LIVING BEYOND MEANS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 49, 26 August 1931, Page 8

LIVING BEYOND MEANS

! We fully endorse the protest of ! the President of the Ratepayers' Association against loans without polls, but we cannot agree with him that "the one idea councillors refuse to entertain is the sensible and obvious one—to stop living beyond the means of. the city." -The Council is anxious to live within its means and business-like investigation of expenditure will help it to do so. There are numerous savings that can yet be made, for example, in the use of motor transport (now under examination ), in which there is extravagance to which we drew attention long ago. But it must not be forgotten, that there are certain fixed charges, which cannot go below a certain ,'*point. Water supply and sanitation services must continue to cost money, .even when all superfluous costs are pruned. Too much parsimony in street maintenance* again, means destruction of the roads and a bigger bill for reconstruction in the future. But the heaviest handicap of all is imposed by past extravagance with borrowed money.' The annual interest bill rose between 1925-26 and 1930-31 from £77,623 to £133,927. In simple terms the city, in its prosperous period, followed the same course as many individuals, and bought heavily on the instalment system. Now it cannot cut its costs by sending back the goods and ridding itself of further liability. It must continue the payments. It would have been much better if rates had been increased at the time to'provide improvements out.of revenue. Then the spending could have been stopped and rates reduced when depression came. Also, the city, like a man who always pays cash, would not have mortgaged its" future so heavily. Now the only course is to recognise that this past spending must be paid for, and to see that all future loan projects are thoroughly examined to decide firstly whether they are worth while, and, secondly, whether they should be met out of revenue.