RATES WILL BE LOWER

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 98, 28 April 1931, Page 10

RATES WILL BE LOWER

MR. HISLOP DEFINITE

FACTS OR GENERALITIES ?

"Mr. Luckie has agreed that a saving of £.10,000 can be made in the general rate," said Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, the Civic League and Ratepayers' Association candidate for the Mayoralty, at Khandallah and Wadestown last evening, "but he has not gone into details and leaves the matter up in the air. I,have given details and I suggest that that saving can be doubled alone by the lessened hospital levy, which will mean £.5500 to the ratepayers, and by ; tho increased share o-f the petrol tax, which will bring in at least £5000, probablj a good deal more. Those two items alone double the £10.000, and in no way involve any savings from salaries or labour." Mr. Hislop stressed that the saving in regard to reserves, the street cleaning system and refuse collection, too, would entail'no reduction of staff, a3 the past year's expenditure had been increased by special expenditure on buildings and plant, and a reorganisation of street works would spread the money and the labour further. "There arc a hundred and one ways in which a. determined Mayor—-one who states from tho first that economics will be practised and, moreover, wets out how ho is going to do it—and council can reduce unnecessary ■ outgoings1". Tho great principle is that of wellbalanced and reasonable cconom)'." NO FAITH IN GENERALITIES. Mr. Hislop repeated his proposals, as stated at several meetings, and continued: "Mr. Luckio says that he, too, stands for economy, but I should like to see him come down from generalities and state just how he proposes to exor<iiso that desirable economy. I have no faith in generalities. If the municipality can reduce its demands upon the public in rates—and Mr. Luckie thinks that this should be done, and I have shown how it can be done—then the city and the citizen will be benefited in other ways than of not merely having to meet high rate demands. Tho money which will be/ saved the ratepayer will not lie unproductive in his' pocket; he will have more money to j carry on his own business, whatever it may be, more to meet his obligations and to carry on his daily work or business, building the work and business, of the city as a whole." ;