CITY COUNCIL'S BUDGET

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 143, 20 June 1938, Page 8

CITY COUNCIL'S BUDGET

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —It is one of the weaknesses of the City Council's budgeting that the heads of different departments first tell the council What they want and the council proceeds to budget accordingly. The first question should be: how can we reduce the rates? We levied £80,000 to £90,000 more in rates last year and the ratepayers paid with difficulty. This year we are asking for nearly £20,000 more so that the council will be taking out of ratepayers' pockets £100,000 more in 1938-39 than was the council's demand note two years ago. Meantime we have had a necessary loan to maintain the health service of the city, and that helped increase the rates. Some councillors are aware of the trials and difficulties of ratepayers. Property is being sold at under the Government valuation because of the burden of rates. There are properties that are not paying the outgoing liabilities and the difference has to be made up in many cases out of owners' capital account. That cannot go on for ever, and forever with little variation the rate burden on property is annually increased. The properties that pay owners, said another councillor, are returning less than 2 per cent. Yet with all this knowledge

of the position the City Council budgets for a further increase of rates. And another loan is projected.

Turning to another page of "The Post" it appears that the City Council has "money to burn." On the recent hustings the Mayor himself said the council was contemplating a more up-to-date transport system, and that the probability was that the trolley bus which was taking the place of the cumbrous and traffic-blocking tram car in most large towns in Great Britain would ultimately be adopted; but it was not proposed to scrap the existing tram service. That is wisdom. We must endure tram cars in our narrow I streets until they have earned enough j to clear off their loan indebtedness before the more modem system of transKort for passenger traffic can be introduced and that too must be gradual. A year or two ago the ratepayers by their rates indicated the very policy to the council that the Mayor gave expression to with respcct to further extensions of tram lines in the city when they turned down that proposal for Bowen -Street; and they signed a petition more recently that put a stop to

the venture. Now we learn that the City Council has £27,000 set aside to defeat the expressed will of ratepayers and has determined to do what ratepayers declared on two occasions should not be undertaken. Make a more direct route by road to the western suburbs by all means, but do not spent £27,000 on fresh tram lines. Turn those buses that are not paying on to this road and stop cluttering up our streets with more tratnlines and monstrous unwieldy tram cars, and make the first step to real advancement in transport management by trolley buses.

What should be done with that £27,000 is to turn it into the rate account, stop an increase of £18,000 on ratepayers, and give the council a further £9000 to play with; that is, if it is absolutely necessary. But that seems doubtful on the reading of the council report. Wherever it comes from, that £27,000 is the ratepayers' money and twice they have said, "We do not want the council to spend any more of our money on tram tracks in our city." A declaration by the ratepayers ought to carry more weight with the council as a whole, than a promise emanating from certain councillors on the hustings to catch certain votes.—l am, etc., i. D. SIEVWRIGKT.