such purposes. Under the present system of making appropriations, as no special fund is available for minor improvements or small additions to equipment, there are many items under these headings left unattended to which should be accomplished, e. g., Outside lighting of entire Villa Flora Group, West Group, portions of Central and Village Green Group; additional plumbing for Schuyler Infirmary and various other structures at the Colony; installation of sanitary drinking fountains; placing of additional fire hydrants near barns and seed house. More furniture is needed in various patients' cottages, especially chiffoniers, wardrobes, pictures, clocks, rugs, chairs of various kinds, bed side tables, tables, settees, mirrors, stands, dressers. To make more homelike, within reasonable limits, these are required in the various cottages. Many of the brighter patients who can appreciate such things are without a proper place in which to keep their personal belongings.

As the cost of articles of food, fuel, etc., fluctuates so much it is impossible to foretell the exact amount required for general maintenance expenditures sufficient to meet the requirements of the Colony for a comparatively remote period in the future. It · was found necessary to obtain from the Legislature of 1917 a deficiency appropriation under several of the maintenance subdivisions.

From the experience of past years I am of the opinion that the State should have an emergency or contingent fund available that some supervisory officer or board or the institutions individually might have, from which to purchase food, fuel, etc., should the amount in the maintenance fund of an institution at any particular time be insufficient to meet urgent need for action. The obtaining of deficiency appropriations entails weeks or months of waiting when immediate relief may be demanded.

I would suggest that your Board consider the following items to be requested of the coming Legislature:

1. For the maintenance of the Colony for the

fiscal year beginning July 1, 1918, I would
recommend that under the subdivision
"Personal Service " an appropriation be
requested sufficient to permit the

Colony to
to pay the amounts included
in the modification of our salaries
and wages schedule recently submitted to
the Salary Classification Commission.
These changes, if granted, would remove
most of the points of discrimination so long
existing between the Colony Schedule and
the Schedule of other New York State
Institutions, and would furthermore place
us in a better position, to compete in the
labor market, as we must perform with
employees in general..

$178,856 00

$115,000

47,500

200

43,475

32,000

The amounts given for expenditures so far in the future are as approximately correct as can at this time be arrived at considering the uncertainty of what various supplies will cost another year. If the two dormitories at the West Group are occupied early in the next fiscal year and as a result the census of the Colony materially increased there will be required a proportionate increase in the amount included under certain subdivisions, e. g., food, fuel, materials,

etc.

2. Repairs.

This amount should be made available so as
to permit of our bringing more up to date
the making of various repairs needed on
the many buildings at the Colony. One im-
portant item which should if possible be
taken care of another summer is that of the
long-deferred exterior finishing of the
various brick cottages, which were origi-
nally whitewashed and which should either
be restored to the original brick color, so far
as such is possible or painted.
painted. If properly
painted such a finish would probably not
require renewing for a period of four or
five years.

While one must appreciate that owing to the

war situation demands upon the State
Treasury in connection with the State Insti-
tutions should only be urgent item, as far
as the Colony is concerned it is felt that in
addition to the usual fund for general
maintenance purposes and for repairs the
following matters should receive favorable
consideration from the present Legislature.

3. Diningroom and Kitchen Building, West
Group, at least..

Without this building no facilities are avail-
able for furnishing meals to those patients
to reside in the two dormitories now under
course of construction in the West Group.

This kitchen building should be designed so
as to provide capacity not only for those
patients residing in the cottages now occu-
pied in the West Group and to reside in the
cottages under course of construction but
also for two similar cottages which will
probably be constructed in this Group in