THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9013, 28 March 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1888.

The Ratepayers' Association, which was launched in an unpretentious way in this city a fortnight ago, has in it the germ of a movement that seems to have become imperative. The extraordinary recklessness in spending, which has been characteristic of every public body in the colony, has by no means been eradicated ; and from what we see we feel convinced that the spirit exists in all its virulence, and that it is only kept in abeyance by the mere inability of these spending bodies to lay their hands on money. It is the inheritance of the " heroic policy;" and corporations, small and large, have followed in the wake of the General Government; and, as in the State so in the local Government, the spirit of lavish expenditure is scotched, not killed. We have just seen the small Corporation of Parnell entering with a light heart maybe— more likely with a heavy one— on the increase of its taxation to an extent beyond that of the city itself; and this the result of the accumulated difficulties of years, in which the Council had been financing by the system of borrowing from one account and adding to another, after the fashion of " transference" of funds practised so successfully in the Auckland Harbour Board. But this game of clerical legerdemain has been brought to an abrupt conclusion by the latest Municipal Act and the firmness of the Auditor-General ; and being suddenly compelled to restore to every account the money taken from it, they are brought up with a round turn, and forthwith they raise the rates. Now, that a corporation should have got into this position is simply the result of reckless spending, which would have been checked at the proper time and before it had got to a head, had the ratepayers been looking after their ! interests, and had had in existence an association like that proposed in the j city to check in the beginning evils that sooner or later lead to this recourse of raising the rates.

The position of the city is that of the suburban borough on a larger scale; and the spirit with which the councillors are persisting in spending the last instalment of the loan shows such an utter indifference to the increase of the burthens on citizens as makes action on the part of ratepayers themselves imperative. We have already pointed out how the major portion of this last instalment might with perfect legality have been devoted to clearing oft' the overdraft which has accrued in doing exactly the same class of works for which it is claimed, and rightly so, that the money has been borrowed. That would have given the city a clean sheet to start with in its general account; and even if the rates were not diminished to the extent of the interest on overdraft which they might be, the revenue, instead of being taxed to pay oft this overdraft, would be available for improved drainage, and many other such necessary improvements as are urgently demanded. But no ; the demon of reckless spending is still present with us, and ward members of Council, who are supposed also to be conserving the interests of the whole people, are determined that that last instalment of loan shall be spent on works whether needed or not needed, even though after them should come the deluge. It is a positive disgrace that a city like Auckland should have on it the excessive burthen of taxation under which the ratepayers are groaning, and here we have the Council, in defiance we verily believe of the wishes of the great body of the ratepayers, doggedly and persistently determined to carry out the same unreasoningextravagant spending to the last stiver of the borrowed money. If the ratepayers of this city do not arouse themselves to this looking more sharply after the expenditure of money, they deserve all they suffer; and if a Ratepayers' Association or a vigilance committee had been in existence for the past few years, and independently of the Council had keenly watched the Council's proceedings, works still neglected would not have been unperformed, and many a work that was only done to promote a private interest would have been checked, and Auckland City would have been paying a far smaller ratage in the pound today.

But at the present hour such an institution is required as much as it eve

was. There will necessarily be an im~ mediate falling away in revenue from the shrinkage in values, and the most serious results will come of it, if the ratepayers do not themselves take the matter in hand, and compel the keeping of expenditure within bounds. In the absence of such a body, the Council seems absolutely callous to criticism, and indifferent to what ratepayers may think of it, and this is warranted by the apparent indifference with which ratepayers regard the proceedings of the Council. It is exactly such period of general indifference that precedes one of those wakenings up such as has taken place in Sydney ; and such ratepayers' associations come into existence ordinarily only when these evils have occurred. The persistency of wardmembers in insisting on the squandering of this last instalment of the loan shows that the profession of retrenchment is a farce, and that the demon of waste is as rampant as it ever was in the civic administration.