Volume 49: Issued Friday 30th July 2010
LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
THE PREMIER AND THE ROADS BOARD.
The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 23rd July 1925
Mr. Lang's threat that he will cut the councils out of the Roads Board's operations altogether is one which, If he attempts to carry it into effect, will call forth the united opposition of all the councils.
If the board does the road-work itself it will become a huge
constructing authority, with a regular mass of workmen to be shifted about the country from Job to Job. Road rollers, traction engines, and rock-crushing machinery will require to be taken from place to place. An army of road surveyors and road engineers will have to travel the country locating and planning roads that are already well known to the councils' engineers.
At the present time the board works on the inexpensive method of employing the councils' trained staffs of engineers and workmen and their road-making plants to do the actual work for them.
If Mr Lang Is serious in proposing that the road Improvement of the State will have to wait until this huge organisation Is got together and placed in units all over the State, then, instead of leading to rapidity in road Improvement, it is probable that it will be some years before the board has become properly organised.
The late Government, in passing the Act, made one of its principal features the fact that the board was to work in co-operation with the councils, and was not going to be another huge department like the Railway Commissioners.
THE ADULT VOTE
The latest announcement that the Government intends to extend the adult franchise to municipalities only (and not Shires) adds another to the mass of inconsistencies surrounding the proposed change.
It can hardly be credited that the Government thinks an adult person in Willoughby Municipality is entitled to a vote, but that if he lives in Ku-ring-gai Shire he is to have no vote.
The real truth of the matter is (if the announcement be authentic) that the Government is scared to fight the massed municipalities and shires, and so it proposes to separate them into two camps and deal with them one after the other. No other reason than expediency could be given for such a division. There are municipalities more of a rural than an urban nature Just as there are shires which, though classified as such, are really large and thriving towns.
There is, of course, no logic in the whole matter. The only reason advanced for the change is the fact that a mere lodger in a town may have some small interest In its welfare. Therefore, says the Government, the man with this slight intangible interest must be given an equal vote with the man whose whole fortune may depend upon the success or failure of town management.
NORTH SHORE BRIDGE.
Should There be a Toll?
(BY A. G. NORDEN.)
The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 23rd April 1931
The North Shore Bridge, connecting the northern suburbs with the city of Sydney, places the coping stone on the efforts of several generations of citizens, both of the past and present, whose efforts since occupation by white men have been in the direction of a connecting link, either below the surface or above the waters of the harbour between the north and southern shores of Port Jackson.
Under the Act authorising the erection of the bridge, the cost of the same is to be borne and provided for as follows:
(a) As to two-thirds of the capital cost by the Railway Commissioners; and
(b) As to the other one-third thereof, by means of a special levy at the rate of 1/2d in the £ on the U.C.V. of land in the city of Sydney and In the municipalities of Manly, Mosman, Lane Cove, North Sydney, and Willoughby, and the shires of Ku-ring-gai, Warringah, and part of the shire of Hornsby.
This basis of contribution towards the cost arose out of a compromise amongst the political parties of the State Houses of
Parliament.
There cannot be any doubt that the bridge will prove of great convenience to the suburbs on the northern shore, but it is certainly open to question whether this advantage is of the value of their share of the cost of the resumption of the land and the fabrication and erection of the bridge.
The contract price for the length of 3770ft of bridge was £4,217,721, and it was estimated that the approaches, etc., would cost £1,275,000. We are informed that the structure will cost more than £8,000,000 on completion, which would include the fabrication of the bridge, the land resumptions, building of approaches, the
interest on the capital outlay, and other expenses Incidental thereto, and the creation of a fund, the income from which will cover the repair and upkeep of the structure in perpetuity.
Assuming that this huge sum is the completed cost of the bridge, property owners in the city of Sydney and the municipalities and shires affected will, by the time it is finished, be required to contribute approximately £2,700,000.
It may be mentioned that this Harbour Bridge rate of 1/2d in the £ will continue to be levied until the full amount of the one third of the capital cost of the bridge is paid for.
The Harbour Bridge tax was first levied In 1923, and up to the end of September, 1930, £1,122,064 had been collected. The city of Sydney and the municipalities and shires referred to will, therefore, have over 1.5 million pounds yet to pay for their share of the cost of the bridge. On present real estate values and the prospect of lower values, in view of the depression, it will probably take a further 12 to 15 years for the municipalities to fully pay their quota, a lengthy extension of the period anticipated during which those
municipalities would be burdened with this serious impost.
The question for the consideration, at the present time, of all residents within the city and the municipalities concerned in paying for the one-third share of the cost of the bridge, is whether:
(a) The bridge is likely to prove of such a value as to Justify an outlay of approximately £2,700,000.
(b) Even if it may prove of this value or n lesser or greater sum, should not the users of the bridge contribute some portion of the
share of the cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment