BOROUGH SALARIES.

Northern Advocate, 7 April 1931, Page 7

BOROUGH SALARIES.

(To tlu> Editor.) Bir, —As tli o municipal elections draw near, it is the privilege of voters to criticise 11}e members of the borough council, whether their deeds have been satisfactory or otherwise. The Press have the privilege., also, to receive or decline letters bearing on the subject. 801110 write under a non de plume; when the winds of adversity blow, they .find it convenient, like the ostrich, to hide their heads in the sand. At the present time there are many carping critics in the world. i presume that in Australia, for some time past, the arch carping critic, according to one section of the community, has been Sir Otto Niemcyer. He was bold enough to toll a conference sitting in Melbourne to lower wages, and balance their budget. In Sydney all the Press, with the exception of one Labour journal, are criticising Lang and Theodore, Lang and Theodore are criticising cadi other, and the Labour journal is criticising the bloated capitalist press —some have Ideated so much that they have floated into oblivion. Our Hew Zealand papers are criticising almost every day, the economic position in'regard to unemployment. If my critic had studied .John Stuart Mill or Karl Marx, ho would have learned .that the product of labour has fallen (farm income). That is an economic fact —and “facts are chiels that whin a ding. M ’ For years, Whangarei owed its good times in great measure to the spending of borrowed' money in the district. It is fortunate in flaying a few other industries to help it .along, but it must rely on the farming .community in the main for its prosperity. The quotation “the. labourer is worthy of his hire” is true, but the .council did not consider the labourer or it could have distributed the increase last year* to the higher paid officials pro rata amongst the lower paid workers. Then there would have been nothing to cavil at 011 that score. The .remarks about the late .town clerk 1 can quite endorse, though the town has gone ahepd without him. I always like to see ability and efficiency rise from the bottom of the tree to the top. Some are pitchforked there by their friends. There travelled from London with me on the MOrford ’ ’ a borough councillor from Invercargill, and he had nothing but praise for our late town clerk. The ! councillor was a member of the Alliance of Labour, a secretary of unions In that city, .and, referring to our' late town clerk and the salary paid; : here, he asked imo how Whangarei, ■ with .a small population, could pay such a high salary. There are others’ beside myself wl\o think as I do as regards salaries paid. It will bo in-' terestiug if my critic will publish the salary paid to the late town clerk, and that paid at the present time; there are many taxpayers who have no idea 1 of the remuneration. My critic says w.c should pay for efficiency. I agree. Unfortunately we have not always got efficiency on the part of officials or council. That is one reason why our rates are so high. We should pay for .'efficiency. Ho the taxpayers know that over £2OOO is paid to three of our highest paid officials of the borough—that is one-fifteenth of the revenue collected by the borough. We have also paid a heavy fee for an outside engineer during the last two years. 1 said in my last letter that we are paying too much for services rendered. We also pay £2OO honorarium to our Mayor. We are a population- of perhaps 8000, Mt. Eden, the largest borough about Auckland, with a population of over 20,000, pays its Mayor £IOO. Deflating, nr bringing down wages, is a painful process to .many. The farmer has had his wages cut this year by a quarter to one third of his income. He growls, but cannot alter it. Perhaps to the wages man in town the cut may prove more apparent than real. If my critic “Fair Play” will answer the questions I have asked, ho will be doing justice to the burgesses, for he seems to know more of the inner side of borough affairs than I do. I am, etc., j W. A. HOEY.