The Sun FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1928 PLAYING SKITTLES WITH ESTIMATES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 293, 2 March 1928, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1928 PLAYING SKITTLES WITH ESTIMATES

A REMARKABLE report on certain loose features of municipal finance was submitted to Auckland’s principal administrators last evening by the city treasurer, Mr. A. Messer. It had a remarkable reception. With one solitary exception, the members of the City Council, who are popularly supposed to represent the most alert business and administrative talents in the community, had nothing to say about a preposterous array of overestimates and deficits, together with the chronic necessity to borrow more money without the authoritative consent of the ratepayers. Like Wordsworth’s party in a parlour, the councillors were “all silent and all damned.”

The exception to the pathetic rule was Mr. J. A. C. Allum, who expressed the mild opinion that the treasurer’s report was certainly very disturbing reading. His comment was all the more effective by reason of the fact that, in the very moment of his speaking, Nemesis was also taking his own tramways department by the throat for over-running the constable to the extent of rather more than £IO,OO0 —the sum including items which, in Mr. Messer’s opinion, could not legally be charged to a tramways loan. No fewer than five loan proposals were affected by the characteristic muddle of municipal finance. The aggregate sum involved exceeds £157,000, of which the ratepayers can only have a say at a poll in respect of a comparatively trivial proportion.

The position, as disclosed officially, is the old story of playing skittles with loan authorities and specific instructions concerning the expenditure of public money. The form of that loose policy may vary with the differences in circumstances, but the results are ever the same, and the principle is always bad and inexcusable in municipal or any other business system. If it is not diversion of loan money from one authorised work to another that has not been given the ratepayers’ authority, it takes the form of big and bold expenditure over apparently generous estimates in the hope that, in good time and without running the gauntlet of public opinion, the deficit will be balanced from money raised without authority. Perhaps the municipal officials concerned in the latest demonstration of slack financial methods and elastic estimates will be able to give a satisfactory answer, but as the treasurer’s report stands, entirely without embellishment or explanation, the position represents a notorious business. Work has been carried out by the engineer’s department on some two hundred streets within the city area. It may be conceded that, in every street under essential improvement, the work has been well done. But it does seem amazing, even “very disturbing,” indeed, that in 129 cases the expenditure exceeded the estimates by no less than the sum of £54,598. As against that phenomenal elasticity of expenditure under-expenditure was experienced in respect of improvement work on seventy streets. Why? Because of this higgledy-piggledy calculation the council will have to raise, without the authority of the ratepayers, exactly £71,000 for secondary streets alone. It has to be noted that as far back as almost three years ago the city engineer was instructed by the council not to overrun his scheduled expenditure in any circumstances. This specific instruction appears to have been ignored. If twenty administrators cannot maintain firm control of the city’s finances, they may yet have to give way to local government by a commission of experts. | REGULATIONS FOR MOTORISTS . FE motorist will need to study with care the revised regulations which have been gazetted to govern his conduct on the road. Considered generally, there is nothing at which to cavil, with the one exception that there is still the bugbear of double-banking authority to harass the motorist. Speeds are fixed by the Government to apply generally, but any local authority may fix maximum speeds, so long as they do not exceed those incorporated in the regulations. Thus a motorist, jogging along at the maximum fixed by the Legislature, may feel the arresting hand of the local traffic controller for having exceeded the speed fixed by the local authority. He will need to keep a vigilant eye on signposts. There are some commendable provisions, however, with regard to speed generally. No person may now lawfully drive a car at such a speed that the vehicle cannot be brought to a standstill within half the length of the clear road that is visible to the driver; and while no set speed-limit is made for the open road, he is warned that if he exceeds the speed set down in an appended table he will run the risk of prosecution for dangerous driving. Th.us, 35 miles an hour is fixed as the maximum, and though the driver is at liberty to exceed this rate where a lower speed is not set out, the onus will be upon him to prove that the speed was not dangerous in the circumstances. Twenty-five miles an hour is the speed fixed within the limits of a borough or town district. Here the onus seems to be on the driver, if he exceeds that speed, to prove that he did not know he was within such limits. Or is it on the authorities to prove that he did know? But, notwithstanding the argument that this restriction is too stringent—motorists holding that if 30 miles an hour is allowed in Auckland it should be permissible in boroughs and town districts—2s miles an hour seems quite a fast enough pace to drive through thick settlements, and if any change is necessary it should be a reduction of the speed permitted in Auckland. It seems, indeed, as if this will be the result, for the maximum speed fixed by a local controlling authority cannot exceed that of the national regulations. On the whole, the regulations appear to have been framed with consideration both for the requirements of the motorist and the safety of the public.