TRANSFER OF FUNDS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 22, 26 July 1933, Page 3

TRANSFER OF FUNDS

ELECTRICITY PROFITS

DECISION IN CHRISTCHURCH

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

CHEISTCHUECH, July 20

The City Council discussed at length tonight the proposal to transfer £15,000 from the funds of the municipal electricity department which its accounts show is a highly profitable business concern, to the Council's general fund. The finance committee and the works committee, in collaboration, reduced the council's estimates for the year considerably, but still ended showing a prospective excess of expenditure over revenue of £12,692 10s.

The chairman of the finance committee, (the Eev. J. K. Archer) ysaid that the amount could be raised in one of four ways: (1) Cuts in salaries and wages, (2) a reduction in the works committee's estimates, (3) an increase in rates, and (4) a transfer from the electricity department's funds. He was opposed to the first three proposals, and recommended the fourth. : The mayor (Mr. D. G. Sullivan) suggested that'the council might give in return for the £15,000 an area of land on which the destructor now stands, land which was now practically in the occupation of the electricity department. The other side of the case was stated by Mr. E. H. Andrews, who said that the committee had not faced the question squarely, for it had not made the 10 per cent, cut in the council's salaries and wages, which, as he said, with the lower cost of living, gave a 25 per cent, advantage to the council 'a employees. He also opposed the continuation of "the iniquitous subsidy to the unemployed,'' referring to the practice of the City Council of subsidising the wages of relief workers in the employ of the council. He also thought that the transfer of land proposed by the mayor was illegal. The division of opinion was not quite on party lines. Most of the Labour members favoured the appropriation of the £15,000, but not allof them, and the Citizens' Association councillors (anti-Labour) were not unanimous in opposing it. Councillor Elizabeth McCombs, chairwoman of the electricity committee, who streuously opposed the proposal to take any of the department's funds, was equally opposed to the reduction of wages or the stopping of the subsidy to relief workers. She moved that rates be increased to provide the necessary money to balance the budget.

The proposed transfer of funds was adopted on the casting vote of the Mayor.