SYDNEY’S RENT ROLL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17781, 17 May 1932, Page 9

SYDNEY’S RENT ROLL

TENANTS REFUSE TO PAY CITY COUNCIL’S DILEMMA SYDNEY, May 0»; Profiting by bad example, this city has reversed the order of economies. Having been denied the orgy of borrowing, it is setting out on a prodigal system of owing—without any intention of paying. The City Council, is right up. against trouble over its finances. Nobody will lend it any money, and apparently few people arc willing to pay it. There is serious dispute over the rates. Thousands of assessments are being challenged with no certainty of a ready revenue, when the Valuation Court makes an adjustment. Years ago there were men of vision in the council, who set. out to replan the city and acquired property with the hope that in time to come the rents would enable the council to continue without striking a rate. The City Council to-day has the largest rent roll of any property owner. Aldermen who are concerned about the city wish the council did not have quite so much property to bother about. Having a rent roll and collecting the money are two different tilings. The City Council’s tenants are £30,422 in,arrears to April 17. If this amount wore in rates the council would put the bailiffs in and sell off sufficient of the goods to raise the money. But the Moratorium Act protects the tenants, and the council has nothing to do but to sit down and whistle. By the end of the year the aidermen will be shaking their lists at the portraits of the civic fathers responsible for the lordly ownership of property and the rent roll that cannot lie turned into wads of genuine currency. Municipal ownership, like State ownership, is apparently not tlie true way out of national difficulties.