Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1913-08-15
Reckless MuniCipaI Pace.


From the Philadelphia Pa. Record.
From nearly every large city in the
country the cry goes up of municipal extrav-
agance, of rising tax rates and of a steady
rush to bankruptcy unless there is a change
in policy. Philadelphia has plenty of COM
pany in her financial troubles, though it is
to be hoped that there are few cities that
follow her idiotic plan of borrowing to pay
salaries and for supplies, thus heaping up
crushing debt for posterity. Every COM
munity, North and South, East and West,
wants all sorts of municipal improvements,
parks. boulevards, fine schools, libraries
and scores of other things, and wants them
right away, too There is no waiting for
natural process of development. What
ever points of superiority the large cities
have the small cities want also. Undoubt-
eddy these growing municipal expenditures
are factor in the high cost of living,
though it is impossible to say to just what
extent
In confirmation of these views we give
two interesting editorial expressions. In
dianapolis may be taken as a sample of an
ambitious, pushing Western city which is
extremely anxious to get ahead and is
making every effort to do so. The pace is
beginning to tell, however, as the following
extract from The indianapolis News indi-
Gates:
THE conclusion of an article on the mu-
nicipal finances in this country was that
most American cities were rushing into
bankruptcy. And a singular feature of it
was remarked in the fact that there was
no apparent realization of it. Cities con-
tinue to act as if there was no bottom to
the purse and no reckoning day. We are
having local example of this. Through
our folly in stopping up and robbing the
streams of their channel, we are in for
large bill of damages. And in this are not
reckOned the losses that private persons
suffer. which, of course, make taxes on
them the harder to meet. In the face of
this every part of the city government APP
parently is pushing on to spend more money.
Every once in while there is boost of
salaries by the Council. There is plea
for more policemen and other men. The
Park Board is pushing costly plans. which
call for money, and money that mnst be
furnished by taxpayers who feel more and
more the pinch of the high cost of living.
1--WE are just now at a costly period of a
towns history just at that turning point
where much has to be done from the
ground up for the first time. But this,
instead of inspiring us with caution, seems
to encourage greater effort and stimulate
the natural American impotence, which
wants to do everything at once. We are
straining every nerve here to push forward
in half dozen years work that should be
spread over two or three times that period.
We are killing the goose that lays the
golden egg We are overtaxing the ability
of the contemporaneous generation"
From Boston comes the same tale That
city has been rushing along many impOr-
tant improvements in just the same way
us lnt DTltIly SUITS
up the general situation as follows:
THE regularity with which one munich
pality after another is reporting an increas-
ed tax rate reinfOrces the moral which The
Herald has many times pointed out, that
public extravagance is our greatest eco
nomic weakness. Population and business
cannot increase at one ratio, and taxes and
Indebtedness at a regularly greater one,
without a collapse coming some time. We
are now GOING through period of extraor-
binary growth of public expenditures. This
has more than anything else to do with
the high cost of living. No man is through
with these local taxes when he pays those
on his own house, even if he owns IT, He
must also help to pay the taxes of the
butcher and the baker and the candlestick
maker. And all these costs are cumula-
tive, even though so indirect as not to be
perceived"