Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Conference of Mayors and Other City Officials of the State of New York (Volume 9-12)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918. Excerpt: ... providing for the establishment of municipal departments of assessments with a single head appointed by the mayor. It is generally agreed that a revision of our civil service laws is needed so that there will be eliminated those features which actually protect and encourage inefficiency in public office. We have now had sufficient experience with insuring public officials under the Workman's Compensation Law to determine with reasonable accuracy what method of providing Insurance is the most economical. I believe that a study by the cities through the Bureau will point the way for many of our municipal administrations to reduce the cost of insurance. The housing problem in many of our cities is in an acute stage. It is my opinion, that the only effective remedy is to increase the supply of homes. I do not believe that municipalities should undertake to do this, but I am convinced that city administrations can do much to stimulate building and to reduce rent profiteering. Cities individually should consider amending or redrafting their charters so as to provide for a simple, unified governmental organization, and the vesting of administrative power and responsibility so that the people can enforce accountability. Some improvement along this line can be made by first and second class cities, but the greatest advancement can be made by most of our third class cities, where centralized, simplified responsible government is yet unknown. In this annual address I have endeavored briefly to summarize only the more important municipal developments of the year, the activities of the Conference and the future municipal problems. The review, I believe, presents abundant proof of the progressiveness of the Empire State Cities, and of their desire and capacity to solve...