PAREMATA BRIDGE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 73, 23 September 1930, Page 8

PAREMATA BRIDGE

. (To the Editor.)

Sir, —Many ratepayers will have read with interest your article under the above heading in 10-day's issue, and the proposed discussion of tho matter in open council will be awaited with interest. The kernel of the nut ho far produced seems to be that the proposed bridge would cost about £22,000, of which the Government might be willing to find £15,000, leaving the local bodies most interested to find £7000. But, Sir, are the local bodies (ratepayers) and the Government (taxpayers) the only parties who should join in finding the cost of this bridge? What about the owners of the land between Paremata and Plimtnerton, Plimmerton itself, and'Plimmerton extensions? All of these, particularly the first mentioned, would stand to profit by increase in value, aa soon as the bridge was built, and their'respective pro-'1 perties brought five or six miles nearer ■ Wellington by -a first-class motor road. Bare grazing land would immediately become bungalow sites. Is not this,, par excellence,'one of those cases which requires v special Act of Parliament—fashioned after "Tho London Act, 1895," quoted by the Mayor in connection with the Wellington City Betterment Bill? Are there any members of the City Council who are prepared to pledge the ratepayers to make . any contribution to this bridge before the Euli specific value of the improvement has been collected from those benefited landowners? The 18 acres reserve is but a | sprat to" catch a mackerel. The develop-1 tnent of such a reserve at the cost of Wellington's ratepayers would be another huge enhancement to the value of the adjoining properties. There is need for a live Ratepayers' Association if schemes of this kind arc favoured by the City Council.—l am, etc., CURIOUS. 22nd September, 1930.