The Williamsburgh Local Improvement Commission

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THE WILLIAMSBURGH LOCAL IMPROVEMENT COMMISSION.

The financial condition of those wards of the city of Brooklyn comprised in the late city of Williamsburgh is by no means satisfactory. In addition to their share of the ordinary expenses of our municipal government, they stagger under a load of debt accumulated by the extravagance and misgovernment of the officials of the late city. The knowledge of this fact makes our Aldermen and others entrusted with the disbursement and control of the current expenditures careful and economical in their administration, even to a fault. We have blocks unlighted, where gas is needed; sidewalks muddy and defective, where reflagging is urgently demanded; ruts and holes in the pavement, rendering transit difficult; and gaps and breakages in the sidewalks, which the insufficient light renders dangerous to the pedestrians; these and scores of other much-needed improvements and repairs we are deprived of, because the burden of our taxation is already as great as our property will bear. Add to these the water and sewerage rates, and the prospect ahead is anything but consolatory, and one which should induce us to labor strenuously to free the late city from the incubus of debt which hangs over it. Our officials at present dread to press forward the smallest local improvement, however desirable, for fear of adding to the already overwhelming burden of our taxation. The masses of our tax-payers do not clearly understand that the heaviness of the charges on their property arises from former misgovernment, and not from present extravagance. Those, however, who do understand the cause of the difficulties under which we labor have endeavored to remove it, but thus far the scheme they have inaugurated has led to no beneficial result. It was supposed, when the act for the creation of the "Commission on Williamsburgh Local Improvements" was passed, that we had obtained a law which would have the effect of relieving us from our embarrassments in the speediest and most effectual manner; but this hope has not been realised. The pay of the Commissioners under the act was fixed at $5 for the first hundred days, and $2 per day thereafter. It was supposed by Mr. Murphy,¹ who drew the bill, that the first hundred days would probably be sufficient to accomplish the whole of the work of ascertaining and reassessing the indebtedness, and that this very liberal pay would induce some of our best men to act on the Commission. But by some of the political engineering so well understood by politicians, two of the three Commissioners were arranged to be chosen from a class of men who were unfitted to accomplish the designed end, and who had far more interest in protracting the per-diem allowance than in relieving Williamsburgh from her embarrassments. Of the three Commissioners, consequently, only Mr. Cotrel,² the sole representative of the locality affected, has labored with any energy to discharge its functions. A counsel has been unnecessarily appointed at an enormous salary, and a clerk, whose duties, such as they are, Mr. Cotrel has discharged. Thus the act has not only failed to answer the end contemplated, but has aggravated the evil by involving us in an additional expense of five or six thousand a year for the Commission. The law it was supposed would render it impossible for parties to recover judgments and accumulate costs against the late city during the pending investigation of its affairs; but the Courts have decided that its provisions have not this effect. It is obvious therefore that the act has failed of its object in both respects; it has not finished the business entrusted to it in a reasonable time, nor does it protect the late city against the fast-accumulating costs of legal proceedings. Indeed its operation has had the contrary effect—for in the suits recently brought against the late city the proceedings of the Commissioners themselves have been adduced as evidence of the claims sought to be established. The remedy now evidently will be, to abolish the Commission, fund the debt of the late city, and employ Mr. Cotrel or some other person equal to the duty, to complete the investigations begun by the Commission, under the direction of a committee of the Common Council, or of the alderman of the wards interested. Some such proposition as this, we understand, is about to be submitted to the Common Council; and we trust that no opposition which may be offered on the part of those profiting by the present dilatory and expensive system will be able to prevent its success.

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