re-election.
5
The term of office for a councillor should be three years but
a retiring councillor should be eligible for re-appointment or
It is for consideration whether the councillors should
retire in a body at the end of each three-year period, or whether
the one-third of the councillors who have been longest in office
should retire each year. The former course would seem the more simple
in practice, while the latter would tend to give more continuity in
policy.
The Council would elect its Chairman from among its own members
end it would be permissible for the Council to vote a salary for the
Chairman. Other members of the Council would be unpaid. It may be
assumed that a great part of the work of the Council would be performed
by Committees. It would be for consideration whether the Council
should be bi-lingual, admitting the use of Cantonese as well as
English into its proceedings. Its records should certainly be kept in
English.
We have now given some consideration to the manner in which the
Council is to be formed and said something of the way in which it might
do its work. Let us now consider what that work is to be, for
undoubtedly the most important of all the questions that are before us
relates to the functions and responsibilities which are to be undertaken
by the Council. Like other important questions it has been answered in
widely divergent ways.
The general conclusion that I draw from studying the opinions which
are before me is firstly that a considerable transfer of powers should
be aimed at and secondly that the transference should be effected
gradually. On that basis let me put forward for consideration a list
of proposed functions, all of which might ultimately be assumed by the
new body, and also my suggestions for the manner in which a gradual
transference of those responsibilities and duties from the Central
Government to the Municipal Council might be effected.
The following seem to be the principal matters of which the
Council might properly assume the direction in addition to all matters
which now come under the control of the Urban Council:
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