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Show uu THE MANAGER IDEA FOR SMALL CITIES Eureka. California, has voted acainst tho commission form of government, but not becauso it Is not progressive. rBye more than eight to one in a total ' vote of 1172, It favored ,a city manager, man-ager, after the Lockpqrt, N. Y. plan. Tn reality this is tho, commission plan boiled down to one man, which Is probably all that any little city needs, says- the Los Angeles Tribune. Staunton, Va., a city at 12,000, was typical of the. average misgoverned American community. It has tried the Lockport plan .with results that are' attractive hs outlined It sont to Richmond for Charles E. Ashburn-er, Ashburn-er, a civil engineer and railroad man, whom it was lucky tb got for $2600 a year. Things are different now In Staunton. Ashburner has heen handling hand-ling the taxpayer's money as ho would his own. He has complete charge of tho town's business. Ho has laid 48,000 feet of pavement In three yonrs, as against about 3000 under the old council regime He has overcome the water shortage, installed a sewerage system, closed n malodorous 'dump" in tho center of Staunton, reformed tho practice of collecting sarbogo, put up street signs, paved school playgrounds, play-grounds, and, Incidentally, made city employes earn their salaries by refusing re-fusing to pay them. for idle time. He has done all this without Increasing In-creasing the tax rate. '1 mean to make this the finest little city in America," says Ashburner. Probably Prob-ably ho could earn a much higher Income in private business, but the pleasure of doing a fine public service ser-vice can't be expressed in dollars. Sometimes poeplo say that proposed Innovations are "too Idealistic for adoption." They mny know that thore are thousands of Americans like Ashburner Ash-burner who would forego financial chances for opportunities like this. The city' manager idea doesn't seem practicable for large communities, but for small towns It has merits that aro aparenL Chico Record. |