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Show COMMISSION SYSTEM. Xow that the election is over and all the great questions, the momentous problems, of the municipality muni-cipality have been settled by a sovereign people, it is unfair to the successful candidates to expect too much practical good to result from their election. There are too many fossilized forms which must be observed, too many legal technicalities to conform con-form with, too much inane red tape in the cumbersome cumber-some machinery of the city government to permit the duly elected and constituted servants of the people to do things in an economical and efficient way. Xo doubt the chosen representatives of the people want to give the city the best administration administra-tion it ever had. In this desire there is nothing not worthy of commendation. But when the new officials are inaugurated and begin the work intrusted in-trusted to their care, they will find a system of checks intended to prevent bad and inefficient servants ser-vants from doing bad things quite as effective in tying their hands in their laudable endeavors to serve the people well. They will find, too, that here and there are workers who under our present political system not only demand, but are entitled to jobs of various sorts. Faithful work before the election is entitled to recognition when the plums are distributed. The duly constituted representatives representa-tives of the people will soon discover that they are powerless to promote the welfare of the city without with-out the concurrence of some half-dozen or more other men. Being powerless, it is natural to associate as-sociate with their lack of power an even greater lack of definite responsibility. So the work of the city will be hindered, and nothing will be done, the authority of doing which is definitely fixed. A great deal of complaint was made during the campaign of extravagance in the administration of public affairs. "Whether the complaint was well founded or not, it is noteworthy that no one man was singled out as a wrongdoer. It was only the administration, a very indefinite thing indeed when considered without partisan or religious bias, and judged without the political color which developed in the heat of the campaign. If the administration did things, it was extravagant and reckless, according accord-ing to its opponents; if it didn't, the responsibility for its inaction was shifted to the intricacies of the law governing the matter, according to its votaries. The whole system is complicated, and the complications complica-tions make it inefficient. It is a relic, modified somewhat, of the old kings and lords and commons com-mons system, outgrown, and the victim of political machinery which makes clean and efficient government govern-ment all but impossible. In marked contrast to local conditions, higher assessments, higher tax rates, and withal less money mon-ey in the treasury, is the situation presented by those more fortunate cities which have dumped the whole wornout system into the limbo of dead things and substituted therefor the commission system, variously known as the Galveston idea or Houston idea, or whatever town has adopted it. The advocates of commission government do not claim perfection for the Bystem. It is only an improvement. im-provement. In operation defects are disclosed, weak places made manifest, but these, even if experience ex-perience cannot show the method of complete eradication, erad-ication, are 'compensated for by the capable administration admin-istration which has resulted. Born of necessity in the dire disaster which befell Galveston, the people peo-ple were quick to recognize that if new methods were required to cope with new and unusual conditions, con-ditions, old methods were certainly not the best to cope with usual conditions. If it is an ill wind that blows nobody good, the calamity whi'-a tf fr! Galveston a few years ago was not without (-pensation. (-pensation. In a comparative statement v.-ri:i twelve years, six under the old system a ix U;. der the commission system in the city of ( ',. the saving in municipal revenues ami r.j .. . tures in the six years under commission has been more than $1,200,000, which is lm-iv $500 a day. The saving is impressive. Th- -r, .... of the larger financial oerations of th- boa-,! ,,f commissioners, as told by the Galveston .'. v ,,f March 7, 1907, in a verified summary, is u t '', "The commissioners have retired $1.7. o , the floating debt that the city owed w'm ;. v went into office. They have put into perniane:, ,; :. provements, in the way of paved streets. . ' houses, erection of new water station, rep;.!.--city hall, etc., a sum which can be safely j , lt $360,000. They have retired of the bomb-d !, all additional $489,000, and in addition to above and in spite of the huge grade raisii u well under way and probably half comp!ru l h,. city owes today less bonded debt than it did v,h..n the board of. commissioners first took charge." Comment seems unnecessary. The eoiunii--;, ;i system in Galveston does things, and it saves vr-r $500 a day in doing them. It retires floating o,.j,r and bonded debt, and it has money in the tr. ;:-!. rv. The changed condition in the finances of Galvr-f ,;, is the happy result of retiring political mt-ti.o.U and substituting business methods in th com: ;,.t of the city business. The reason for the rha-. x.- that the authority to do things is centralized, turn-is turn-is no public pap for ward heelers, superfluous offices of-fices are abolished, and the men who are hired t. look after civic affairs are at their offices just thn same as any business man, working man, bankers or anybody else is at his post of duty. The commission com-mission system pays in Texas. It ought to ay equally as well in Salt Lake. |