THE CORPORATION STAFF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13923, 7 June 1907, Page 4

THE CORPORATION STAFF.

The City Council has found itself confronted, with a proposal that various increases should be granted in the salaries of a number of its officials, these increases varying in amount from £10 to £50 per annum, except in the case of the Town Clerk, whose salary the councillors are asked to increase to £1000. So far as it went on Wednesday night, the discussion was confined to the proposal, 'which was submitted by Councillor Small, not as chairman, of the Finance Committee, but on his own behalf, that the salary of the Town Clerk should be raised by £200 a yeav. We have a good deal of sympathy with the view that was expressed by Councillor Stewart and other members who were recently elected for the first time that it is hardly fair to them that a proposal of this kind should be sprung upon them before they have had an opportunity of forming a sound and independent judgment upon the merits of the matter. What the great majority of the citizens will hold, wo are disposed to think, is that the Council is being invited to act with greater precipitancy than is at all necessary. They cannot forget that the present Town Clerk was appointed at a salary of £000 a year, and that, although lie has occupied his office for a period of only twenty months, ho has already had his salary incronscd to £SOO. But the plea is advanced in justification of the proposal for an increase of tho Town Clerk's salary to £1000 that that official is also at the present time acting as City Engineer. It may be doubted, however, whether the public will be greatly impressed either with this argument in its general terms or with the list which Councillor Small presented of tho special reports that were prepared and of tho special work that was performed by the Town Clerk during the past year. There will be no desire on the part of tho citizens to depreciate tho services of the Town Clerk or to ignore the fact that he lias proved himself in various ways to bo a very efficient officer. At the same time, while it cannot be admitted that the whole of the extra work that was specifically mentioned by Councillor Small is not such as would ordinarily fall without tho scopo of tho Town Clerk's duties, it must be obvious, if Councillor Small's argument be given the highest value, that it can only have been through the transference of a portion of the work of his own office to tho shoulders of someone else that the Town Clerk was enabled to perform these additional services—services which, we may observe, probably entitle biin to some pecuniary recognition at the hands of the Corporation. But it seems to us that a more important aspect of the question than this is that which was raised by Councillors Burnett and Jl'Donald of tho wisdom of uniting the offices of Town Clerk and City Engineer in one individual. It may quite conceivably be the falsest of false economy to adopt such a course. Nor is it any answer to this objection to assert that the city lias no important engineering undertakings in contemplation such as would bo likely to involve serious demands on the Town Clerk's time, tho fact being that the liabilities of the city have reached such an amount that it has become absolutely necessary that the Council should pause before embarking on fresh tchemes (if any magnitude. And this suggests the question whether, in existing circumstances, the control of the City Engineer's department might not quite fittingly be entrusted to the assistant engineer. In any event, it may reasonably bo questioned whether, on general principles, it is desirable that the combination of two important public offices in one person should bo continued.