The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-12-06
MuN1crPA1 LEGISLATION.

Many suggestions will be made to
the forthcoming legislature for
amending the charter under which
cities conduct their affairs through
the commission form of government.
These will come from city officials
who have worked under this system,
and from others who are interested
in the development of municipal gov
eminent along effective lines. There
is general approval of the commits
sion plan wherever it has been tried
in Kansas, both by the people and
by the men who have been charged
with administering it. But it is a
comparatively new system for munich
pal rule, and it would be strange, in
deed, if experience did not teach that
the plan is far from perfect as to
many of its details.
And when the time comes for the
members of the legislature to consider
to the commission plan
and the other laws which govern the
of cities, they should
have a fundamental aim of making
these laws more elastic, of giving to
the city commissioners or to mayors
and common councils, where the lat
u
ity that will be sufficient at all times
to meet any possible emergency. In
other words, the cities of Kansas are
entitled to a far larger measure of
home rule.
Few of the cities in the state are
alike in any particular, with the pos
sible exception of the size of their
Most of them are de-
unlike geographically and
therefore have much different prob
lens to solve in the matter of con-
structing sewers, establishing water
supplies, paving streets, and providing
bridges where they are necessary.
Yet under existing legislation most of
the cities are grouped only as to their
and told that they can do
this and that and no more Then, too,
there is a wide divergence between
the likes and the dislikes of the peo
pie who make up the several cities.
The population of one city might be
of a mind to devote considerable sums
of money to the creation and devel-
opment of parks. In another city the
inclinations might run towards sys-
TENS of boulevards, and so on and SO
the city inclining to parks could spend
no more money in that direction than
could a city which did not particu-
larly care for parks or was without
the opportunities to have them.
Why, think of it! The city of Topeka
had to go to the legislature for a
special act that would permit it and
other cities to establish great white
ways.
An emergency has arisen in Topeka
Just now that demands the reconstruc-
ton of a small sewer into which two
larger sewers empty. No funds are
available for the work. Under the COM
mission plan the expenditures are linn
tied to a budget prepared year in ad-
vance. This sewer difficulty did not de-
veIop or come to the front until after
that budget had been made out. Be
cause the last census accorded To-
peka a population under the $4,000
mark, it is not possible to create an
other sewer district in the locality af-
once. and double taxation of this va
riety is only permissible in Kansas
cities having a population of $4,000 and
over. Now, why should there be such
senseless discriminate as to what one
city can do and what another
cannot?
City officials, whether of the commits
sion or the old fashioned variety, are
hampered and hindered at every turn
by large variety of legislative enact |
ments. These should be generally re-
vised at the coming session of the legis- |
ature, and in way that will give city |
officials the widest latitude and which |
will also permit of the development of
cities along the lines of their individual |
nclinations.