The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1921. OUR HOSPITAL BOARD.

Waipa Post, Volume XX, Issue 1180, 10 December 1921, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1921. OUR HOSPITAL BOARD.

THE Waikato Hospital Board has frequently been suspected of displaying an undue anxiety to centralise its activities in or adjacent to Hamilton, and its rejection of the Public Health Department's offer to use the vacated Te Waikato Sanatorium near Cambridge will perchance be regarded as another indication of the Board's centralisation policy. A few weeks ago, in order to relieve the shocking state of over-crowding at the base hospital, it was decided to utilise Te Waikato for the purposes of an Old Men's Home. Since then certain influences have been at work, and it has been discovered that a site adjoining the hospital proper can be compulsorily acquired. The outcome is a sudden and unexpected reversal of policy. The Old Men's Home is not to be transferred to Cambridge; instead of a nominal rental of one shilling per annum for the vacated Government buildings, a costly site and new buildings are to be financed by the ratepayers on whom the 'Board has power to render its levy. The three main arguments used by the Board in support of this action are humanitarian in that Maungakawa (where the vacated sanatorium is situated) is a desolate and dreary place; financial, in that maintenance will be at a prohibitive cost; and tenure, in that the shift to Te Waikato may prove only temporary. Most of these arguments are purely speculative, and should have been tested before any extensive outlay of new capital, such as will be required for the purchase of Hamilton land and the erection of new buildings was decided upon. There seems no sound or sane reason for refusing the free use of Te Waikato except it be that there is a hidden desire to create a mammoth institution on the outskirts of Hamilton. In any case, if Maungakawa is a dreary and desolate place, as some of the boardsmen suggest, would it not be a good plan to use some of the present endowments in more suitable localities —and the Board has several such endowments—before calling upon the taxpayers to buy another Hamilton site? The Board's position in this matter seems utterly untenable: it is surely looking a gift horse in the mouth when it rejects the proffered use of Te Waikato.

This raises the whole question of the constitution and the powers of hospital boards. Once elected to office, hospital board members are almost entirely removed from the ratepayers. Hospital taxation is raised by the other local bodies: the board has merely to make a levy on the borough or county; there is practically no appeal—the local body must raise the revenue the best way it can and pass it on to the hospital board to spend. So far as capital expenditure is concerned, the hospital board is in the unique position of determining its own policy, since it is saved the necessity of obtaining the ratepayers' consent at a loan authority poll. The result is that the people who foot the bill are rushed into loan commitments

almost without | their knowledge and more than likely without their consent. How many ratepayers, for instance, would support a loan for land and buildings which are rendered necessary because of a fad against Te Waikato? It is obvious that the law as it stands gives hospital boards altogether too much power, and it would be well in the public interest that Parliament should considerably modify these abused legislative privileges.