CITY HOSPITAL LEVIES

Evening Star, Issue 25170, 9 May 1944, Page 7

CITY HOSPITAL LEVIES

LAST YEAR'S SURPLUS EXPLAINED A recent ipuhlio comment that tht* City Council had failed to pass on to the ratepayers the benefits of the increased Government contribution to hospitals last year was criticised by the Mayor (Mr A. H. Allen) at a meeting of the council last night. " Quite recently one of our wellknown citizens took the opportunity to say that we had smothered up the position of hospital rates last year in order to place a better position before the electors, this year," the Mayor said. " That is not so." The council had budgeted for its rates in May, and it had the estimate of what would be required for hospital rates based not on its own figures but on the figures supplied v by the board, the Mayor said. The rates had been struck accordingly. In August the Government had made an increase in the grant to hospitals, which enabled a reduction of £9,788 in the levy. Jl would have been a costly and difficult matter to make a reduction in the levy at that stage, and the position was that a credit of £5,510 had been carried forward, enabling a reduction of 2d in the £1 to be made in the levy this year. There had been no intention to mislead the ratepayers. Hospital levies were credited to a separate account, and the surplus had been carried forward.