The Star. SATURDAY, SEPT. 19, 1874.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 2039, 19 September 1874, Page 2

The Star. SATURDAY, SEPT. 19, 1874.

Att official copy, of the rf solution of the City Council, fixing the May oral allowance, will be found' attached in the form of a footnote to a letter in another column. By reference to the recolution it will at once be seen that the allowance is fixed ' at any sum not exceeding d63CD for each^year, and not for this year only as was our impression when writing on the subject on Thursday last. It is true that the money will have to be voted from year to year, but so long as the resolution fixing the Mayorai allowance stands unrescinded on the minutes of the Council, so long ..will the Mayor be in a position to claim, and the Cpuncil will be unable to refuse to vote, any sum up to the limit named in it for expenses incurred in " maintaining the dignity of the office." is therefore absolutely necesaary, if any new arrangement is to be made, that this resolution should be rescinded, and Councillor Raphael by his notice of motion has adopted the best mode of bringing the question under the notice of the Council. In discussing it the Council should, we think, bear two or three things in mind. They should remember that an undoubted object of the framers of the Municipal Act ..in providing for an annual retirement of a certain portiou <of the members of municipal councils, was to give tho ratepayers once., at least in the year- — at the annual election — an opportunity of expressing approval or disapproval of the manner in which the councils conduct their business. As members of the Christchurch City Council, they should then^call to mind the storm that was raised at the late public meeting the moment the Mayor's allowance was alluded to, and the warm expressions of approval with which Mr Raphael's expression of opinion, that " he was opposed to the payment of a Mayor," was greeted. And, lastly, they may reasonably infer that the fact of Mc\Raphael being elected a Councillorshews in the plainest terms that the majority of the ratepayers are thoroughly in accord with him in the opinion that the Mayor ought not to be paid; That he himself

believes that be was elected mainly on the platform he took up is evident by the fact that at the very first meeting of the Council he attends, he table* a notice of motion for consideration at the- next sitting for the purpose of abolishing the allowance to which he and his supporters object. In this lie has done no more than his plain duty but those who elected him, and in considering his motion the Council ought to keep iq view the fact that it does not come before them as the mere opinion of one Councillor for adoption or rejection by the Council as a body, but as the unmistakeably expressed opinion of a very large and influential section of the ratepayers of the city, who regard an allowance to the Mayor expenditure as " official expenses" as a waste of money at a time when, notwithstanding heavy municipal taxation, the city funds are miserably inadequate to the carrying out of even w moderate portion of the thousand and one public works urgently required for the comfort and health of the inhabitants of the city.