MAYORAL HONORARIA

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 85, 10 April 1935, Page 10

MAYORAL HONORARIA

In the Lower Hutt Borough Coun-. cil debate on the proposal to raise the Mayoral honorarium the greater general question of paid or unpaid public service was scarcely touched. There is a question which should be considered: whether, having decided, to make some payment to men holding public office, we are doing the best for ourselves by paying usually much less than efficient service is worth. But this issue did not arise in the Lower Hutt debate. The issue there was whether the honorarium should be such that a future Mayor would not have to draw heavily on his private resources to' meet the calls incidental to the office. The heaviest of those calls at the present time are due to distress. In an emergency the Mayor of a,borough must meet numerous pleas for help. Inevitably, if he. is a humane man, he will meet many of them out of his own pocket. People who are intimately acquainted with conditions today know that a small honorarium (no more than an ordinary clerk's pay) cannot go far in meeting such calls. It is certainly not right that a Mayor should have to do this all at his own expense; and when the main reason for increasing the honorarium is to permit the Mayor to relieve distress it is unreasonable to demand that the increase shall not be allowed till employees have their cuts restored.