It is readily to be agreed that it would be of considerable advantage to the city in many ways if it possessed a fine hall of its own in which important public demonstrations, great political meetings, and entertainments by renowned artists might be held under conditions of a favourable kind that do not at present exist.
Nor is it to be denied that at the present time the resident of Dunedin, who has seen the spacious and admirable town halls that have been erected in Auckland and Wellington, has to acknowledge that his own city has fallen distinctly behind the two principal centres of the North Island in respect of its municipal equipment in at least one particular.
After all, however, the question resolves itself into one of finance. If the people of Dunedin wish to have a Town Hall they must be prepared to pay for it.
They are deluding themselves, it is to be apprehended, if they believe that such an institution would be self-supporting.
The reasonable assumption is that the receipts each year, for at any rate several years, would not equal the expenses, consisting of the interest charge and the cost of maintenance, and that in consequence a certain demand upon the rates would be entailed.
That is a prospect that might be viewed with indifference if it were the fact that the municipal account, which is the ordinary revenue account of the corporation, was sufficiently elastic to meet easily any fresh calls upon it.
Unfortunately we know that this is not the case.
The expenditure which has to be provided for out of the municipal account is growing more rapidly than the receipts are, and, as a means to secure for the account an additional permanent revenue, it is now proposed that the trading concerns of the corporation shall make a specific annual contribution to the general fund, the contribution being regulated by the amount of the capital invested in the enterprise.
It is, however, quite problematical whether two of the trading departments will be in a position to pay over to the municipal account in the current year the amount of the suggested assessments.
But unless the corporation is assured of a definite payment by the trading concerns to the municipal account of an amount approximating the aggregate which these undertakings are expected to provide, it must adopt either one or other of two courses - it must curtail its expenditure on the ordinary municipal services, such as maintenance of the streets and lighting of the city, or else it must increase its rates.
When this is the position, the proposal that the city should borrow 50,000 for the construction of a Town Hall, which would not pay for its own cost, cannot fairly be regarded as opportune.
This conclusion is arrived at without reference to such relevant facts as that the corporation has within the last few months raised a loan on account of the Waipori enterprise - a loan which had largely been expended in anticipation - and that it has authority at the present time to raise a loan of 175,000 for the improvement and construction of streets.
The City Council has yet to consider whether it will exercise the power the ratepayers have conferred upon it and expend the 175,000 as far as it will go, or whether it will take the whole question into reconsideration.
It is sufficiently clear that, even if the ratepayers should be favourable to the flotation of a loan for the construction of a Town Hall, the improvement of the streets must receive priority of consideration.
- ODT, 11.4.1914 .
