The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 1935. HIGHER COSTS: LESS WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 1935. HIGHER COSTS: LESS WORK.

For the cause that tacks as fin taric«, For the wronr/ that needs resistanot, For the future in the distance, Atui the good th-al we can do.

In 103(3 thp Auckland City Council secured .llic approval of the ratepayers —tu lie precise, the approval of a majority of t!ie 12 per cent of flic ratepayers who bothered to vote —for a works programme of £377.000. The works, financed by loan money, give employment to more than 300 men, and by November 30 last a substantial number of the planned projects had been completed. But, though they were estimated to cost £..84,960, they cost £101.603, or nearly 20 per cent more than had been provided. In consequence, the City Council last night had to face the fact that- the whole programme cannot be completed as planned, I even by the legally allowable increase of the I original loan by 30 per cent. The Council : therefore agreed to curtail some of the remaining projects and so save £29,000, and to apply to the Minister of Labour for an increase in the rate of subsidy. This decision —- and no doubt it was inevitable, for the city engineer advised that an increase of from 20 to 25 per cent on the original estimates must he allowed for to meet increased costs of labour, materials and services—should be carefully considered bv ratepayers, for it is a major indication of a. universal tendency.

j IHo cost of doing (he work that the com|munity wants done has increased, and so— j unless more money can. be borrowed, or extracted from taxpayers and ratepayers—less work, can be done. The streets upon which work was begun first were completed as planned, but others—St. Ilclier's Bay and Koliiniarama roads, for example—will have less spent on them than the ratepayers in those districts expected and voted for. Other projects—such as the rclining of water mains and the construction of access roads—deemed necessary when the programme was drawn up, have been suspended. The Council has hopes of securing l an increase in the Government subsidy, but if its request is granted it will mean only that there will be an additional drain on the employment fund, which is built up by taxing salaries and wages. If the request is not granted, the men employed will be out of a job sooner than they expected. This experience of the Auckland City Council is merely a prominent, example of the workingout of the Government's policy. What is to be the end of it? On that there may be several opinions, but the probable interim results will be a slackening of enterprise, public and private, a consequent reduction in the demand for labour, and an increase in unemployment.