New Britain herald., 1914-05-07
Foisting City Upkeep on Posterity. (New London Day.)

INV" AIOIuOH Lay
 The individual who tries to live too cheaply generally makes mess of his life and pretty often doesn't even suc- ceed in doing the one thing that he devotes his life to doing-getting rich. If he saves money at the expense of comfortable housing, good food and plenty of it, proper clothes, plenty of soap, and towels, and more or less recreation, he generally has to spend 1t on doctors. hospital expenses and bare living during periods of inca pacitation. It costs about so much, the best you can do, to maintain an individual in a state of health and usefulness. To live cheaper is to make net loss, .&t -. "s.
 The city. which tries to get along too cheaply generally undergoes an experience broadly analogous to the experience of the over-saving indi- vidual. It costs about so much, the best you can do, to run, a city and keep it up to the mark where it isn't creating a deficit of Improvements and modernity that will have to be paid for, sooner or later, by extraordinary sacrifices, on the part of it's citizens or by that most unsa tisfactory of all forms of payment, interest on a bond issue. The community that scrimps along with little else in view than determination to keep the tax rate down to the last notch, not only never amounts to much but eventually has to make up a heavy arrearage of up- keep, all in a lump.
 New London was proud of her low tax rate and her low appraisal of property for a good many years, dur ing which she had mighty little rea- son to be proud of anything else in her management. She has had to pay for that low tax rate and paucity of improvements by having to shoul- der in bulk all the paving and side- walk building that ought to have been done from year to year. She is still putting off for future reckoning day divers things that she ought to be attending to right now.
 Bridgeport isn't the most unpro- gressive city in Connecticut by good deal-in some ways she is the least i so. But even that hustling commun- ity has just had to take up the bur- den of a decade or more of cheese pairing and on Saturday her people voted a bond issue to million and quarter dollars to help her catch up to her own growth. Four hundred thousand dollars goes for a new bridge that ought to have been built long ago, $3O0,000 for sewers most of which should have been laid long ago, $200,00O for paving that should have been done before this, $2O0,000 for grade schools that should have al- ready been provided. Of the entire million and quarter only one-tenth, providing funds for the completion and equipment of a high school al- ready under way, appear to be prop erly matters of expenditure as late as in 1914.
 But the time has come when the city can no longer postpone the duty of providing these improvements. It's people have to produce them. So, naturally, they issue bonds. The bonds will have to be paid off, which means that, after all, every dollar that should have been spent before will have to be spent at last. And in ad- dition the city will have to pay inter- est charges amounting probably to more than the cost of the $4OO,000 bridge and the $2OO,OOO worth of grade schools put together In other words, if the city had taxed itself for the improvements in the first place it could build $600,00O worth of schools instead of $20O,OOO worth and be no worse off than it will now be in the end.
 This is a shining example of the operation of the policy of trying to run a town too cheaply. The best friends of a city are not those whose . everlasting cry is that We cannot af- ford "at this time' to keep our com munal body in good physical trim.