292564228

50

MR. A. W. FLUX, M.A., ON CITY GOVERNMENT AND

its liabilities, including the secured debt, at £17,118,158, thus showing a surplus of £4,335,038, which was a substantial increase on that of the previous year. At the beginning of this year the city liabilities of Copen- hagen amounted to £3,384,000, almost entirely in stock, the item of mortgage debt having been reduced to an insignificant amount. It may be worth mentioning that the period of amor­ tisation of these loans is 60 years, thus involving a smaller annual charge than our loans with a shorter period for redemp- tion. The annual charge for interest and redemption together amounted to £88,100 on the average of the years 1894-98. Against this debt the assets of the city were valued. at £3,963,000, the excess of assets amounting to £579,000. The valuation of the assets, however, is carried on in a i'ashion to which special attention must be directed. The properties owned by the city are divided into two classes. The one inciudes profit-earning properties or properties held for purposes of profit, such as vacant building land, house property, gas and electrical works, abattoirs, etc; the other inciudes such property as is litid for the purpose of rendering the public services required by the community, and inciudes the Town Hall, public hospitals and lunatic asylum, the water works, police and fire stations, and schools as the chief items. Of these only the former, valued at £2,430,000 are reckoned among the assets available as set off against debt. The second group, standing at a valuation of £2,136,000, are additional assets beyond the surplus of £579,000 already mentioned. A further point is that the valuation of building land held by the city is certainly not excessive. A proof of this is found in the comparison of the selling and book value of some 40 plots sold in 1897. Their book-value was £28,430, while they sold for £70,740, or a surplus over the book-value of £42,310, which means that the book-value hardly exeeeded. 40 per cent of the market value at the time they came to be sold. The balance of assets over liabilities, as stated in the balance sheet, must be held to be a most conservative estimate of the situation.