Economy In Keeping With Progressive Growth

By Commissioner T. Yorke Smith, Director of Revenue and Finance

The year was 1927 and the future had hardly ever looked brighter for the City of Camden. Times were prosperous, business and industry were booming, and the city was full of recently constructed public buildings, civic improvements, schools, the new Delaware River bridge and its new highway to the suburbs. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed were in the unimagined future.

It was in these times that Camden prepare for its 100th anniversary, and in this spirit of optimism that the city fathers under the direction of Mayor Winfield S. Price commissioned the booklet whose text you will find below.

Read more about the first 100 years of Camden and more articles from the Centennial Mirror

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A municipal financial structure must be guided with diligence and efficiency, and guarded against extravagance and unreasonable expenditure.

These are the principles practiced in the administration of the Department of Revenue and Finance for the citizens of Camden.

Individual and corporate interests have an assurance that the CIVIC dollars they pay in taxes are protected against wasteful expenditure.

Camden has entered the period of its greatest growth.

This growth can become harmful if the demands it creates are permitted to invade at will the city treasury.

It is the duty of the Revenue Department to appraise the financial needs of the municipality and then to raise necessary funds through taxation, but this must be done with strict adherence to the policy of keeping to a minimum the burden placed on the taxpayer.

This is what the City of Camden is doing for its citizens.

That is why the new industry or the new home seeker or the new business establish­ment may come to Camden and settle without fear of burdensome municipal taxa­tion, and with a knowledge that the municipal growth is not influenced by boom hysteria and is progressing on lines of substantial safety.

CONSERVATIVE CITY FINANCING IS ONE OF THE EVIDENCES OF OUR MODERN ADMINISTRATION.