A CITY'S PERPLEXITIES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 85, 9 April 1924, Page 9

A CITY'S PERPLEXITIES

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —I feel, as a, contributor to the revenue of the Wellington City Council, obliged to dispute the conclusions of a number of your correspondents on matters of vital interest to the ratepayers. I cannot, for instance, appreciate the force of the contention that our municipal government should be controlled by experts because of the deficienck-s of councillors with their limited experience of technical work. The trouble is not to be' found in the limitations of these unpaid servants of the public so much as that men become infatuated with the desire to servo the public in too many positions and thus give a limited and totally inadequate attention to the duties they should discharge. To meet this difficulty, no man should be elected to more than" one position _at a time. Think of this as resulting in a more general diffusion of responsibility and an increased efficiency to serve tho public. The experts are properly the servants of tho council, but a council of experts would be confusion worso confounded, and lead to ths bankruptcy of the city with tlieir insistent demands for improvements beyond the ability of the ratepayer to pay. Then there is the question of obtaining the best man as City Engineer by inviting applications from far _and wide. I shall like to know if there is any real reason for adopting this course, and can you tell me of' any conspicuous success attending the ignoring of local candidates whom we have trained. It amounts to this with your imported City Engineer with a fixed term of employment, a. generous salary to be liberally increased: he can1 play most successfully with the council by insisting on increased revenue to an over-rated com- | munity, or more loans to an over-borrow ed public, and when the Mayor has to tell him to make the best he can with the present revenue ho is filled with wonder to discover a people who are not content to leave well alone. •f S % 3 u CW .Zoalan(ler lam just about sick of the littlo encouragement my fel-low-countrymen get from, a section of the people s representatives. Our young men can go abroad and make good, as witness the number of Rhodes scholars who come not back to a country which can find no way of employing them as they can be employed abroad. This is, I can assure you, no unreasonable complaint. 1 have m mind the futile efforts of almost a majority of members of an important local body in keeping out of a.job a local man so that a distinguished and accomplished applicant with testimonials overwhelming m their irnpressiveness to minds which see the things worth while only in distant. prospects. The local man got the appointment, however, and I can assure the public that he has proved to be the most competent man to hold the position, lo think of a.City Engineer without local knowledge means, if it means anything to me, tho appointment of a shrewd individual who can play the courtier 'to one 6ection of_.the council, the tyrant to another kind,,: and to devise flamboyant schemes. It is probable, in their overweening regard for the browbeating export, that councillors show their deficiencies, but then expert councillors could, not protect themselves from greater experts. And now, Sir, to refer, in conclusion, to the milk business, with milk at Bid per quart. In my opinion this, tho most necessary article of food, is too dear. That it is better than tho milk formerly supplied by the milkmen/ because it keeps longer, is about the' worst reason in the world for recognising it as a benefit. I suppose some day it will come to us as an indisputable truth that to destroy or impair all elements of life in food, and even that life resulting in putrefaction, will lead to a general deterioration of the health of tho people. I wait with confidence .the advent of someone who can express himself as an authority on the subject to ;> find that many of the tricks we are up to are leading to our undoing.— I am, etc. ■' . G. LONDON. sth April. , • •