Estimates and Rates.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19985, 21 July 1930, Page 10

Estimates and Rates.

It will not be long before the Christchurch City Council passes the estimates for the present financial year and fixes the rates; and the obstinate upward tendency of local rating has made this a business which ratepayers cannot think of without anxiety. Previous expectations of reduced or at least stabilised rates have been so sharply disappointed that it would not be altogether surprising if ratepayers now inclined to consider the annual rating only as a questioto of how much more; but they should not, and do not, and have at the present time specially strong reasons for insisting that the Council must ease the burden. So far as general rating is concerned; the precise figure arrived at in striking the rata matters less than the. total sum to be collected from the ratepayers; in recent years that has gone

steadily up. Wot the financial year 1927-28 the general rate levy was £124,539; the following year it was £125,079; and for the financial year which closed last March it had risen to £147,536. The general expenditure, met by general rate and by other sources of income such as license fees, etc., advanced from £176,827 in 1927-28 to £194,808 in 1928-29. What it will amount to for the financial year 1929-30 will not be known until the annual accounts are issued; but there is this fact to go on, that the estimated general expenditure for 1929-30 totalled £211,867, as against £198,617 for the preceding year, and £191,718 foi 1927-28. It must also be remembered that special loans with special rating provide for much of the work undertaken by the municipality, and that a growing proportion of this special rating is imposed without reference to the ratepayers at all. There is also the big roading loan of £220,000. now being spent, and intended to cover a four-year period, of which eighteen months have expired, while the expenditure up till now is about £90,000. It might have been anticipated that, as more works were done with loan money and special rating, a reduction would ,follow in general expenditure and general rating; but nothing of the sort has happened. The position must be faced promptly and courageously, for expenditure cannot be allowed to mount indefinitely without its producing results disastrous to those who have to provide the funds. The present Council will be doing a duty with which the opinion of the ratepayers unquestionably charges it, if it sets its face resolutely against any expenditure not absolutely essential. It must spend less, and get full value for What it does spend.