COUNTY COUNCIL FINANCE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 374, 20 February 1880, Page 2

COUNTY COUNCIL FINANCE.

To the Editor of the Aharoa Mail,

Sm,—Not being a County Councillor* and not having the same faith in the deputation nuisnuee that some of my neighbours have," I have to appeal to you to allow me to state my case in your columns* I, with many others, who firmly believe in the future of County Councils read with regret your report of the last .meeting of the Council, that part of it that refered to what is called the allocation of funds in the hands of- the Council to the various Road Boards in the County. It is only a few meetings since that Mr Barker was not able to find a seconder for his favorite motion, and at the last meeting the motion to divide out the money in hand was carried all but unanimously. There is no doubt the Council have committed an act of financial suicide, ,, and the verdict of the outside public,, taking the most charitable view of the matter, is that they must have been laboring under a fit of temporary insanity. In any case the Council must have come to their decision in the matter, either oblivious of the facts of the case, or in ignorance of them. As an outsider, Ido not possess any special knowledge on the matter, but a slight reference to your files, puts the matter in such a light thai I think the Council will pause before carrying out the Barker motion. The amount at the Council's credit in the Bank, as reported at last meeting, was a little over £1800, and out of this sum has to be paid—the County map, £175 ; Armstrong's road, £250 ; St. John's compensation, £300; accounts passed at last meeting, £57 ; furniture and fittings, £150; books, stationery, &c. ? £50 ; levelling, fencing, and making stable habitable, £100 ; Clerk's salary, travelling expenses, printing, advertising, law charges, &c, say £300, Roughly, only £400 will be available for division amongst six Road Boards, of. which the Little River and Akaroa and Wainui Boards will swallow two thirds, leaving only a third for division amongst the remaining four. I fear that Councillor Barker's share for his much-canvassed re-grading of the Summit road will not cover the £50 already expended in this last triumph of engineering skill. If this miserable £400 balance be whacked out in ad valorem shares, the Council will at the end of thoir financial year, find themselves like' their neighbours the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board with an empty exchequer and surrounded by elamarous creditors. It is not too Jate yet to retire from their position, which is, to say the least of it, a blunder, by the Council's revoking their previous resolution, as provided for by the 78th section of the Counties Act. This last course is respectfully submitted to the Council at their next meeting by

A CAUTION