The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 1937. STREETS LOAN REJECTED.

Evening Star, Issue 22630, 23 April 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 1937. STREETS LOAN REJECTED.

The only thing that might be surprising about yesterday’s rejection by the ratepayers of the council’s proposal to raise a loan of £IOO,OOO for street improvements is the emphasis of it. The poll was heavy by comparison with past standards—more than half as heavy again as that on the important question of the introduction of the new water supply—and a majority of Jotes was cast against the proposal at very polling place except two of the smallest. Moreover, the judgment, of 6,970 “ against,” compared with 2,996. “ for,” was given despite a very general recognition of the desirableness of the works to be financed by the proposed loan. Only one conclusion can be drawn from that conjunction of facts. It was the methods of the present council, not the proposal in itself, which the ratepayers weighed in the balance and found wanting. The campaign for the loan on the council’s part was more active than well directed. The proposal was not likely to be commended to ratepayers when it was only their insistence, at the beginning, that caused them to be consulted, and when the first objectors were referred to a§ “nine grouchers who feared an increase in the rates.” It was not helped when, at public meetings, the mayor and chairman of the Finance Committee spoke with different voices. It was not the wisest time for the expression of hopes, which the mayor has now repeated, that the jury required to rule on such projects for public expenditure may be widened in future to include those who are not directly responsible for meeting their cost. A “ vote of the people,” which the mayor has envisaged, would include a great number who pay neither rates nor rents, and may be here today and gone to-morrow, so far as their stake in the city’s prosperity is concerned. There was a natural objection to paying for unemployment through the rates as well as through the taxes, and .room for the belief that ratepayers would get more l for their money if the streets were improved b'y another council. The financial methods of the present body have not bred confidence in its administration. And it is a mistake to speak, as one advocate of this loan has done, of Labour and anti-Labour councils. There has never been an anti-Labour council in Dunedin. No council'has ever called itself such, or been thought of as such while it existed. An early objection was mad© to “ saddling the ratepayers with the expense of a poll,” but this will be the cheapest poll yet held in the city if its lessons are learnt.