City Council Administration Costs

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21315, 7 November 1934, Page 10

City Council Administration Costs

The debate at the City Council meeting on Monday evening on Cr. Armstrong's proposal for a general public enquiry into the costs of the City Council administration was illuminating, not so much for what was said as for its implications, and for what was left unsaid. Cr. Armstrong did not himself advance any very cogent reasons for his motion but Citizens' Association councillors said sufficient to indicate that there was good warrant for it. The replies of Labour party councillors to at least two of the charges made, indicating with considerable clarity the working of the party mind, disclosed candid acceptance of some extraordinary views. Labour party members, for instance, concurred quite readily in Cr. Milliken's charge that the reason for rejecting a lowest tender for the supply of coal to the Municipal Electricity Department was the allegation that the tenderer was a firm which did not pay as high wages as that submitting the tender that was ultimately accepted. One Labour councillor described the lowest tenderer as " an enemy of work- " ing men and that was apparently considered a good and sufficient reason for incurring additional expense. In other words the lowest tender was rejected wholly and solely on grounds no more strongly based than prejudice created by political gossip. The astonishing frankness with which this admission was made should give ratepayers some small indication of what they have a right to expect from an administration that places party politics first and economy a problematical second. But extraordinary as this admission was, it was capped by the disarming frankness of Cr. Thurston, who admitted that a motor-car had been provided at the expense of the council to take him to Timaru and back. He had indeed insisted on this arrangement when he had agreed to stay in Christchurch the previous evening for a council meeting at which an important decision was to [be made and upon which every party vote would count. Obviously Cr. Thurston saw nothing reprehensible in this arrangement. It doubtless would not occur to him to consider whether the expense of his trip would not more properly have been charged to the party that so urgently required his voting services. But that is the point; and it is a point upon which ratepayers, who

paid for the trip, are entitled to demand a more reasonable explanation. The fact is that few ratepayers will regard Cr. Thurston's journey at their expense as other than thoroughly reprehensible and improper. If the two instances quoted are a fair sample of the way in which l the ratepayers' money is being spent to serve the interests of a political party, it is a safe assumption that there are equally unsatisfactory happenings that have not yet been made public. If that is so, Cr. Armstrong's enquiry is not only desirable, but urgently necessary.