SYDNEY'S NEW RULERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19809, 2 December 1927, Page 12

SYDNEY'S NEW RULERS.

COMMISSION'S BIG TASK. CLEANING THE AUGEAN STABLE. [from our own correspondent. ] SYDNEY, Nov. 24. The three commissioners who, under the Government's bill abolishing the City Council, are to have control of the City of Sydney, are faced with a gigantic task. Figures reflect the vast ramifications of the City Council. Take, for example, the electricity department. Here alone is invested capital running into something like £9,000.000, with ar: annual revenue of about £1,700,000.

From the public markets there is an annual income of £126.009. Nearly £50,000 a year js laid out on parks, gardens, and reserves. The council foots a bill of £160,000 a year for the cleansing of the city. Of other vast departments, there are a score or more. Take, again, city property, In the resumption of land and buildings, the council has close on, £4,000,000 invested. The control and management of a city with an improved land value of £151,000,000, and with as many problems almost as those of a central government, will be no sinecure for the commissioners, who, like Hercules, are to clean the Augean stable. The Labour faction at the Town Hall, with the support of one or two of the Reform aldermen, have net accepted at all philosophically the approaching doom of the council. The death-bed wrangling in the City Council, in fact, has been quite painful.