OCR Text |
Show Published Every Saturday BY GOODWIN8 WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO INC. L. J. BRATAGER, Business Mgr. F. P. GALLAGHER, Editor and Mgr. 8UB8CRIPTION PRICE: In United 8tates, Canada and Mexico $2.50 per year, the fi) Including postage months. six "$1.50 for Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal Union, $4.50 per year. Single copies, 10 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, payable to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postofflce at 8alt Lake of March 3, 1879. Act under the City, Utah, Ness Bldg. Salt Lake City, Utah. Phone Wasatch 5409. 311-12-- 13 $3,300,000 BOND PLOT IS LAID BARE is painfully conspicuous that the city commissioners do not believe in open covenants openly arrived at. They are withholding vital information concerning the $3,000,000 bond issue which they propose for the purchase of unnamed water rights and the construe- tion of undefined reservoirs and conduits. They have not taken the public into their confidence; they have not placed all their cards on the table. They have attempted to put over their deal by waving brilliant, but vague promises at the taxpayers. The average taxpayer does not know what they are talking about and for the very good reason that the commissioners and the city engineer are not talking about what they know. They are talking about a sort of impressionistic picture of something that has to do with a water system. But they do not talk about brass tacks. The city engineer publishes a map occupying columns of space in the newspapers and he writes a brief camouflage statement about water supply and water rights. In his article there is no definite statement of what the commissioners intend to do with the $3,300,000 if they can delude the public into granting that enormous sum to official IT . len. head of the water department, would be the next secretary of the Commercial Club: Is it possible that he is going to resign after the bond election?- If the bonds are issued will he abandon his plan and desert, leaving the responsibility on a successor? These are questions which he should answer. Not that we would blame him for wanting to desert such a plan. It is about the worst plan yet suggested and anyone who champions it today will repent in sackcloth and ashes. If the commissioners will not trust the taxpayers with information about the bond issue should the taxpayers trust the commission- ers with the $3,300,000? It would be the extreme of folly to vote the bonds without knowing fully how and for what the money is to be expended. Neither the city engineer nor Commissioner Neslen has given a detailed statement of what the people are to get for their $3,300,000. The average taxpayer who has the slightest business judgment knows that $3,- 300.000 will buy less today than ever before. Even if the water plan were admirable, instead of being a hold-u- p and a frame-uthe $3,- 300.000 would be expended at the very peak of high prices. spendthrifts. We are amazed by the statement of the engineer that the explorMoreover, our limit of indebtedness is such that if we vote the ation work is to begin for reservoir sites after the bonds have been $3,300,000 we shall be unable to appropriate any money for paving. issued. Manifestly, no worked-ou- t plan of a water system has been Those who support the preposterous water plan promise that the legislature will adjust this matter satisfactorily. If so, we need not prepared. The work is to be done after the bonds are issued. The city engineer gives the case away when, in an obvious at- be in a hurry. We should wait until the legislature tempers the wind tempt to combat the argument of present high prices, he says that to the shorn lamb. There will be a double advantage in patience. While we are .fcmoney will be expended over a long period. Vague in this statement, as in most of his other statements, he does not designate, nor even giving the legislature time to raise our limit of indebtedness or, better still, grant us home rule and a charter which will free us from outapproximate the period he alludes to. If the money is not to be expended now or in the immediate fu- side interference, prices will be falling and when we shall have oband comprehensive water plan we shall be ture, why are the commissioners demanding a bond issue at this time tained a able to use our money to advantage. If we get a charter we can when prices are at their highest level in history? It sounds like a mystery. Perhaps we can help to solve it. Per- have a water board and hold it to strict accountability. As it is each sistent reports have reached us that some of the banks of the city hold new set of commissioners adopts a new plan and scraps the old plans at great cost. paper of municipal contractors and want a settlement as soon as possible. The powers that be back of the banks have sanctioned the Another consideration which should appeal to all classes at this bond issue because it will give the contractors a chance to pay. time may be outlined briefly. What we need, above everything, is In a word, the bond issue is to build a pork barrel and not a increased production. If the commissioners are granted the $3,300,000 Skater system. they will immediately begin competition for men and teams that will The commissioners backing the bond issue are pulling chestnuts come from the farms. On the farms the labor would be skilled and out of the fire for the creditors of municipal contractors. If all the highly productive; on the water system it would be unskilled and cards were placed on the table there would be amazing revelations. would help to produce nothing better than a colossal failure. The experts who are doing most of the figuring are reckoning in galWhat are the home-owneto do if the debts of the city continue lons of pork rather than in gallons of water. to mount ? It has been rumored, from time to time, that Commissioner Nes- The burden of taxation on the people has increased enormously p, fully-thought-o- ut rs |