COUNTY COUNCILS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4765, 17 October 1924, Page 2

COUNTY COUNCILS.

administration expenses. MORE EFFICIENCY WANTED. A writer in the Dominion takes the county councils throughout New Zealand severely to task over what he terms the lack of efficiency for the expense incurred in administration of their affairs. He draws comparisons as between counties and boroughs, pointing out that, taking the boroughs of the Dominion as a whole, of the total expenditure only 3.14 per cent, goes in management, whereas the average for the counties is 9.84 ner cent., or three times as great. The writer goes on to state, that the Public Works Department does its work on about 5 per cent, for management, and remarks that if the county council system could be remodelled and the cost of management brought down to 5 per cent, of the expenditure, it needs no genius to see that a very great gain in efficiency would result. It is high time, he adds, that users of the roads and rural dwellers generally realised the immense loss that is involved in the county council system, and the utterly needless burden it imposes on the ratepayers’ and the taxpayers’ backs. It was in 1876 that the counties came into existence, when the provinces were swept away. In place of nine provincial districts New Zealand was divided into 63 counties. Since then a process of subdivision of counties has gone on until to-day there are 129 counties, many of them quite unable financially to stand on their own legs and all appealing for further spoon-feeding and wet-nursing. The great burden imposed on the country by the system of pocket handkerchief counties is clearly seen when the cost of management is compared with the total expenditure. The small,er the county, as a rule, the greater the cost of running ic in proportion to its total revenue. '