Delaware Inquirer

City Economy.

Can we ever expect economy in the administration of our city government, while the present members are continued in office! We have tried the most of them for years, and the result is, our city debt has gradually increased-our taxes multiplied, and other incidental expenses increased at a rate beyond endurance. We hear one continual complaint, and that is, "What becomes of the money raised by taxation?" If we buy a house worth $1000, it will in a few years grow into a $1500 house, if you believe the assessment books. In order to practice the fraud upon the people of raising enough money to support their extravagance, the assessed valuation of property must be increased. To raise a half per cent upon the old assessed valuation, would never raise enough money to pay the expenses of the city government-there must be an increased valuation laid upon the property. Consequently, a $1000 house (instead of growing less in value,) increases, and soon becomes a $1500 house. Every dealer in property in this city knows how much difficulty he experiences in making sales whilst the Receiver of Taxes has the books open at the City Hall. The present City Council is a mill-stone around the neck of the city. It is an impossibility for it to increase as rapidly as it should do, so long as fifteen men can legally meet once every two weeks and thrust their hands into the public treasury and scatter the funds to the winds. We must try a new set of men-men who will feel the responsibility of holding the public money, and will spend it with as much economy as they would their own. We want men in the Council who will respect the law of the land. We do not want men elected to hold in trust the property of the citizens who do not themselves respect the laws. For the benefit of the people and the members of Council, we insert a portion of a law that should govern the city at this time, and is published by authority of the Council, in a book called the "City Ordinances." It will show whether the City Council has the right or not to increase the public debt by mortgage or otherwise:

"Wilmington shall have no power or authority to borrow money, or contract or create any debt or liability, or to make any ordinance for borrowing money, or contracting or creating a debt or liability, (except ordinary debts and liabilities in the common course of carrying on the work and business of the said city.) to be paid out of the taxes, rents, or receipts of the year for the time then current: and if the said debts and liabilities shall not be so paid, the same shall bind the members of Council, for the time then being, personally, other than those shown by the journal of the Council to have been absent or to have voted in the negative when the ordinance, order, or proceeding under which the debt or liability arose, was passed, or had making them jointly and severally responsible."

Let the people bear the foregoing portion of an act of the Legislature in mind, and, when they vote, next September, see that they are voting for men who will be governed by it.