GOOD ADVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 59, 10 March 1926, Page 11

GOOD ADVICE

RATEPAYERS SHOULD WAKE UP.

A meeting of the Wadestown and Highland Park Progressive Association was held in St. Luke's Schoolroom at Wadestown on Tuesday evening. Tho residents of Wadestown: were invited, to the meeting, but few were present, probably on account of the boisterous weather. . The president, Mr. &.■ Carwell Cooke, said that in his opinion much of the cause of complaint in respect to city affairs was due to the apathy or inertia' of ratepayers themselves. If an employer engaged a person to perform any service for him, he took pains to show that person what he wanted done. In' the case of tho City Council, however, which consisted of a body of men of undoubted ability and experience, who placed themselves at the public service free of charge, • the ratepayers virtually said: "There, we have elected you to do all that we require, or ought to have done, but we've not sufficient time or interest to tell you what those things are—yon: must just find out, and we'll confine ourselves to raising a rumpus when we consider you haye blundered or neglected us." Was that a fair and just at-; titude? It was, he said, both unjust and senseless, and would have to be. radically altered before a better working understanding could be. arrived at —an understanding which long years of practical relations with I ->th the council and its staff, had shown-him would be as. welcome to them as to the ratepayers. In no other phase of life did ratepayers maintain such indifference with regard to the payment of moneys as they exhibited in relation to the ex penditure of rates contributed by them: never, "except in spasms, did they concern themselves as to the economic disposition of the vast funds placed in the hands of the council and its staff, but paid over with that kind of philosophic resignation which they endeavoured to maintain during the extraction of a too^th. Defects in city administration undoubtedly existed; but before stonethrowing to any extent could bo justified on' the part of ratepayers, , they must arise and do their fair share in assisting to promote reform, and not be content with clamouring for it.