UNDIVIDED CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 14 June 1924, Page 6

UNDIVIDED CONTROL

The pitfalls surrounding a method of civic control which takes account of persons were pointed out when the City Council resolved to fill the office of City Engineer without open competition. Yet another illustration of the danger of such methods is afforded by the recommendation of the Finance Committee that the office of waterworks and drainage engineer should "remain, as at present, separate from the City Engineer's control." The use of the words "as at present" conveys the impression that such separate control is the established order, and that unified control would be an innovation. This is quite correct. Dual control was adopted as a temporary expedient when the chief lieutenants of the late City Engineer were continued as heads of those departments which, they had previously directed. ,JBy re-estab-lishing unified control the Council has reverted to the system formerly in operation. The advocates of separation produced no arguments which were not personal. In substance, their plea was that because the present waterworks and drainage engineer was a competent officer, who had specialised in that branch of work, his department should be separated entirely from other engineering departments. But if such a course were adopted, what logical objection could there be to breaking up the whole service into sections—except where the' head of a section was deemed incompetent? Though dual control may not yet have resulted in clashes or overlapping, there would be every risk of such if the separation system were extended and made permanent. Unified control does not, as was suggested, place the specialist officer in a humiliating position. But there would have been a distinct reflection upon the City Engineer if the Council had decided, within a few weeks of his appointment, that he should have no aiithority whatever in two important branches of city work.