PAEROA HOSPITAL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4938, 12 February 1926, Page 1

PAEROA HOSPITAL

ANOTHER PLAINS OBJECTION. INQUIRIES DESIRED. At Tuesday’s meeting of the Hauraki Plains County Council. Or. Parfitt moved the following motion :—

“That this council requests the Minister of Health to make inquiries into all the circumstances concerning the building of a hospital at Paeroa, —particularly as to whether the demands of the district warrant the expenditure—thereby placing a further burden of rates to meet construction costs and possible cost of maintenance.”

Or. Harris, in seconding, s.aid that the council, had opposed the hospital on the iscore of an increase in rates, but the request was a reasonable one, because if the project .was preyed a sound one the opposition might be removed.

Cr. Hare said that the council had already registered its opposition. He was of opinion that the opposition was promoted frdin an outside source. Certainly there was a large section of the council’s ratepayers who favoured and urgently required the proposed hospital at Paeroa. Cr. J. C. Miller said that the Plains County would contribute almost 50 per cent, of the cost of hospitals, and this levy had to be paid by the county whether the hospital rates were paid or not. The council had that day paid £25 as interest on an overdue hospital levy. Cr. Hare said that hospitals could not be expected to be a paying proposition, and the small cost w'as as nothing compared with the saving in human life that might be effected by

having a hospital close at hand. The Paeroa hospital would be built, and the only hindrance was the difference of opinion between the merits of brick and weed.

The motion was, carried, Crs. Hare and Nicholson voting ’gainst it.