Marck 10.
For those who look to the annual meeting of Ratepayers to provide the excitement of some nine days' wonder, the list of Resolutions to be brought forward on Tuesday week will be something of a disappointment. With one possible exception the list contains nothing controversial; nor has public gossip as yet supplied any inkling of sensations to come, as has occasionally been the case in previous years. The one point of controversy alluded to above is contained in Resolation VIII, under which the Council seeks powers to raise a loan mot exceeding Tls. 350,000 for the purchase and erection of additional electrical plant." That this Resolution will give opportunity for further debate on the vexed question of Municipal trading seems not improbable, alike from the experience of previous years and from various corres-Pondence which has appeared at! different times in these columns. The subject is, however, too vast to receive, for the moment, more than a passing reference. One other point on which criticism may fasten is the proposal to borrow Tls. 300,000 for the purposes defined in the estimate of Extraordinary Expenditure," which item, as glance at the Annual Report reveals, includes such items as the) rebuilding of the Bund Bridge over the Yangkingpang, the purchase of certain land, road-making, drainage and a small amount of bunding and building. OF late years the tendency to cover Extraordinary Expenditure by loans has boon growing more and more pronounced. In so far as our borrow-in, ywers are concert "still well within our limit terest" figares in the ordinary estimated expenditure of the year at no more than Tls. 109,000, ard this is indeed a very small proportion of a total income of over two and a half millions. Moreover, it will doubtless be argued that the steady redemption of old debentures may fairly be set off against the incurring of new. The question is rather one of principle than of particular instance; and when, as now, the Resolutions contain yet other borrowing proposals to thi tent all told of Tls. 600,000, while as the "Gazette" store elsewhere new charges are impending on account of ie General. Hospital, it would seem wiser to impose some restriction on the now apparently accepted
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.