PLAINS REGULARITIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4386, 6 March 1922, Page 4

PLAINS REGULARITIES.

DOUBLE RATING PROBLEM The Hauraki Plains County has a great problem before it to satisfy its three different classes of ratepayers, one class of which pays a double rate This fact has some particular bearing on the future administration of the Hauraki Plains, discussed at a special council meeting on Wednesday. Mr J. C. Miller (chairmap of the Hauraki Plains County Council), m-; terviewed by a “Gazette” reporter, declared that few people fully understood the position of the three kinds of rateable land. There are* in the Hauraki Plains, said Mr Miller, three- distinct classes of ratepayers. The first class is the freeholder, who is outside the Hauraki Plains Drainage Area, and on whom the County Council can levy a general, rate.. The second class, the settler who holds Crown land within the Hauraki Plains Drainage Area, is exempt from the County general rate, but pays the Government drainage and maintenance rate of 2d in the £ unimproved value. The settler in the third .class, continued Mr Miller, is most unfortunateThis man is a freeholder inside the Hauraki Plains Drainage Area, and pays the Government drainage and maintenance rate of 2d in the £ and also the County rate. This position is considered unfair till all farmers are under one system of rating, and that cannot be until the Government hands over all these areas to the County Council’s control.