George A. Codding, Jr., Governing the Commune of Veyrier: Politics in Swiss Local Government, 1967.
Chapter Six
Administering the CommuneMany of the various aspects of the administration of the commune of Veyrier have been covered in the preceding chapters. In order to make the picture complete, however, and in order to provide a firmer basis for comparison with other units of local government, this chapter will provide a general view of the governmental activities of the commune from the perspective of three basic categories of local government functions: protective services, physical services, and welfare services. The chapter will end with a discussion of the manner in which the commune pays for these services.
Protective Services Of the three types of services offered by the commune to its residents, the protective are perhaps the least important. It is the canton, rather than the commune, that takes the major responsibility in this general area.
In the field of police protection, for instance, all through the canton of Geneva the administration of the gendarmerie (police), including recruitment, training, and supervision, is carried out by the authorities of the cantonal Department of Justice and Police. Although this department usually consults with communal authorities on the location of police posts, and although the personnel of the various police posts often become so absorbed in the life of the commune that they are thought of as auxiliaries to the municipal administration, it retains complete control.
This situation was made quite clear to the commune of Veyrier when on January 1, 1965, the Department of Justice and Police closed the police post in Veyrier despite the earnest protest of the communal authorities. A frontier commune like Veyrier, it was argued, needed the extra protection and security of a police post. The cantonal authorities persisted in their decision to close the Veyrier post, however, on the basis that the department did not have adequate personnel to staff as many posts as it had in the past, and on the basis that modern equipment, especially motorized transport, would permit a prompt response from neighboring police posts to any call for help emanating from Veyrier.1
The commune does have the power to create a rural police force, however, and since the closing of the cantonal post there has been a great deal of discussion of the possibility of having one in Veyrier. It has been proposed that one or two individuals be hired who would patrol the commune to prevent damage to property as well as to carry out many of the routine tasks which the police had voluntarily performed in the past. The members of this force would not have the right to arrest transgressors. In this restriction, they are more or less in the position of the guards of the private protective associations which are active in many American cities.
Inasmuch as the court system is also cantonal, the only police or judicial function that remains in the hands of the commune of Veyrier at this time is the mayor's power to levy a fine up to a maximum of 50 francs for infractions of municipal decrees. And this, according to the mayor, is a rarely used power.
The second major type of protective service, that dealing with fire protection, is still given a great deal of emphasis in communal administration although, as with the police, the canton has in effect taken over. The rural volunteer fire departments, such as the one in Veyrier, were at one time the major source of fire protection for the smaller communes. In the case of fire, the communes that were isolated by any distance from the major centers of population had to rely upon their own resources. The volunteer fire companies became expert at their task and the inhabitants of the smaller communes were satisfied with what they had to offer.
As towns and cities became larger and their buildings taller, a more sophisticated fire fighting system became necessary and only the larger political units, such as the cantons, had the financial resources necessary to buy the new equipment and to maintain permanent fire fighting forces. The smaller communes were not forgotten in this development, however, and the services of the larger fire fighting centers were extended to include the entire canton and were paid for out of taxes. As this occurred, the practical importance of the volunteer fire departments tended to decrease. The canton began sending help at the request of Veyrier communal authorities about ten years ago. Since 1963, it has become automatic.
At the present time, in the case of a fire in Veyrier, the permanent, central fire department office of the canton located in the city of Geneva is telephoned. This office immediately dispatches the necessary equipment to the designated place in the commune. Then the central office alerts the Veyrier volunteer fire departmentâ€"the volunteers are available as auxiliaries to the regulars during the fighting of the fire. After the fire has been extinguished, the volunteer department provides a watch to make certain that the fire does not break out again. The volunteers also provide a fire guard for such things as annual school ceremonies and other public events held in school buildings or the town auditorium.
The volunteer fire department is made up of three officersâ€"one captain and two lieutenantsâ€"and thirty-eight men. It has two fire houses, one in the village and one at the Pinchat school, furnished with the necessary hand-operated equipment. The company also maintains eight fire extinguishers deposited at strategic points throughout the commune, four in. Veyrier village, two in Pinchat, one in Sierae, and one in Vessy.
The cost of fire protection for the commune of Veyrier is not excessive, but it depends upon many things, including the state of the equipment of the volunteer fire department. In 1965, for instance, a year in which there was no important purchase of uniforms or equipment, 10,000 Swiss francs was budgeted for fire protection, but only 2,533.10 was spent. In 1964, however, 37,000 was budgeted for fire protection and 40,409.65 francs was spent.2
Public health services, which in the United States are often referred to as among the more important of the protective services, are in the hands of the cantonal authorities, with one exception. That exception is the Social Hygiene Center, established by the commune of Veyrier in 1965, staffed by a half-time public health nurse. The center is open from 3:30 to 4:30 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, for general purposes, and on Mondays from 9:30 to 11:00 for consultation on problems of nursing mothers. The 1965 financial report carries an indication of the sum of 10,000 Swiss francs for the "communal social service."
There are three other functions of the communal administration that could be classified as part of the protective services: sewage, garbage collection, and cattle inspection. The upkeep of the sewers is a communal responsibility, but any changes in the system must be approved by cantonal authorities. Two major expenditures have been made in the past twenty years to keep the system current with the needs of the commune. In 1958 a water purification plant, built at a cost of 72,800 Swiss francs, was opened at Sierne to treat sewage before it is emptied into the Arve River. In the early 1960's the communal authorities hired an engineering consultant to inspect the entire system and to evaluate the future needs of the commune. After approval by the canton, work upon his recommendations was begun in 1962 and terminated in 1964, at a cost of approximately 2,000,000 Swiss francs.3
Garbage collection is carried out by a private concern under contract to the commune. Garbage is collected in Veyrier village on Mondays and Thursdays and in Pinchat on Tuesdays and Fridays. Trash is collected, by the same firm, on the first Wednesday of each month. Garbage is transported from Veyrier to a garbage disposal plant owned and operated by a consortium of communes including Veyrier. The expense for the entire service, including Veyrier's share of the upkeep of the plant, was 29,021.30 Swiss francs in 1965.
The cattle inspector, whose job is becoming less important each year, is paid 150 francs a year by the commune.
Physical Services The second major category of municipal services, the physical, has always had an important place in the priorities of the municipal authorities. Among those services classed as physical, the maintenance of roads and streets of Veyrier has almost consistently accounted for the largest single item in the annual budget. The History of Veyrier, for instance, notes that in 1816, the year that Veyrier became a part of Geneva, the major problems facing the municipal administration were "the upkeep of the roads and repairs to the church, the parsonage, and the school."4
According to the annual report for the year 1946, the amount necessary for the upkeep of roads and streets exceeded 10,000 francs, and the reason given for the high amount was that it was necessary to make up for what had been suffered as a result of the deprivation of materials during the six years of war.5 If the municipal authorities had any hopes that the cost of the upkeep of the roads would diminish in the years to come, they were mistaken. In the early 1950's the expenses for the upkeep of roads exceeded the sum of 30,000 francs for the first time, dropping to 29,948.50 in 1957. In 1958 the sum spent on roads and streets exceeded 50,000; and in the early 1960's it exceeded 100,000 francs. In 1965 it was 140,192.10.6
The reason for the high relative cost of the upkeep of roads in Veyrier is not too difficult to find. In the first place, the commune has always had several centers of population which had to be tied together in a common road system, and the commune had to be linked to the city of Geneva. Second, the routes of Veyrier have always had hard usage. For many years the products of the Saleve stone quarries have traversed the commune in conveyances that have not been kind to the roads and streets. At the turn of the century, it was reported that more than 100 heavy horse-drawn wagons carrying building stones passed daily through the village necessitating, among other things, speed limit signs.7 The wagons are now replaced by heavy trucks, loaded with stone, roaring through the commune from one end to the other. As long as the citizens of Veyrier are permitted to continue to exploit their holdings across the border, this heavy usage of the streets is likely to continue.
Third, the Saleve has always been a tourist attraction. Veyrier is on the normal path for those who live in Geneva who want to take the cable car to the top of the Saleve to enjoy the magnificent view of the valley of the Rhone. In addition, the increase in the population of the commune and the steady increase in the ownership and use of automobiles has had as important an impact on the resources of Veyrier as it has had in other areas of the world. The attempts of the municipal authorities to prepare Veyrier's streets and roads to meet the demands occasioned by the large influx of automobiles in an area which was formed for other types of transportation is to a great extent responsible for the rather large expenditures for this service in the past few years.8
The officials of Veyrier are proud of the results of their work, however. The existing network of communal roads and streets provides easy access to places of business and farms, to residences and recreation sites, and to the French countryside adjacent to Veyrier without any great bottlenecks or delays. If there are any complaints, they seem to be not of the communal streets and roads but of those which are the responsibility of the canton. It was pointed out that the canton was often slower than the commune to react to the needs of the people of Veyrier, and that sometimes requests from the commune to improve cantonal routes seemed to become lost in the larger cantonal machinery. The bridge over the Arve, which provides one of the main avenues of access to Veyrier from the city of Geneva, is a case in point; despite several suggestions over the past few years by communal authorities to the effect that the bridge is now too small for the amount of traffic that crosses it, nothing discernible has yet been done by the canton.
Another important expenditure in the area of physical services involves public buildings. As mentioned earlier, the commune is involved in an extensive remodeling of the town hall and has just finished overhauling and remodeling the communal auditorium. The schools, for which the commune has physical responsibility, are also a constant source of concern. As the commune continues to grow, the schools must grow also. In 1958, for instance, it was necessary to float an 800,000 franc loan for a new school in Veyrier village and the enlargement of the school in Pinchat.
Public buildings cost the inhabitants of Veyrier a total of 47,847.55 Swiss francs in 1965. The largest amount, 18,295.00 francs, went to pay for the resident janitor-caretakers of the two schools. Upkeep of all the public buildings was 15,512.20; 10,930.70 went for heating, and 3,109.65 for lighting.
Two other items in the communal expenditures for 1965 fall in the physical services category, 400 francs for the upkeep of the communal clocks and 882 francs for the upkeep of the commune's six fountains. The fountains were at one time the main source of water for the entire commune. Although most of the homes of Veyrier now have running water, the fountains are still necessary for some purposes and do add to the commune's beauty. As a sign of the times, the municipal council passed an ordinance in 1957 prohibiting the practice of washing automobiles at the communal fountains. The sum of 490.90 francs for the upkeep of the firing range could also be included as a physical services expenditure.
The communal authorities of Veyrier have no responsibility concerning the provision of public utilities. An autonomous but cantonally controlled enterprise, the Services Industriels, takes care of the needs of the inhabitants for gas and electricity while water is provided by the privately owned Societe des eaux de I'Arve. Telephone services are provided by the federal government, and transportation by the Geneva city tramway authority.
Welfare Services The welfare services aspect of the commune's activities was never too important in the past, but since the war has demanded increased attention and expenditure of public funds. In the past the commune's responsibility in this field was severely restricted by the assumption of authority by the canton over two major areas of welfare service, hospitals and similar institutions, and education. In Geneva, public hospital and other institutional care is provided by the cantonally chartered Hospice General. The expenses are covered mainly by taxes, but each commune makes a token contribution. In 1965, Veyrier donated the sum of 200 Swiss francs to the Hospice General.
The commune is responsible on paper for providing a free non-denominational education for all children up to twelve years of age. The canton, however, has exclusive control over the crucial instructional aspect. All hiring and firing of instructors, as well as the setting of standards and licensing, is done by the canton. The commune, then, is left only with the task of providing for school buildings and their maintenance and for furnishings and supplies. The only expense item directly attributable to schools in the annual financial account for 1965, other than that mentioned earlier under physical services, was 7,185 francs for furniture and supplies. The people of Veyrier are very interested in their schools, however, and in addition to their attempts to provide the best physical plant possible, they would not hesitate to criticize the canton if the quality of teaching personnel were low. The pride of the people of Veyrier in their schools is illustrated by the annual School Prize Day, which is one of the more important functions of the year in the commune. In 1965, the commune spent 8,618.45 francs on this function.
As a result of the cantonal responsibilities in these two areas, the commune's task in public welfare in the past was not too great. The commune distributed the federal and old-age pensions, maintained a cemetery, and provided a few well-placed and well-kept parks and recreation areas. The commune has a very small public library, and did distribute a certain amount of charity to Veyrier's poor.9 More recently, the commune has created a baby-sitting service operating from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays, and installed an automatic washing machine for the use of the aged or handicapped. None of these services, however, is of a nature to tax the imagination of the communal authorities nor the communal budget.
A problem did arise recently, however, which the commune met with imagination and decisiveness, and which has resulted in making the welfare service an important responsibility of the commune for the first time. Shortly after World War II it became evident that the young married people of the commune were no longer willing to continue the pre-war practice of moving in with parents until they had amassed a large enough fortune to buy their own homes or until they inherited their parents' homes. Rather than move in with their parents, the young married couples were moving away from Veyrier to the city of Geneva where they could find an inexpensive place to live by themselves.
The communal authorities responded by floating a loan of 1,500,000 francs, with the permission of the cantonal authorities, and building an apartment house to be made available at low rentals to young couples just starting out. The first section of fifty-four units was completed in 1957. The commune has borrowed an additional 1,640,000 francs in order to construct a second section of twenty-four units. In order to keep the rents as low as possible, the commune will not make a profit on the apartments. On the other hand, the taxpayers of the commune are not being asked to contribute. The projects are self-financing. In 1965, receipts from the first section amounted to 92,741.80 francs, including 3,236 francs from the coin-operated washing machines installed in the basement.
Communal Finances The process of determining the financial needs of the commune of Veyrier has become quite standardized, leaving little room for unwelcomc surprises. The process begins with the drawing up of the estimates of the financial needs of the commune for the coming year, as well as the means to pay for them. This task is carried out in the fall by the mayor with the help of his two deputies and the ever-important secretary to the mayor. The budget is then presented by the mayor to the municipal council at its fall session. The council has the right to either raise or lower the mayor's estimates. After approval by the council, the commune's budget is presented to the cantonal Department of the Interior and Agriculture for scrutiny and approval. All communes must submit their budgets to the Department of the Interior and Agriculture by December 1 of the year preceding the year for which the budget is valid.
The cantonal authorities have two major responsibilities, to make certain that the budget includes all expenditures the law makes obligatory, and to make certain that the proposed taxes are adequate to pay for all the proposed expenditures. If the cantonal authorities should discover an obligatory expenditure to be missing, they can call on the municipal council to add it to the budget. If the council should refuse, the cantonal authorities have the right to add the expenditure to the communal budget and either reduce other expenses to make up for its addition or propose to the cantonal legislature that it increase the commune's tax base sufficiently to cover the added expense. In the case of an unbalanced budget, the cantonal authorities will bring the fact to the commune's attention. If the commune should refuse, without a valid reason, to balance its budget, the canton may act as in the previous case by either reducing the commune's expenditures by the necessary amount or by requesting the cantonal legislature to impose the necessary additional taxes.
If the commune feels that it has been injured in a budgetary matter by a decision of the cantonal executive, it may appeal the matter to the cantonal legislature. The appeal must be made within a month from the time the decision was made, and the cantonal legislature must inscribe the matter on the agenda of one of its earliest meetings.10
All budgets, either those in which the cantonal authorities make no changes, as is usually the case, or those which have been changed as a result of cantonal action, come into effect upon a decree of the cantonal Conseil d'Etat, during the month of December.
The communal financial process is not complete until the following year when it is possible to compare the anticipated expenses and the anticipated revenues. Communes usually find that the revenue was more than adequate to meet the actual expenses of running the commune. The communal authorities are in fact encouraged to create a surplus of revenue over expenses by the provision that the monies so obtained become available for the use of the commune for non-budgetary expenses. The mayor may not use these funds, however, without previous debate and agreement by the municipal council. The amount of money thus obtained for communal use is of some importance. Veyrier, for instance, was able to pay for the construction of a public scales through accumulated surpluses. In 1965 the surplus of receipts over expenditures amounted to 186,372.30 Swiss francs.
If there is any generalization to be made about the financing process in Veyrier, it is that the cost of running the commune has increased enormously in the post-World War II years. Table XII should make this clear.
The constantly increasing cost of communal administration must be accompanied by a constantly increasing source of income. The main source of income for Veyrier is a tax known as the centimes additionels communaux, although an increasing number of communal expenditures are being financed by loans and cantonal subsidies.
The centimes additionnels is a surtax added to the cantonal taxes on personal income and property, on corporate profits and capital, and on dogs and domestic help.11 The amount of the surtax is fixed annually by the Veyrier municipal council subject to the approval of the cantonal executive body. The cantonal law on taxes provides that where an individual or corporation has taxable income or property in another commune, his commune of residence must give to that commune or communes up to 75 percent of the tax collected. For several years, however, Veyrier has benefited from a temporary law permitting communes in which a heavy proportion of its people earn their living outside of the commune to keep up to 75 percent of the tax collected on such people.12 In 1965, the centimes additionnels provided for 589,535.95 francs out of the total communal income of 859,684.15 francs.
Communes in the canton of Geneva are also authorized to impose a "professional tax" (taxe professionnelle fixe) on anyone possessing or operating a commercial enterprise, industry, or profession in the commune.18 For some communes this is also a rich source of income, but not in communes such as Veyrier where there is a dearth of commercial enterprises and industry and where most residents are employed elsewhere. In 1965, the professional tax brought only 24,059 Swiss francs into the communal treasury.
Expensive communal enterprises, such as the building of a school or laying a complicated sewage and drainage system, cannot be financed out of ordinary annual income. For such enterprises, Veyrier along with many other local governments throughout the world has had to resort to borrowing. The commune's first loan was in 1915 in the amount of 20,000 Swiss francs at 5 percent interest. The largest loan was that of 2,000,000 francs to finance the new sewage system for the commune. As a rule the commune borrows from either the Veyrier Credit Union (Caisse de credit mutuel de Veyrier) or the Cantonal Mortgage Bank (Caisse Hypothecate). All communal borrowing must be approved by the cantonal legislature.
The increased reliance on loans to pay for communal projects is reflected in the growing communal debt and the large portion of the annual expenses devoted to the payment of interest and debt retirement. Table XIII gives a clear picture of the increasing communal debt. In 1965, 127,483.45 francs out of a total communal expenditure of 673,311.85 were for paying interest on the communal debt. Another 71,105.15 was for payments on the principal of the communal debt.
Cantonal subsidies are the third largest source of income for the commune. In 1965 the largest subsidy was one of 54,000 Swiss francs for communal equipment. Other subsidies included one of 14,500 for roads and streets, and 2,500 for school furnishings. In 1965 the commune also received the sum of 5,000 francs, which it turned over to the local Sports Club, as its share of a tax on a nationwide soccer pool (Sport-Toto). Total subsidies received by Veyrier in 1965 amounted to 106,200 francs.
Other sources of income for 1965 included 11,100 for rental of communal property, 3,806 francs from charges for the use of the communal scales, and 8,977.50 as the commune's share of the annual earnings of the cantonal mortgage bank. The smallest amount recorded in the 1965 financial report was 57.50 francs as the communal profit from the registrar's office.14
Notes 1 See Compte rendu financier pour I'exercice 1964 et administratif pour la periode 1964-1965, p. 16. A special parting ceremony was held by the commune on the day the gendarmes left their Veyrier post, and gifts were given to the departing gendarmes.2 Compte rendu financier pour I'exercice 1964 et administratif pour la periode 1964-1965, p. 25, and Compte rendu financier pour I'exercice 1965 et administratif pour la periode 1965-1966, p. 21. The figures used in the first three sections of this chapter, unless otherwise designated, come from the second of these two publications.
3 See Histoire de la Commune, pp. 126 and 139, and Compte rendu financier pour l'exercice 1964 et administratif pour la periode 1964-1965, p. 10.
4 Histoire de la Commune, p. 95.
5 Comple rendu financier pour l'exercice 1946 et administratif pour la periode 1943-1946, April, 1947, p. 10.
6 The material which follows regarding the finances of Veyrier is taken from the commune's annual administrative and financial reports on file in the office of the secretary of the mayor. Until 1964 only a five-year summary of the reports was printed for distribution, but since 1964 each annual report has been printed. Other than the five-year summaries, the reports for years prior to 1964 were made out in two copies, one for the commune's files and one for the cantonal files. These reports, until fairly recently, were handwritten.
7 Histoire de la Commune, p. 114. The horses were only permitted to walk.
8 In order to get a true picture of the entire costs of streets and roads one would have to include supplementary expenses, such as a portion of the salary of the communal road-menders equal to the amount of time they actually spend on the upkeep of roads, the installation of street lights which took place in 1948 and their upkeep, and the amount spent on street lighting, amounting in 1S65 to an additional important sum of 60,953.65 Swiss francs. 9 The communal charity fund for 1965 was 5,000 francs. The commune also made a contribution of 100 francs to the cantonal charity office in 1965.
10 The material on the cantonal control over communal budgets is to be found in Loi sur l'administration des communes du 3 juillet 1954, Arts. 48-51.
11 See Geneva, Republique et canton de Geneve, Loi sur les contributions publiques du 9 novembre 1887 (Geneva: Chancellerie d'Etat, January, 1967), Arts. 291-300. The third category of taxes does not yield a great deal in comparison to the other two.
12 See Compte rendu financier pour l'exercice 1965 et administratif pour la periode 1965-1966, p. 17.
13 See Loi sur les contributions publiques du 9 novembre 1887, Arts. 301-318.
14 For a complete list of all receipts and expenditures in 1965 see Compte rendu financier pour I'exercice 1965 et administratif pour la piriode 1965-1966, pp. 20-21. See also Appendix B. It should also be noted there is an entry in the receipts side of the financial report of 71,105.15 Swiss francs for the commune's share of the old age and survivors payments, which is matched in the expenditure column by an equal amount.