Note (Back) — Chapter VIII

200. The Borough Council.—In the capacity of representative authority of the municipality the council controls corporation property, adopts and executes measures relative to police and education, levies rates, and not infrequently administers waterways, tramways, gas and electric plants, and a variety of other public utilities. The enormously increased activity of the town and urban district councils in respect to "municipal trading" within the past two score years has aroused widespread controversy. The purposes involved have been, in the main, two—to avert the evils of private monopoly and to obtain from remunerative services something to set against the heavy unremunerative expenditures rendered necessary by existing sanitary legislation. And, although opposed by reason of the outlays which it requires and the invasion of the domain of private enterprise which it constitutes, the device of municipal ownership is being ever more widely adopted, as in truth it is also in Germany and other European countries.[272] Aside from its general functions, the borough councils is in particular a sanitary authority, and among its most important tasks is the execution of regulations concerning drainage, housing, markets, hospitals, and indeed the entire category of matters provided for in the long series of Public Health acts. The expenditures of the council as a municipal authority are met from a fund made up of fees, fines, and other proceeds of administration, together with the income from a borough rate, which is levied on the same basis as the poor rate; its expenditures as a sanitary authority are met from a fund raised by a general district rate. To assist in the administration of education, sanitation, and police, grants are made regularly by Parliament.[273]