CITY FINANCES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 65, 14 September 1925, Page 4

CITY FINANCES

The position of the City Council finances, to which Councillor Monteith drew attention at last Council meeting, is certainly disquieting, and the terms of the Mayor's reply are. not reassuring.- The City; on Counciliqr Monteith's showing; is ,oertain to overspend its estimates even if the rate of expenditure is reduced. As local bodies are now required to balance expenditure by revenue each year, the>: Council must %&1s& ;s,teps to. bring more money; in, : The Mayor spoke of certain credits, but he did not say to what extent these would ease the pressure; and we do not know any sources of re-; ven^e now available which were n6t taken into account when thes estimates were prepared. The danger of overspending was fully apparent wjien the Council adopted the unusual course of taking a p'eiv j centage from all expenditure esti-. mates and calling it a contingency fund: As we pointed, out at the time, it was not a true contingency ! fund, and the method of reducing estimates by arbitrary rule was. most imlikiely to prove effective. However,, discussion of past mistakes will not remove this year's difficulty, though it may save the Council from similar error next year. The only course to be taken now is' to state ( the position fully and fairly—we have had only the, vaguest references hitherto-—a.nd then tell citizens what alternatives of reduced expenditure or increased pjtymerit are before them. ,V