The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1849-03-17
Municipal finances.

it with attention, and endeavored to understand
and digest it. The report ITSELF processes to be an
appeal to the people, drawn up for the purpose OF
" informing them of the financial condition OF the
corporation" of instructing them - to what prln
ciples and policy guide and direct their public ser
wants and to enable them to detect the allacies
and MISREPRESENTATION which designing persons.
for selfish purposes, often resort to, to misead them'
Coming before us with such pretensions, we had a
right to expect from the report something more than
common something which, when read, would fill
the mind with knowledge and make the usually
mysterious operations of municipal financeering as
plain, to even ordinary understandings, the sim
pie principles of mathematical science. With this
hope and feeling we began the perusa of the docu-
ment; but we may as well confess, at the outset OF
this article, that we laid it down disappointed
There was lamentable discrepancy between the
promise and its fulilment; and with every dispo-
sition to be convinced that the Municipality was in
most furnishing condition, that the taxes were
being gradually diminished, and that we were ra
pidly approaching the period promised in one of
these financial reports about nine years ago-when
no more taxes would be required and surplus
would accumulate in the treasury, perhaps, for dis
were forced to the conclusion that
things were going on much as usual, and that there
was no likelihood of speedy improvement.
The first thing that strikes the reader of the re-
port is, the extraordinary income of the Munich
pality. The estimates for the current year make
the revenue $780, 600, nearly double the amount
which will be collected during any year under the
amended revenue law for the whole State of LOU
isana. What is to be done with all this money!
The improvements so much talked of will of course
absorb the greater portion-as those Improvements
have been, year after year, held up to US as the
cause of heavy taxation, and the inducement to
bear it without complaining! If any one imagines
this, he has to learn the first rudimens of finance.
The amount set apart in the report for "public
works." under which head are included the ex.
penditures necessary on Wharves, Levees and
Landings, and for paving the Streets" is but
100000, little more than one-ninth Of the whole.
What becomes of the remainder! The pretty little
of $3.50 600 goes to pay the interest on the debt
the blissful memento of former financial opera
tons $50 600 mere, under the stringent enactments
of State law, are devoted to the payment Of part
Of the principal of that debt, in order to get rid in
the course of years of the exhausting drain for
interest and no less than $345 0O0 topay" current
expenses" which, as they form no part of the
" public work" 6 interest" nor sinking fund"
expenditures, must mean the payment of the re-
corder, police officers, tax collectors, etc., etc.
very moderate sum it must be confessed, consider
ing the vast extent of the municipality, the singu-
lar efficiency and wondrous abilities of these pub
lie servants; and the entire exemption which our
citizens enjoy from all disturbances, fires, Migrants,
thieves burglars murderers. No has any right
to complain of so small an expenditure; it is but
little more than is required for the government of
the State of Louisiana-and what is the State,
when compared to the Second Municipality! Be-
sides, while we thus show the State that we can
DO thing or two which it has never dared at
tempt, we are assured by the "report" that this
greatness of our portion of the city has been ac-
4uired at remarkably cheap rate-that our taxes
really less in proportion to the value of the pro-
perty owned than those paid by the people of the
city of New York. Let this console US. 1t is true
we have no Croton Water Works, to give health
md cleanliness to the city, to extingush fires, cool
the air by hundred fountains, and add to the gen.
sral comfort of the people in thousand other ways,
Ind we have not many other things which New
York possesses, but that is nothing-we shall have
4 City Hall when it is finished we may have
water if we do not live too far from the centre of
he city and will pay the Commercial Water Works
is own price for it !; and when the happy time ar
ives, SO confidently promised years ago, that taxes
hall be abolished and a surplus accumulate in the
we will have a goodly number of other
hings-if we can get them.
With such an income it is not strange that the
Finance Committee should congratulate itself on
he prosperous condition of its affairs, and fecitate
Itself on the assumption that by the first of JAM
larry next the reduction of the debt of the Munich
oality since March, lS47, when the administration
If our municipal affairs was in other hands, and
when the debt had reached its highest point and
he credit of the Municipality its lowest, will not
be less than $4OO, 600" We join with the Com
ittee in its evident exultation at the prospect of
payment of the enormous debt, and we sincerely
return our thanks to the State Legislature for COM
Deing the Municipal Councils to take measures for
It's reduction. But we do not think it kind or
generous on the part of the Committee to make 70
heavy a back-handsd blow at those " other
hands, in which our affairs were placed some two
years ago. 1t is true that at that time our debt
at its highest pont but it is also true that the
g other hands" did not add to it materially, if at
.ll-whether because they had no desire to do SO,
Or because no one would trust them we cannot say,
probably the latter for we have the authority
If the report for believing that the credit of the
was then at the lowest" Those
other hands" were "raw-hands ;" they knew
nothing of the science of finance, and foolishly
supposed that there was no way to redeem the
credit of the Municipality but to pay its debts, and
that the shortest way of paying would be to raise
money by taxes. Proceeding upon these crude no.
tions-so utterly at variance with financial maxims
the best accredited-thsy imposed an extraordinary
tax to pay the debt, for which act of folly the peo-
pie very wisely turned them out before they had
fairly begun to collect it. They were, perhaps,
Justly punished. But it is not charitable in their
successors, o used the money, to give them thrusts
so severe and keen. We are fain to believe that
these remarks crept into the report inadvertently
The magnanimity and benevolence of the members
Of the Finance Committee, are too well known to
permit the belief that any thing that would hurt
The feelings Of those other hands, was intended.
But prosperous as the condition of the Munich
pality is now, and will be hereafter, according
RI the Coxcvc;ttoa 4 10 moi vxfhout ita emhar.