Untitled

Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1888, Page 4

Continued from second jiage) . opinions are fcatid in tho street ; youmupt have thd oonYapp to father your own introduction and your own opinions." ,Tn<>j wore not prepaiod to take tho responsibility •of fathering their opinion, and they took ir. away to ono of the oyoning journals, bui oould not tret it in for the Bam.--reason, and tho other evening paper alfo refused to insert it. All the journals were honourable enongh not to publish it unlpp* it was authenticated, and finally the opinion was handed over tho countor of one of th« newspaper offices by a messenger, and paid for as an advertisement. That was tho kind of anonymous attack he had been subjected to Btnoo ho bad rotirod from the contest, and ho thought it waa conduct which would be •inn-ecatodby every honourable man. (Hear, hear.) CITY AFFAIRE 1 , Passing on to nlludo to general questions, i Mr. Maodonald reminded the andienee that I one of the features of his address Was ono Tor w, complete reorganisation o? the Corporation mtaff. This proposal bad been Vittwed in an •entirely wrong BQnxe, and h* had been told that it was not right to hunt down officers, or bully in hunting them. Suoh a policy was the furthest from his intentions. Reorganisation meant making two men do throe men's prosont work if it were jiossibla, giving them a little extra money if neoessary. Thin was the differonce, Dotween rotronohment and reorganisation. Tho now City Counoil, he bolioved, woro quite ready and willing to tako tho matter in hand. But bo would point out that the office of Town Clork had practically drifted to that of City Solicitor, pure and eiraplo, all the Town Clork's work boing done by tho Assistant Town Clerk. Th» Town Clerk waa doing pnroly legal work , and so long as tho present state of things continued, bo long wonld the Council have law upon their bands j and it onght to be a question for thenew Counoil to decide whether Mr. Martin should not do some of the ordinary work of the office. Messrs. Martin and Pago woro, in his opinion, admirable officers, and the latter was one tho oity could ill «paro. The Inspector of Nuisances was another admirable officer— (dissent) —so inuoh bo, that the City Counoil and Benevolent Institution wete never tirei of heaping work upon him. The result was that he was unable to properly discharge tho duties of the office ho was originally appointed to. Was it not a faroe to expect that a oity like Wolhngton could be properly inspected by <one roan ? The sooner the present state of things was put a stop to the better. (Hear, l»ear.) ANOTHER VERT VALUABLE OJFICEB was the City Valuer. He was given three months' work, and had nine months' holiday, with the exception of such time as he gavo to tho licensing oommittoes, and the position of Returning Officer. When ho (the speaker) was in the Counoil, in 1878-79, a re-organis-ing committee rooommendod that every officer should give his whole time to tho Corporation, and should not be employed in nny other capacity. Ho felt, as every man in tho commission or valuation business had felt for years that it was a very peculiar thing that thoy shonld be compelled to compete with a gentleman who was paid by tho Corporation, and who wad using Corporation stationery in carrying on his business. Tho wholo thing was a farce, and he hopod that the now Counoil would insist on carrying out tho proposals of tho Reorganisation Committee of 1878. When bo told the meeting that Mr. Amos was at tho baok of tho advertisement he had jußt read, tho bur' gnsses would see that tbat gentleman bad plonty of time on his hands. (Laughter.) He saw tbat Mr. Duthio was prosont, and ho knew that that gentleman held strong opinions on the subject, and he hopod that when ho was Mayor of Wellington he would give the matter his very serious consideration. Reports of the transactions of each <lBp*rtmont wore presented to other Councils by tho head of tho department at tho ond of oaoh financial yoar, and that was an important reform which he hopod the new Council would take in hand. In his published address he had stated that THE ffINANCIS OF THK CITT wero getting into an ombarrassod position. In 1885 tho balance due by the Corporation to its bankers was .£1409. In 1886 it had risen to .£5622. In 1887 it was .£BOO2. In 1888 it had got up to but that astute gentleman who was running the oity (Mr. Samuol Brown) discovered a means of making the overdraft appear less by issuing debentures for £9500, bringing the amonnt of the overdraft down to £12,260. The dobt, however, was there all the same, (Laughter). Ho had shown tho meeting that the overdraft; had risen from £1409 in 1885 to over £20,000 in 1888, and in the faoe of these figures would any one dare to toll him that tho Corporation had not boon going to tho bad during tha past few years ? Another vory ingenious thing in the statement of accounts which excited the amusement as woll as the sorrow of the reading rateyayer was that tho Corporation, though not supposed to be so astute as Sir Julius Vogel, ha 1 a large amount of craftiiiosb beneath their Corporation Bkin. They nppointed as Commissioners to look after tho seouritiea, two of their own officers, the Town Clerk and the Assistant Town Clerk, no that if any question of investment aroso tho Commissioners would do as they were told, liko very good boys. This was tho way the finances of the oity wero manipulated. One of tho main points he had put before tho oitizens as affording practically the only relief without incroasod taxation was the CONSOLIDATION OJ 1 THE LOANS. Tho only roply given to tfie (proposal was that it could not be done. He intended to show how it could be done. Without posing us a financial prophet, ho would show that nothing waa better known to the British nublio than loan consolidation, and no stocks stood better than munioipal loans. Wellington's prinoipal loan was one of £200,000, the amonnts of tho others being .6100,000 and £130,000. A short time ago Mr. Wastgarth, ono of the large shareholders and bondholders in the Wellington and Manawatn Railway, was in Wellington, and after going over tho line Baid he Baw no reason why the company should not got their money at 3\ per oent. instead of 5 per cent,, which would enable thorn to pay their shareholders a dividend. The company had borrowed between £600,000 and £700,000 on tho London market at 5 per cent., and in Mr. Westgarfch'a opinion tho loan oould be easily converted to one of 3\ per oent. The Corporation on its loan of £200,000 paid 0 percent, or £12,000 annually. If we offered to the bondholders £125 for every £100 worth of stook they hold we would redeem the £200,000 by tbe payment of £250,000, thus inorea&ing our debt by £50,000, but if wo oould issue this at 4 per oent. we would bo only paying £10,000 a year instead of £12.000 as at present. The value of the saving of £2000 a year, invested at 4 per oont. for 19 years, was £6t,178 or £11,178 more than the city would have to pay. In other worJa the oity would have Rained that Bum in the long- run by tho _ oxoliange. So great was tho powor oE interoßt that at the end of 50 years the saving would amount .to £305,333. Thore was no reason under Heavon why tho munioipal loans shonld not be oonverted as easily as those of a railway. (Applause.) He oared nothing for the opinion of those who said it could not be dono. To sit quietly and say that the thing oould not be done was the aot of a fool, and not of a wise man. (Laughter.) Mr. Macdonald proceeded to show that by a similar process of conversion of our £230,000 loan, a saving of £1800 per annum might be affected for the 42 years which the present loan had yet to run. Theso figures, which were absolutely oorreot, proved that there oould be a saving of £3800 per annum, whioh would pay interest on a now loan of nearly £100,000, sufficient to complete a proper system of drainage, instead of one which promised to destroy ono of the finest harbours in the world. Years ago the Corporation deoided to carry drainage through to Island Bay, and_ a large amount of money wa's expended in malting the neoeasary arrangements— an expenditure which, in a tow years, would beoome quite valuelesß. ONLY BALVATION FOB THB CITT was some such scheme as ho had sketched. The ratepayers had also got to faoe the question of a new oemetery and a rooreation ground for tho Thorndon end of the city, and the only way of getting the money was to borrow, bo that tho burden upon the burgesses should not be greater than at presont. (Mr. H. D. Bell— What is the price of the New Zealand Government's 4 peroents?) No ono know better than Mr. 801 l what the price of that stook was, and no ono knew better than that gontloman that there was no stock whioh stood better on the London markot than than that of the Wellington Corporation. All municipal Joans raised in London for the last few years had been negotiated at 4 per cent., and money-lenders had become rather Buspioious of a 6 per oent. loan, thinking that there must be something fishy about it. (Laughter). Mr. Duthie had endeavoured to show that the conversion of tho Corporation loans could not bo carried out, because the New Zealand Government had failed to^convert tno whole of their £5,500,000 Joan. That, howevor, was not a vory romarkablo oiroumstanoe, as it was probablo tbat many of the bondholders wore absent from London at the timo, and that if a little more timo had been givon the whole amount would have been converted .1 Money could now bo borrowed as readily in Melbourne as in London. ("' No "). Did anyone dare to toll him that that was not so P Why, whon he was in Australia recently he met numbers of men who had the handling of large sums of money, and some of these people told him that they were prepared to lend tens of thousands of pounds upon good security at 5 per oent. It was no use telling him that what he had stated was incorreot, booauso he had the faots before him (applause). He had proposed to speak at some length upon THE FBONTAGE QUESTION, but that was a matter whioh would have to be fought out in Parliament, and not in the Counoil. It had been sought to oreate amusement at his expense by the statement that he advocated the rate because he had no frontage to his property. But if his private rosidence was not approached by a publio streot, he had adjoining it property with more than 300 ft of frontage. At any rate an amendment of the Munioipal Corporations Aot was not far off, and when it took plaoe provision for a frontage rate was bound to bo introduced. CONCLUSION. In oonolnding his address Mr. Macdonald said he bad endeavoured honestly to do his duty as a citizen, and no man nod a moro patriotic interest in tho advancement of tho oity of Wellington than he had, and whether ho served tho citizens in a public capacity or not they might depend upon it that his whole soul would go out in doing his dnty as a citizen. Thunders of applause preetod the conclusion of the address, and continued for some time after Mr. Maodonald had resumed his seat. Mr. James Burns proposed a hearty voto of thanks to Mr. Macdonald for bis straightforward and eloquent address. Mr. M. P. Cameron seconded the motion, whioh was put and carried amidst loud applause. Mr. Macdonald, in acknowledging tho compliment, thanked the audience for their patient hearing, and assured the meeting that it had been a pleasure to address them. The uiemblage then dispersed.