"DANGEROUS METHODS"

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 157, 31 December 1931, Page 6

"DANGEROUS METHODS"

(To ttre Editor.) . Sir, —Under the beading "Dangerous Methods," Mr. Sievwright ably, sums up the risks- vq have allowed ourselves to be exposed to under the Wellington City Empowering Amendment Act of 1024, not merely by the power it gave to the City Council to raise lows ■by .special order, without the. poll of the- ratepayers, but also to divert.the whole or any part o| a, loan, eyeu when sanctioned by the ratopnyers, to. some other work tho council may think fit.. la other words, by legis-. lation- rushed through. Parliament, in tho last, days of a session, the council .has become an autocratic body. It .nerves' to show that, tho' "price of liberty is eternal vigilance;" While wo ratepayers .slept' our rights und privileges 'were snatched from us. This in uot any'aspersion on the Ratepayers' Association and its president; who did their best to arouse citizens to their danger. But had there been, as I have often advocated, a select and paid coterio of professional men, including «. solicitor of repute, a civil engineer, and an expert accountant, whose business it was wholly to-advise the association as-to the wisdom cr otherwise of projected legislation or works of any kind the City Council is intending, this dangerous Empowering Act would probably never have passed. One cannot expect a voluntary body such as the Ratepayers' Association, the members of which havo their own concerns to attend to, to bs us alert, vigilant, and aggressive, aa thoso whose living depends upon the resojts they show, Many ratepayers are not aware that a rato demand takes precedence to a' mortgage, and that the council can, in the case of default, sell up ■by legal process, and eject the householder, and seize any moneys in payment, to the exclusion, should there not be any remaining, of all other oreditorswhatsoever. Thus by the apathy of tho. citizens in permitting their interests tt> be betrayed, not only the.ratepayers, but the whole community, is adversely affected. There is only one remedy left for us, and that is to initiate and carry put a continuous and unceasing agitation for the. repeal of that iniquitous Act by which we were deprived of our juat rights.^-I am, etc, . . . ' ■ A. H. GIBSON.