Page:The Name of William M. Tugman Added to Honor Roll.djvu/4

 But on the bridge bonds, three days later, the paper said:

"... Term bonds are now forbidden in many states. Sound practice calls for serial bonds on which a definite proportion is paid off each year. And even serial bonds should not be used except for improvements of the very greatest permanence. It is sound practice to borrow for a new power plant or for lands and buildings that will outlast generations. It is exceedingly bad practice to borrow for wooden bridges which probably would not survive the bonds. The interest on $10,000 term bonds in thirty years would be close to $15,000, making total cost $25,000, and the chances are that long before the bonds were paid off the bridges would be gone. Let such bridges be built out of cash income...."

Commenting on the defeat, 345 to 176, of a revised school budget to permit the schools of Eugene to operate efficiently and adequately, the Guard (November 5, 1927) cried out against the "absurdly inefficient system of handling public business with which we have been saddled under the disguise of more effective public control." Editor Tugman went on to say that "it matters very little that these school budget elections are prescribed by state law (the six percent limitation having been exceeded). We are election-ridden. Here is one of the great causes of non-voting." He went on to conclude:

"We elect public officials to perform certain services. Then we take over their powers and reduce them to mere "yes men." A school board may give days and weeks of intimate study to a financial program. It can be upset by a very small group of malcontents who pick out some item for janitor hire or black ink and make an appeal to prejudice. The great majority of voters have been hurried to the polls so often on cries of "Wolf! Wolf!" that they get tired of trying to be discriminating and stay home. We vote and get nowhere.

This paper is for the initiative and the referendum and other measures designed to give the public an emergency control over wayward public officials. But we submit that the original intent of such measures has been violated by the ruthless application of the townmeeting methods to matters that ought to be left to duly elected officials if there is any virtue at all in the principle of government by elected representatives..."

This editorial was followed up a few days later with a reminder to the voters that $9,000 of the money in the school budget was for interest on warrants, "in other words, on bills that the schools never catch up with." Over a period of years, the editorial set forth, "we have been getting farther and farther away from the cash basis and gambling on income to take care of bills plus interest."