LOCAL BODY ENGINEERS

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 35, 10 August 1921, Page 4

LOCAL BODY ENGINEERS

A Bill " with the object of ensuring that local bodies that receive assistance from the public funds shall employ qualified engineers" w worthy of more than the passing attention that it received in, Saturday's issue. The object stated above has been a feature once or twice at meetings of civil engineers, and in principle it appears to be worthy of encouragement and support. Even twenty years ago jew people denied that the standard of local body engineering'needed raising. A county engineer in those days, even as in these days, had to essay a number of complicated tasks, and by the manner in which he attended to them and looked after his staple business, roading and road-maintenance, ho helped or retarded the progress of rural New Zealand. But if road-work needed practical science then, that need is to-day at least doubled. Twenty years ago the roads.had not felt the destroying influence of fast and heavy motor traffic. Roadwear was comparatively little, and the labour needed to make it good was comparatively cheap — the work-product being higher and the wage lower than Therefore an* engineer could move.quietly along, by the aid- of antiquated methods, without getting .either his roads ( or his finances into an impossible mess. To-day he is faced with entirely ohanged conditions, i Suitable labour is/scarce or dear, new methods of road-construction ■ and maintenance are necessary, and costs must be cut down to the lowest. Possibly, in order to secure efficiency with economy, the engineer must be able to devise. andapply not only new methods but new labour - saving machinery. Never was there so much need in local government for a high grade of engineer—which, of course, con-1 notes a high grade of salary. These facts are sufficient to show that, in principle, insistence on the employment of qualified'engineers by' State-aided local bodies has much to commend it. A great deal, however, depends on the details of the Bill, which, so far as we are aware, have not received publicity. Its trainers* have to deal with a situation in which the home rule spirit (highly commendable in- the right place) has produced ."a very .decentralised condition of local government. Decentralisation, like self-determination, is a splendid thing so long as the unit is not too small, but the whole thing hinges on the unit's efficiency, and on that point there may be, and are, great differences of opinion. If the local government unit is too small, its ratepayers will enjoy a. large measure of independence, but they will also carry a large proportion of overhead expenses ; and this fact, combined with their general financial weakness, may tempt them to reduce overhead expenses at the cost of efficiency, and thus make confusion worse confounded. There is a good deal of evidence that the local govenunental unit in many districts is too small for efficiency; and when the Institute of Engineers tells local bodies to< raise the standard (and salary) of their engineers, the Institute may find that its remedy will jieed to go past the]

servant to the master, and will strike at the roots of the decentralisation system itself. If the insistence of qualified engineering can be applied without any clash of this sort, so' much ijxe better; but we rather fear that good engineers and good roads are wrapped up with the question of local government reform that every Government shirks. Nevertheless, the Institute -of Civil Engineers, deserves the good wishes of the community in its battle for efficiency, and in its attempt to apply an excellent priiv ciple^to somewhat unpromising material.

Sir Francis Bell is reported in Saturday's issue as stating, in reply to a deputation of surveyors, that, according to evidence brought under his notice by the engineers, "in Australia every local body with a revenue of £5000 must be advised by a qualified engineer if it wishes to receive the Government subsidy." This appears at first sight to be an attempt to compromise with decentralisation." Under such an arrangement, a local body with a revenue of £5000 or over would have to pay for efficient engineering, aud apparently the smaller local \bodies would be left to their own devices., The immediate question before Sir Francis Bell was not how to make qualified engineering applicable to a subsidised and decentralised local government system, but how to define the work of surveyors in relation to the work, of -engineers.',,,' A professional question of thjfr character should be adjustable Jb]|Jegotiation between the two profession's, and Sir Francis Bell took • a ' sensible course -by suggesting such negotiations, which mayNresult in a settlement by consent, and which in any case should assist the Government's technical,-advisers if they are called on to draft a definition.