HOSPITAL COSTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 12

HOSPITAL COSTS

BASIS OF TAXATION

SHOULD BE ALTERED

CITY COUNCIL MOTION

The City Council last night, on the motion of the Mayor (Mr. T. C. A. Hislop), decided to enter a formal objection to the proposal of the Wellington Hospital Board to raise a loan of £435,000 for the erection of a hospital, nurses' home, boiler house, etc., at Lower Hutt. The council expressed the unanimous opinion that the whole basis of hospital taxation should be reconsidered.

Mr. Hislop said that the £435,000 proposed for the Hutt Valley Hospital would not be raised during the coming year, but when the loan was raised next year the additional charges upon. the city would amount to .at least £10,000, in addition to the £32,000 in respect of the loan for the new buildings of the City Hospital.

Mr. Hislop said that his view was that if the present heavily increased charges were to continue the system of raising moneys for hospital services should be altered, and that the council should enter a formal objection to the proposed new loan on that ground. The system of taxation should be upon a much broader basis of general taxation. ■ He moved accordingly. The needs of the Hutt Valley, should be recognised, said Councillor T. ißrindle, but the feelings of the people in that district should be ascertained. He agreed with the Mayor that some other system for raising money for hospitals would be advisable. VALLEY HOSPITAL NECESSARY. Councillor W. Appleton said that there was no question about the need of a hospital in the Hutt Valley, but the present proposal went far beyond the recommendation of the Hospital Commission, which had proposed a 300----bed hospital to cost £180,000 to £200,000. The general opinion was that the present proposals of the board were altogether too elaborate and too far advanced. Another question was whether some of the money should not be devoted to convalescent homes, for any number of patients should be in. such homes. Moreover, there was no indication in the Hospital Board's estimates of what could be expected from, the Government under the Social Security scheme; the board appeared to be as much up in the air as everybody else.

To Councillor R. McKeen, M.P., the Mayor said that the amount to be expended on the Wellington Hospital was some £750,000.

They were entitled to all the information they could obtain, said Councillor A. Black. All knew that the Hutt Valley was growing very rapidly indeed. Many commercial concerns were being added, and the number of accidents in the district was increasing. Councillor W. Duncan was informed, on making the inquiry, that if the Hutt Valley Hospital were built the expensive Wellington one would also be built.

Councillor M. F. Luckie said -that'it had been suggested that the Hutt Hospital had been proposed by those opposed to the proposal to spend £800,000 on the Wellington Hospital. Now it was evident that the expense would be doubled, the two buildings costing something like £1,235,000.

A motion objecting to the expenditure in the Hutt Valley was recorded.