City Expenditure.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20278, 12 April 1934, Page 8

City Expenditure.

Praise for the Works Committee.

“ipHE COMMITTEE is to be congratulated on the fact that in its statement to-day it is shown that, although it has spent very nearly up to the estimates, it has a little in hand in every respect,” said Mr J. W. Beanland, chairman of the Works Committee of the City Council, yesterday, when addresing the last meeting of the committee he will attend before leaving on a tour of Great Britain and Europe. “ For the relief of unemployment the committee has spent £11,550 9s sd, whereas the estimated expenditure under this heading was £11,722 5s Bd. In connection with the general estimates, the sum of £92,477 13s Id was available for expenditure, and the committee has spent £91,796 16s Bd. It is something to be proud of. and I think we can all recognise that the committee has done its very best.’'

Mr Beanland said he was going away at a time when things were, perhaps, going to be as hard as ever in financial but he sincerely trusted that, when he returned to Christchurch, he would find that the committee had continued the policy it had carried out in the past, and that everything had gone on smoothly. The committee had followed the policy of doing as much tar sealing as possible, and he would like to see the city streets maintained as they were at present, or made better if possible. They all recognised that one thing was going to be a feature of the administration of the Works Committee, and that was the tar sealing of streets. During the coming year, explained Mr Beanland, the committee was going to have several difficult tasks to perform, such as relieving some of the elderly workmen from positions so as to give vounger men with families more work, and of getting efficient foremen for its works. Some of the present foremen were getting up in years, and the matter of their replacement was a job that would have to be given attention.

In the course of subsequent and complimentary speeches, Mr E. Somers, the assistant-engineer, also made reference to the tar sealing of roads. In the original estimates, he said, there was an amount providing for the treatment of ten miles of roads, but the Finance Committee, unfortunately, decided that there was not money available for that amount of work. Although ten miles of roads had not been given attention, with the money available nine and a half miles of roads had been tar sealed.