MUNICIPAL SERVICES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 350, 11 October 1932, Page 4

MUNICIPAL SERVICES

Although the National Expenditure Commission recommended that various of the Tourist Department aetivities in Rotorua which were not showing a profit and paying capital charges should be closed down, and also recommended that the department should rid itself of the ; unprofitable borough services by I demanding a contribution from the Rotorua Borough Council, it had no recommendation to make with regard to the position of the electricity department which alone among the various municipal services operated by the department, is in profit. The commission, however, expressed the opinion that the water and drainage systems at present operated by the department should be the responsibility of the borough council and recommended that these services be forthwith" transferred to the borough, inter est and sinking fund to be paid j on the capital invested, which j woulcl be placed on the same j basis as a loan. The suggestion | that the ratepayers of the borough should shoulder the responsibility for the unprofitable services and at the same time, by implication, leave the Tourist | Department n; control of the | only paying service, is a little ingenuous. It is a moot point whether the interests of the borough would not be better served I if municipal services were con- ! trolled by the elected representatives of the ratepayers ; event- ! ually that system of control must be instituted, but its present elfect depends entirely upon the terms under which the transfer is made. One thing, however, is certain. Government valuations on both the water and drainage system must be scaled down considerably to eliminate dead assets at present shown. This point, among others, has been raised in the preliminary discussions which have taken place at different times in conneetion with the matter, and in this aspect alone, the position requires most careful examination before any definite course of action is decided upon. In this conneetion also it should be remembered that the ratepayers of the borough of Rotorua have already accepted responsibility for loans aggregating over £50,000 in order to carry out necessary street and footpath work. This liability has been shouldered progressively in various loans since the passing of the Rotorua Borough Act in 1921. And now, ten years later, we find a suggestion made that the ratepayers should take over the further liability of the drainage and water supply which represents at the present time an aggregate annual loss in the vicinity of £5000. The suggestion of the commission, therefore, that the borough should accept responsibility for these services but forfeit any interest in the electricity system is distinctly inequitable. At present however, the recommendations and the position cannot be further discussed until the Government indicates how far it proposes to act upon them. Three points, however, should be steadily borne in mind. The first is the substantial contribution which the ratepayers of the borough have already made to relieve the Government of its liabilities in the town, the second, the necessity for a thorough examination and scaling down of the existing valuations, and the third the obvious inequity of the suggestion that the ratepayers should shoulder the responsibility for all non-paying services but allow the department to retain control of the service which woqld off-set the present losses. If the Government desires to

"cut its losses" in Rotorua, it cannot fairly expect to retain control of the only paying service. • A suggestion has been made in this respect that the interests of jthe district as a whole would be better served by the constitution of a Power Board district and a board which would operate under the terms of the Power Boards Act, 1925. This suggestion is one well worthy of discussion and examination but it is one which is not strictly relevant to the commission's recommendations. For the moment, nothing can be done until the Government indicates its intentions, but when that is done the directions in which any chahges in control can be carried out, will be very fruitful of discussion. Even at the present stage, however, it is obvious that the Government cannot, in fairness adopt the recommendations of the commission as they stand.