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CONFIDENTIAL
(e)
યુન
(f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
.7.
XCC(71)20
The complete list of the Council's present responsibilities and the proposed changes (Annex C) demonstrates very clearly the very wide range of responsibilities with which the Council is already entrusted and underlines the point made earlier in this paper that the Urban Council already has significant, not to say daunting, tasks which demand a great deal of thought and attention. How- ever, the new legislation needed to give effect to these proposals should provide for the Council to undertake additional functions with Government's approval.
Title: the present "Urban Council" title would be more appropriate to a local government body (which the Urban Council is not) and the same objection would apply to "Municipal Council" or other similar names. It would be desirable to give it a title indicating its limited field of responsibilities; however, such a change would be hotly opposed by some of the present Councillors and it is not proposed to press this issue, but to leave the name unchanged.
Finance: a significant advance should be made in the field of finance by giving the Council its own rate and requiring it to raise capital funds in the market. This is discussed in paragraph 9 below. The Council would have to be incorporated to enable it to operate in the manner suggested.
Council Chairman; the Council should be free to select its own chairman, who could be either an unofficial or a coopted official, or even an eminent private citizen from outside the Council.
Use of Cantonese: the Council's Ordinance and Standing Orders should be amended to allow its proceedings to be conducted in Cantonese as well as English; further advances in bi-lingualism should follow decisions and action on the reports of Sir Kenneth Fing-fan Fung's Committee.
Unofficial membership: there are at present 10 elected and 10 appointed unofficial members, and at this transitional stage, when the working of the Urban Council is to be materially changed, there would seem to be good arguments for not introducing new, inexper- ienced Unofficials into the Council. Furthermore, an increase in their numbers would tend to reinforce the elective nature of the Council. Nonetheless it is pro- posed to increase the total from 20 to 24 for presen- tational reasons. The best division would be 12:12, which has the advantage of making service on the Council more palatable to appointed members (since they would not be outnumbered by the elected members who, after all, represent only a small percentage of the population) and would also seem appropriate where substantial financial autonomy is to be given to the Council.
CONFIDENTIAL