The Sun WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1928. A FORTUNE FOR REJECTED ADVICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 451, 5 September 1928, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1928. A FORTUNE FOR REJECTED ADVICE

IT has become almost farcical to suggest that the Auckland City Council administers the city’s affairs on its own initiative and departmental ability. The administrators lean upon overseas expert advice like a cripple on crutches. Within the past lustrum thousands of pounds have been paid for technical instruction on how to run the municipality of Auckland and make a city beautiful. And the habit grows with the stimulus of extensive and expensive indulgence. Six hundred and ninety administrative bodies tinker with the local government of the Dominion. Of that preposterous total not any dozen of them, excluding the Auckland City Council, rival Auckland’s administration in the squandering of public money on the purchase and acquisition of expert advice on municipal problems, also on plain, straightforward tasks which to competent administrators would not be problematical at all. Next to the State, with a multitude of legislators, advisers, departmental officials, and public servants, exceeding in number Wellington's army at Waterloo, the Auckland City Council is the biggest fiimp of administration in the count ry. It is excelled only by the Government in the bulk of labour employment. Its annual bill for salaries and wages makes the traditional king’s ransom look like a beggar’s pittance. An enormous percentage of the total outlay must be attributed to the payment of departmental administrative service. It is impossible for the layman to discover in the story of municipal accounts the exact cost of administration; that secret is as wrapped up as a Mussulman’s head. Whatever may he the cost of routine administration as spread over all the municipal departments and administered by two dozen councillors functioning as seven different committees as well as a sanhedrin of wisdom and talent, it is not enough to secure the maintenance of progress and the initiation of efficient enterprise. The council has to range far afield for new ideas and expert guidance. The burdened ratepayers would have no reason for complaint, and would not eomplain, if it were the practice of the council to follow the advice it pays for so extravagantly through their pockets. Glance over the past record of commissions, experts’ reports, and the results of sending departmental officers abroad to see with their own eyes and to ponder, with their own heads, how other cities get things done and keep on going forward. Two or three thousand pounds were spent on obtaining a masterly report from a commission of experts on the Civic Square project. Had their splendid advice been followed Auckland to-day would have had reason for civic pride. But the scheme was muddled for years and then finally smothered under a mass of Little Pedlington stupidity. The Civic Square at the moment is a frowsy parking ground for motor-cars, and a rendezvous for evangelists and others less evangelistic. Then the tramways manager was sent on a quest abroad and came back with an informative report. He had a delightful trip and used his alert eyes and keen -judgment to advantage. His knowledge was swept aside. Then came another cloud of expert commissioners from the far country, and the inevitable expensive advice has set all the local bodies concerned by the ears. They wrangle politely. And there is to be still another Murray inquiry into a charge of obtaining costly advice from an itinerant, detached, imposturing London expert on trams and buses. A Water Commission was engaged some time ago to find a way to an avoidance of summer drought. What happened to its recommendations? To-day, an able expert from Australia is on the Auckland watershed searching for better ideas. And if the competent visitor provide an excellent scheme for a dependable, supply for a generation or so, there will be no guarantee as to its adoption. Probably, if and when adopted, the suburban local bodies which buy water from the City Council will take the huff and band together in sulking pride for the purpose of tapping the Waikato. So the tale of expert advice runs on, touching traffic, accountancy, streets construction, destruction of refuse, sanitation, and the development of a zoological park. And yet there is to the need of more expert instruction. The question concerning public baths calls for attention. Then, an expert from Melbourne might be brought over to have a look at the deep pools and mud-puddles on the flat street intersections of Queen Street on a rainy night. He would at least advise the use of seven yards of asphalt on temporary repairs. Lastly, it might be a good thing to import three commissioners and appoint them in the place of an inefficient administration.