OUR RATING SYSTEM

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2298, 31 October 1914, Page 4

OUR RATING SYSTEM

IS IT FAIR AND EQUITABLE? The public wore able to gain some idea of the general dissatisfaction that appears to provail over the Government valuations on which this year's City rates are based by the discussion which took place at the meeting of the City Council on Thursday evening. One member of the City Council, who has the matter at heart, stated yesterday that the value 6 of property had gone up considerably in many cases without any valid reason, and he added that the sudden rise could not avoid having an effect upon the rents, wlu'ch were-high enough in all conscience at the present time. '. Another councillor disapproved of the principle of rating on the unimproved value, and instanced the unfairness involved by stating that if oue owner had a building of two stories on a 30ft. section, and another had one of four or five, stories on an adjoining section of the same 6ize, the rates would be the same. After all, he maintained, the value 'of a property to its owner was what it. returned—the annual value, .in point of that 6ystem was far more equitable' than the present "system of rating. He admitted that the present system of rating had'forced many people to build on vacant allotments ill the City, and to destroy old. / bujldings and erect more substantial ones, but at the same time it had helped to bring about the crowded conditions which were so often severely criticised; by visitors to Wellington. Property-owners, who at one time were' able to have beautiful gardens attached to their homes, had been compelled on account of the increase in rates to build on garden lands, both in the City and suburbs, and had brought about conditions that were deplored by all those interested in town-planning. Another phase of the matter was the one which affected suburbanites. Many of such people had been induced to build at Kelburn, Hataitai, and elsewhere on account of the comparative cheapness of the land (compared with values in the City proper),- but'.their lot was being made increasingly hard by tho rise in the values that had been registered. Interest.had been added to the ques\tibn- by, a,\ notice, of;; motion'..tabled by Councillor M. F. Luckie, to the effect that a poll be taken as to the advisability of reverting to the system of rating .on'the annual value. ! r 'This, system was in,force.in Wellington from-1876 "tb; 1902. :'. It ; was"' provided for in the Ratirig'.iAcV of .1876'.. The system is described in.'brief in Section-2 of that Act,, which 'says;. '.'The. .rateable value of .any. property .means .the rent at which such property' Would: let from year to year, deducting therefrom 20 par centum in cases of houses, buildings, and'other perishable property, and ten per cent, in caso of. land and other hereditaments, but shall in no caso bo less. than 5 per centum on tho value of_ tho fee simple thorefrom." This, in simple, embodies a system , based on the return received from the property. '