THE NEW COUNCIL’S TASK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23505, 20 May 1938, Page 8

THE NEW COUNCIL’S TASK

The ratepayers who are aware of the recklessness and lack of foresight with which the municipal funds were expended in the past three years will not have been surprised at the fact that the Mayor has indicated that the current year will be one of some difficulty as regards finance. The habit of the council in “ the terrible past was to live within its means, and a resumption of this salutary practice is distinctly called for in the existing circumstances. In the two years that recently expired the council, its principal concern being to maintain an enlarged expenditure, budgeted for a deficit. The normal income of the council is inadequate, as the Mayor has observed, to meet the heavy standard of expenditure set during that period. The late council prided itself on breaking away from traditional policy and embarking upon what the late Mayor has called a “social reconstruction plan.” If it avoided increasing the rates, save in the matter of additional charges for water and of raising the tramway fares, and facing in a business-like way the actual situation created by its policy, it managed, by withholding contributions to several funds, to scrape through on deficits. That “ there was any amount of money ” was the easy assurance, up to the end of its term, of the chairman of its Finance Committee. But accumulated deficits can only end in financial dilemmas, and in the necessity for additional rating or recourse to the loan market. The business of restoring a healthier civic finance falls upon the new council. To employ a phrase assiduously used by the Labour Party to epitomise the objective of the present Government, its task is to “ clean up the mess ” left by its predecessor. It may not

be a specially congenial undertaking, but it is to be regarded as an essential part of a sound administrative policy. It will be necessary for members of the present council to keep a particularly vigilant eye on the expenditure, at all events, for the current year. To some extent they must find it a cause of embarrassment that the late council withheld its budget for the present year, instead of bringing it down at the usual time, as a consequence of which delay the rates normally collected in December will not be due for payment till February next. But the careful administration which the majority of the ratepayers expect to be the watchword of the new council will be appreciated by them.