PAYING THE PIPER
week back, when dealing with professions of pleasure by the Napier evening paper at the Napier Harbour Board being allowed by the Marine Department to do a little repair work at the harbours and a little reclamation a long way from them, it was suggested that it might also find it possible to extent! congratulations to the ratepayers when the Department sought to impose the costs of the Commission upon them. That time has now come. The supplementary estimates include a sum of £3500, “the charges for the Napier Harbour Commission,” which is said to be “recoverable.” The “recovery” is no doubt to be attempted from the ratepayers of the harbour district, the Minister having indicated that he intends bringing in legislation that can scarcely have anything but that purpose in view. These costs are not those directly incurred by the Harbour Board itself in defending its position from bureaucratic encroachment. They are the altogether extravagant costs to which the Department has put itself in its efforts to buttress up the hasty report on Napier Harbour matters made some years ago by its Chief Engineer. For beinu told they must do nothin for ten or fifteen years in the way of providing themselves with accommodation for ocean-going shipping the Hawke’s Bay ratepayers are apparently to be called upon to “shell out” this nice little sum. This is, of course, in accord with the Commission’s recommendations, for which the Napier paper professes such fond admiration. Had the Commission had any sense , of the real “fitness of things ’ it would have pointed out that the most fitting thing would be to ask the Wellington and Auckland Harbour Boards to pay these costs, since they, and especially Wellington, are the ones that will benefit from the proposed muzzling of the Napier Board. Possibly our contemporary, in its solicitude for the Hawke’s Bay ratepayers, will join with us in pressing this rational view upon the Minister before he proceeds further with the carrying out of what we understand to be his intention. Wellington, at any rate, should be ready to pay this little subsidy in return for the substantial extra trade it will derive from the embargo to be put on Napier.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBTRIB19271129.2.12
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Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 29 November 1927, Page 4
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371PAYING THE PIPER Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 29 November 1927, Page 4
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