Ratepayers of the International dettiemient generally wall read With approbation tue letter addressed to the Municipal Council. by Mr, Isdward Hzra and twenty, other ratepayers, which we print. w-day. Of the growth and alliciency of the Electricity De-. partment the community are justly proud. Its continual extensions they regard, as any business men would, as evidence of vitality and, in principle, are always prepared to endorse. But. the fact cannot be overlooked. that, with silver at its present. price, money is very hard to get and without any wish to curtail the legitimate growth of the De~ partment, the community must. be satisfied that its demands are. indeed indispensable.
Since and including the year: 1913—when the proposal to con-. vert the Department into a company was rejected—Electricity leans, authorized, have amounted: to Tls. 4,653,310. - Nearly half as: much again as this is now asked for at' one fell swoop. The company scheme just alluded to was rejected by the ratepayers because they desired to keep control over the undertaking, and under the proposed conversion into a company they anticipated that they: would lose control without in anyway relieving themselves of responsibility. Those considera—tions are as sound and cogent today as ever they were. But this further question arises: whether the desired control, nominally retained, has been exercised as effectively as it should have been. It is notorious that the Council' has found difficulty in borrowing money (owing, as stated above, to the price of silver) and that "general purposes' have been stinted for the sake of ihe Electricity Department. Does it not look a little as if the Department were beginning to control tte Council and not the Council the Department?
Such are the considerations that have prompted the twenty-one ratepayers in their letter to the Council. The report by the Engineer-in-Chief and Manager, appearing in the Gazette of January 29, gives a comprehensive~ idea of how the need for electricity is to be met. It does not show whence that need arises. For
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.