The Assessment Court

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 104, 10 March 1887, Page 2

The Assessment Court

On Tuesday, the Bth of February, there was posted to every ratepayer in the Borough a post card on which was a notice giving the amount of the rateable value of his or her property and a footnote stating that all objections were to be left at the Court House, Feilding, on or before the 15th day of February, addressed to the Assessment Court. About the same time these cards were posted a notice appeared from the Clerk of the Court to the effect that the Assessment Court would sit on Wednesday, the 23rd inst. In consequence, a number bf burgesses put in objections to the amounts for which they were rated, and appeared at the Court to support them on the day appointed. The list of civil and criminal cases was unusually long 1 , and the court had to sit until a late hour in the night to dispose of the business. When the court was adjourned to the 24th of this month, no mention was made of the Assesment Court or when it would be held. We made inquiries afterwards and discovered the reason of this to be that Mr Northoroft, the locum tenens of Mr Ward, had not been* gazetted to preside at the said Assessment Court, he having merely been appointed as Resident Magistrate during the absence on sick leave of Mr Ward. We expected this omission would have been rectified at once, but as yet nothing has been done. It is a manifest injustice that ratepayers should be put to this loss of time and money by having to attend at the Court again, by the carelessness or indifference of some official at hoad quarters, whose duty it was to attend to the matter. Some ratepayers were in attendance at the Court House yesterday, under the impression the assessment cases would then be heard, not knowing that the Court will for the future only sit once a month instead of twice as heretofore. Their ignorance was quite pardonable seeing no official notification of the fact has yet been given. We hope some action will be taken at once as further delay will only tend to augment the dissatisf.-ction now expressed. [Since the- above was in type we have received a notification from the Clerk of the Court, published on our third page to-day, that Assessment cases will be heard at the R.M. Court on Thursday the 24th instant].