MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 56, 8 March 1915, Page 6

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

Next month the people of Wellington will elect a Mayor and Council for a term o£ two years. Circumstances require the citizens to be more than usually diligent in gauging the qualifications of candidates, but it is possible that, by feason of the war. municipal matters will not have the attention which they need. True to precedent, the Labour Party is early in the field, and the flag has the old scroll of miscellaneous aspirations and ideals. Some of the objects are thoroughly reasonable and practicable, and others are more or less visionary. Probably a majority of the public would approve the following declaration :—": — " Establishment of a general market, hot water baths, and tepid swimming baths," but for the present there is a financial difficulty. The council is committed to a schedule for a number of necessary works, but this is not a favourable time for borrowing. Candidates who flourish proposals which are dependent on loans should be closely questioned about the financial factors. We are confident that before the term of the new council expires the money market will have improved, but the immediate future" off ers no prospect of any appreciable change. The Labour programme is sound in regard to public reserves, but the practice of the party has not been as helpful to the public as the theory would lead one to expect. Labour has made an occasional protest against the infringement of public rights on the Town Belt, by.fc.w,e. have not, observed any- sustained or spirited fighting for the party's principles. We have particularly in mind the battle of Pirie-street, afc which Labour was practically an onlooker. The text of another clause is: "Assessment of all rates on the unimproved value of land, with special provision for increment land taxation for civic purposes." The Post fought strenuously for the system of rating on the unimproved value, which is designed to defeat speculators who hold land for an "unearned increment." We have not lost our faith in the principle, but experience has proved that the indiscriminate operation of the scheme has covered some of Wellington's beauty-spots with buildings. A visitor from the South remarked cynically a few years ago.-— "ln Christchurch every house has a backyard ; in Wellington every backyard has a house." It can be truly said that in parts of Wellington the rating on the alleged unimproved value' of land has created unimprovements. Flowers and the verdure of living trees have been replaced by dead timber, of uninspiring form and colour. Undeniably, this rating system sadly needs intelligent amendment. "Town-planning — clearing of slum areas," runs another line of the Labour manifesto, and then a form of rating is advocated, without qualification, of which one visible effect is townspoiling. Those blessed words "initiative and referendum" are again paraded ; they do not lose their place among, the magic properties of the "new democracy" (which defies definition, apparently). Here is the full clause: — "Initiative and referendum, by which 5 per cent, of qualified voters may demand that a poll of the electors may be taken on any municipal proposition ; the result of the referendum 1o be binding on the councillors." Some of the Labour leaders have a wondrous confidence in a count of heads on a "proposition." Kb matter how complicated the "proposition" may be. all heads are to be the same head for purposes of decision. Singing the sacred shibboleth of "one vote, one value," the populace will march to the poll, and the elected representatives will wait for the count. However, Labour will not be happy till the big words have been put to a test, and then the party will find, that the ballot-box has its limitations in helping to manage a city or a country. No doubt the party's candidates will take the platform, and give the public a full opportunity to ask for information about the Labour Representative Committee's plans of civic government.