*To be interpreted as cash or such securities as have a ready cash value. BOOK ACCOUNTS. RECEIPTS. I. Taxes collected for the State and to be turned over to the State treasury. II. Receipts from Revenue Bonds in anticipation of current taxes. EXPENDITURES. I. Payment of taxes collected for the State. II. Payments to Sinking Fund from general treasury. Assets. GENERAL STATEMENT OF ASSETS AND LIABILITIES. I. Available. Cash in treasury. Salable lands and buildings. Taxes, assessments, etc., in arrears. Other debts due. Other available assets (specify). 2. Not available. Liabilities. Water works. Gas works. School houses. Public buildings. Parks. Sinking fund. Bad taxes, i. e., those in arrears for a period making future collection improbable. Other assets not available (specify). Debt. a. Bonded. b. Floating. Outstanding claims. Other liabilities (specify). THE POWER TO INCUR INDEBTEDNESS UNDER THE PROPOSED MUNICIPAL PROGRAM HON. BIRD S. COLER The effect of constitutional limitations upon the debt-incurring capacity of cities has recently been a matter of extreme practical importance to the City of New York. None of the municipal corporations which were consolidated by the Greater New York Charter into the City of New York, as now constituted, had exceeded its constitutional limit of indebtedness at the time of consolidation. Nevertheless, the effect of consolidation was to create a new city, the indebtedness of which considerably exceeded the limitation in the Constitution of the State of New York, of ten per cent. of the value of its real estate as assessed for purposes of taxation. The reason for this was that the limitation in question applied separately to the indebtedness of the counties included within the territorial limits of Greater New York and to the municipal corporations included within it. For example, at the date of consolidation the City of Brooklyn had a debt practically equal to the maximum permitted by the Constitution, whereas the county of Kings, which was territorially identical, had also a debt of nearly $15,000,000. The Greater New York Charter made all indebtedness, including the county debts, a part of the common debt of the new city, so that the effect of the annexation of Kings County and the City of Brooklyn to the City of New York was to reduce the debt-incurring capacity of the new city by nearly $15,000,000. The same results were also obtained in a less degree from the annexation of the counties of Queens and Richmond. I do not mean to dwell upon the debt-limit difficulties which beset the financial administration of the new City of New York during the first eighteen months of its existence. We were theoreticallythough not, of course, practically-bankrupt. The city had exhausted its credit within the constitutional limitation, and could only continue in business on a system of cash payments. These difficulties have now been surmounted, first through a large increase in the assessed valuation of real estate, principally in the limits of the old City of New York; and, secondly, through the adoption at the recent election of a constitutional amendment eliminating the county indebtedness of the four counties of New York, Kings, Queens, and Richmond, from computation in ascertaining the debt limit of the city. One effect of these difficulties has been to make the general public quite familiar with this constitutional provision, and to excite an amount of public discussion in regard to its merits and demerits which would not otherwise have been possible. Advocates of consolidation had written many eloquent articles describing the great possibilities for modernizing and improving the City of New York, so that it might become foremost among the imperial cities of the world. It was found, however, that consolidation, with its enormously increased public duties and responsibilities, instead of carrying with it an increase in the power to issue bonds to meet these responsibilities, actually brought about a diminution of that power. I hope that this reference to the increased public duties and responsibilities resulting from consolidation will not be regarded as mere phrase-making. This change in conditions is a real one and vital, as a single illustration will show. Prior to consolidation the building of a sufficient number of bridges across the East River was regarded as a pleasant dream, be longing, as a great English novelist has said, "to the avenue of wishes leading to the golden mists beyond imagination." To-day how different are the conditions! If Greater New York is to be one city in fact, as well as in name, intercommunication between its several boroughs must be made as easy as physical conditions will permit, almost regardless of cost. If consolidation had really any sensible meaning or purpose, that purpose was the upbuilding of a city of homes at more equal distances than at present from the center of commercial activity. Prior to consolidation these bridges were but dreams, because the taxpayers of Manhattan Island would not build them, and the communities on the other side of the East River could not. To refuse to build them now would be to declare that consolidation has failed of its primary and most important practical object. Yet the cost of these bridges is enormous. Including the land necessary for approaches, twelve millions of dollars each is a moderate estimate of the average cost. The demands made to-day upon the public purse for public improvements in the great modern cities of the world would astound the publicists of past generations. The ever-increasing cost and complexity of urban life is nowhere better exemplified than in the demand for increased assumption of public utilities by government. A city that does not respond to this demand is provincial, is not a metropolis. Paris has been regarded as the typical modern city. It certainly was the first to make widely extended use of its credit. for public improvements. And this fact has, by most observers, been cited with approval and as a cause of its greatness. How does the bonded debt of the City of Paris compare with that of New York? The present net funded debt of the City of New York is $253,000,000; the bonded debt of Paris is, in round figures, two billions of francs, or, say, $400,000,000. Yet New York to-day is |