City Rates

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23394, 30 July 1941, Page 6

City Rates

, The (1941-42 estimates were adopted and the i covering rate was struck by the Christchurch \ City Council, on Monday night, without discus- ; sion or explanation thorough enough to 'satisfy l [ ratepayers who expected to see expenditure minimised and to hear the minimum constructively justified. This is in part the inevitable result of the committee system. The estimates, it is known, were laboriously overhauled; and all councillors are no ‘doubt familiar with the arguments for and agaihst every increase, for and against every reduction, and even wearied ' by them. But the public knows next to nothing about them and ought to know more. It cannot learn as much as it should, if the battle of the estimates is fought out behind committee room doors and the function of the council, in open meeting, is in effect the formal one of receiving and endorsing a statement of the results, with a broad commentary from eral, the chairman of the committee. This is particularly worth emphasising at present, for two reasons. First, local bodies are under as clear ahd heavy an obligation as the central government to make the economies which will divert resources from the normal purposes of peace to the abnormal ones of war. Second, whether explicit promises were given during the municipal election campaign or were not, the speeches of Citizens’ Association candidates generally were so cast as to suggest that,the bush of expenditure had been allowed to grow wild, could be pruned, and would be. The difference bletween breaking an implied promise and .breaking an explicit one is merely the difference between cleverness and cynicism. The estimates as adopted are disappointing in both Aspects, It is.sot at all evident that the de-. : minds of : war have bean recognised and squarely met, or that councillors have striven to make good their platform braveries. This is so in spite of the careful and useful survey with which Cr. M. E. Lyons, as chairman of the r : finance committee, introduced the estimates. He did as mwh** could fee done, within the scope of such a broad review, to illuminate the , figures; but it was hot enough. He showed that I the estimates,are loaded with certain extraordinary items, such as election expenses, the > cost of emergency precautions schemes, and a ’ contribution to Home Guard finances; that cer-

tain unavoidable cost increases, such as a full year’s charge of the general advance in award wage rates, are incurred; that the Harewood aerodrome will absorb £7OOO more this year than last; and that receipts under various revenue heads are bound to contract. It will not be disputed, moreover, that street maintenance, the collection and disposal of refuse, and other essential services offer only technical scope for economy. But the fact remains that an over-all increase of £17,500, after a reduction of nearly £SOOO in the finance and departmental vote, is disturbing as well as disappointing. Ratepayers are certain to ask why, for example, the vote for relief of unemployment still stands as high as £7500, only £IOOO less than last year; why the vote for relief works and municipal piggeries is advanced from £3812 to £4000; why such capital projects as street widening (£1825), buildings at Woodham Park (£1000), street sealing (£7000), etc., could not have been or cannot be deferred. There may be valid answers to such questions as these, or to the question why the reserves department vote is increased by more than 25 pet cent.; but they have not been given. The public could have heard, ' and judged, the answers only if they had been brought out by vigorous and pointed discussion. The council’s failure to see the need for it is a very discouraging one. It leaves the ratepayer to supply his own answers; and they are not likely to lift him out of a sense of grievance.