THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1931. CITY MANAGEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21530, 30 December 1931, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1931. CITY MANAGEMENT.

Prom time to time suggestions are made to the effect that changes for the better might be effected in our system of local government. They are prompted, no doubt, by the thought that the present system does not function as well as it might in the interests of the ratepayers. It has been urged that, especially in communities of considerable size, which have various municipal undertakings in hand, a more businesslike supervision is desirable than is obtainable under the present methods of control. Management by civic commissioners has been advocated. Within recent years there has been an experience of this form of management in Sydney. The City Council of Sydney was providing a glaring example of tainted administration, and the Government of the day in New South Wales took the course of passing legislation to effect the dissolution of the local authority and the replacement of it by a commission. This commission held office for a few years while it carried out its task of cleaning up Sydney in a municipal sense. Though there has been a reversion to the older method of vesting civic responsibility in a Lord Mayor and aldermen, this involved no condemnation of the work of the commissioners. It implied, rather, that control by commission had been looked on as a remedy for a specific disease, with the disappearance of which the necessity for the continuance of it ceased to exist. An alternative to civic administration by commissioners which has been largely adopted in the United States is the employment of the services of what is termed a city manager. This official is elected by the city councillors, and serves the city in the same way as a general manager would serve the directors and shareholders of a private concern. An article in an American journal under the heading “ The Rise of the City Manager ” conveys the information that the city manager plan, which was first adopted in Staunton, Virginia, in 1908, has made such headway that at present it is in operation in some 450 American cities, these ranging from Cincinatti, with its population of nearly half a million, to towns the citizens of which number but a few hundreds. There have been several instances of the adoption of this system during the past year, and it is claimed that the movement towards city managership is general throughout the country. lu the United States the outlook upon civic affairs differs from that to which wo are accustomed in British communities. We read of “the superiority of the manager plan over the politically operated cities. While no system which is operated by human beings ciin be free from the possibility of private gain at public expense, one system may come much nearer the ideal than another, and this is the argument for the city manager plan. The political aspect of civic administration does not constitute a prominent consideration in the case of British communities, and American ways and standards are so different from those to which the average British municipality is accustomed that it may well be a sound contention that the city manager plan represents —as a former American President was credited with saying—“ a marked advance over any plan hitherto tried in the United States from the standpoint of both efficiency and democracy.” That the system is in the ordinary sense a democratic one cannot be pretended, and for that

reason there is always likely to be a strong objection to the adoption of it in British communities. The fact that the Americans seem to have little difficulty in reconciling the introduction of it with their claim to be the most democratic people on earth must be grouped presumably, without explanation, with various other manifestations of the manner in which they are content to be governed. We may take it, however, that in the United States the widespread adoption of the city manager as a municipal institution is largely the outcome of inability to get along without him, combined, of course, with the force of example. In too many American cities control by a mayor and councillors has been accompanied by corruption on a deplorable scale. The test of the city manager system must, however, be its efficiency. The fact that upon the city manager is thrown the direct responsibility for the administration of the affairs of the municipality leads, it is claimed, to a closeness of supervision over expenditure which it is difficult, if not impossible, to secure under any other kind of control. As an illustration of this, instances of very important savings in the interests of American ratepayers are cited and authenticated. It will be conceded that this recommendation, even if it were all that could be claimed for the system, is far from negligible.