that our system of local government is a foolish one; that we have too many boards and councils; and too many members on all of them. There is probably no more glaring example of what I refer to than the one in our midst. "Why we need four Mayors and 30 or 40 councillors, part of a county Council, a river board, a gas board, an eleetic power board, a city and suburban highways board, and dozens of social workers' committees, and other bodies, with their separate office buildings ana all their armies of permanent staffs, to indifferently control the district from Upper Hutt to Eastbourne is beyond my understanding," said Mr. Andrews. "My own job is no better and not muc worse than I expected it to be, but am having it forced upon me more ana more every dav what an absurdity 1 a is. One devotes three or four hours every day to routine borough work, in an executive capacity, and say five or six hours to interviews with harassed relief workers or their wives in need or f. home or more food, and an odd one o two presiding at some public or social function. At the end of the <^ a y one j thinks how much better it could all have been done by a manager specia y trained and possessing qualifications, assisted yferf^

"At Petone and Eastbourne and Upper Hutt the same routine is being gone through daily and the same feeling of impotence must frequently overcome their Mayors. And the same problems are being settled four times by four Mayors and councils, instead of once by one Mayor or manager, to say nothing of the problems left to the other bodies with rating powers who are elected separately and who spend other money provided by the same set of ratepayers, "In the interests of efficiency and economy some way out of this must be found. I am afraid that our alleged democracies have outgrown their usefulness in the continual further decentralising and duplication of control.