The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1884.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4704, 4 February 1884, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1884.

The Borough Council has made "a-solid resolve " to appoint a Committee to look into matters financial, and report on the possibility of reducing expenditure in the direction of salaries paid to its officers. This is very laudable, and wonder increases when one thinks, Why was this step not taken before P In our most prosperous times, the expense attached to carrying on the affairs of the municipality did not exceed —in administrate matters —the amount now absorbed, and reduction of expenditure should be one of those natural consequences which attend a decrease in revenue. It is not a matter of question, or a case of " bolstering up," that our wnys and means are much less than they have been, and it should not be necessary to point out to the representatives of the various wards, 3 that some steps must be taken to correspondingly reduce our outlay. A proposal in this direction is now before the Council, and .will be considered at its next meeting. We have previously pointed out directions which these reforms could take, and are willing to admit that amendments to our proposals might be advantageously made; but we cannot resign the position' we have taken up, viz., that retrenchment is not only necessary, but easily practicable. We are bound to admit that the municipal taxation to which the people have to submit, is not very heavy ;' yet some of the money expended in unreproductive work, such as salaries for officers whose duties might be coaoenjtrated, might be more advantageously laid out in street work. Very litUe has of late been done in the vgf of public expenditure in the atreetfl—bo iittle, jn fapt, that burgesses have been inclined to murmur jtfaat nearly all the rates go in salaries. This is not as it should be. It would, for instance, make a contractor on a large work look sowewhat awry, were he to contemplate the fact thai the expense of keeping up his overseeing and book-keeping, staff amounted to any sum approaching that |of carrying but the work he bad

in hand. Even allowing that multitudu- ] ious Acts of Parliament in connection with the administration of municipal matters entail an extra amount of clerical work, which, were those Acts non-exist« ent, might be dispensed with, the actual state of affairs cannot he disguised, and it is impossible to get over the fact that our circumstances will not permit of the expenditure we are now indulging in, being long continued. In the face of all this it is impossible to too foroibly impress upon the minds of councillors the necessity of " cutting their coat according to their cloth," and of living within their income.