AFFAIRS, To the Editor of the "Norra-Cama Daty News."
Sin,—At the last meeting of the Civic League Mr. Cecil Holliday voiced the very urgent need of the fullest publicity being given to all the deliberations of our Civic Fathers at their meetings, furthermore, that Committees should be appointed to oversee the workings of each of the Departments of the Council, formed of two Councillors assisted by a number of Ratepayers chosen at the annual ratepayers' meeting. These Committees would serve to divide up the now far too heavy work attempted by the Council as a whole, doing it more thoroughly, and at the same time helping to educate a wide group of citizens their civic duties in connexion with Municipal Government and Administration.
There is ons aspect of the present system of secrecy in municipal matters that is apt to be lost sight of, viz:—not only are the general public kept in ignorance of what is going on in the Counci! champers, but, that as some of the members of that public will later be called upon to fill the responsible position of councillors it follows that our very future councillors are being kept in the same ignorance. The fallacy of this position needs no dilating on, it is utterly wrong and inconsistent and means that when vise men do take office they are at a complete disadvantage to those who are in possession of all the knowledge i.e.:—the permanent officials, and so are more or less under their tutelage instead of being independent representatives of the public. Complete changes in the personnel of the Council are liable to occur every year, so to correct the wrong bias that these conditions engender it is essential that public matters should have the fullest publicity and we should be willing to forgo any questionable advantage that it may be advanced is achieved by secret diplomacy. We should also have a wide criticizing body outside the very narrow Council circle, which body should be in possession of every possible bit of information on municipal matters on which to base their criticism. _At present there is little such information, even when a matter is placed before the ratepayers at the annual meeting, as for instance the alterations in the Public Garden, it forms only one small item in a tremendous bulk of business, so great as to preclude any possibility of dealing with it in detail in the time available, and so the whole has to be accepted or rejected more or less en bloc, confining comment to the matters of the most vital importance and raising questions about the rest as they occur during; the year.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.