THE LOAN PROPOSALS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 308, 2 November 1910, Page 5

THE LOAN PROPOSALS.

| Borough Council Meeting. | A special meeting of Te Kuiti | Borough Council was held on Monday I night. Fresent —His Worship the | Mayor (Mr Jas. Boddie), and Crs i Luslc, Julian, Hardy, King, Somer- | ville, Young and Stevens. I Ratepayers' Roll. The special roll, i complied by the Town Clerk, for use I in the coming loan voting was examj ined by the Council. The Clerk said j it comprised about 400 names of rate- | payers, extracted from the rate-book. ' —The Mayor and Cr Young moved i that the roll be approved and signed.

i —Carried. i Lighting.—The Mayor said the cora- | mittee had unanimously resolved to ; recommend to the Council the DreadI nought system of lighting. The Council unanimously adopted the '■ recommendation for submission to the ', ratepayers. The Scheme of Work.—The finance : committee's report approving of the ■ scheme of works as outlined was for- '. mally adopted. Sanitary Service. —Cr Stevens raised the question of the period of collection whether weekly or fortnightly—- ] stating that a fortnightly one in certain parts of the borough was unsatisfactory.—The Town Clerk said he had ; had numerous complaints. —Cr Stevens moved and Cr Julian seconded,that the • north side of King street be included j in the weekly service, and that the i contractor be notified that the work : must be more satisfactorily attended j to. Carried.

Streets or Roads? —The borough solicitor gave his opinion on the question whether certain roads on section 1, block 15, Orahiri survey district, within the borough, were, streets within the meaning of the "Municipal Corporations Act, 1905." The road* were not under the control of the County Council immediately before the date of the constitution of the borough, nor had the Governor proclaimed them as roads. It therefore followed that the roads were not streets within the meaning of the Act, neither were they under the control of the borough.

Ratepayers' Meeting. MAYOR'S MASTERLY SPEECH. UNANIMOUS VOTE. Following on the meeting of the Council the statutory meeting of ratepayers in connection with the proposed loan of £29,500 for borough purposes, was held in the Town Hall, Te Kuiti, on Monday night last. There was only a small attendance of ratepayers, and his Worship the Mayor (Mr James Boddie) took the chair. The Mayor said the meeting was not a very large one and could be looked at in two ways. One: that people were indifferent, and two: that they were all well pleased with the proposals and had no opposition to offer. He hoped they were justified in looking at the matter in that way. All the proposals had been fully dealt with at the first meeting of ratepayers, except the question of lighting. The meeting that night was the statutory one, but he looked upon the first meeting 33 the most important one. The object of a statutory meeting was to give the ratepayers the opportunity to move for or against the proposals. Detailing the various schemes the Mayor said the first on the list was the water scheme, and he was very pleased to say that had been fully gone into. The district health officer had visited the district, and the Government analyst had given his report on the water which was a very satisfactory one indeed. The estimated amount for the service was £II.OOO. He would briefly refer to some criticisms indulged in by a ratepayer. It was a right and proper thing for any ratepayer to express his opinion on a matter of public interest, and in this case it was a very good thing, as it gave the Council the opportunity to make enquiries. No sooner had the criticisms appeared than steps were taken to enquire whether there was anything in the idea of an artesian water supply. He had visited Napier and Hastings, and the information he got convinced him that anything in the nature of an artesian water supply for Te Kuiti was absolutely out of the question. The Town Clerk then read the following letter from Mr L. G. P. Spencer, the consulting engineer to the borough:— "Re Mr Pine's proposed scheme for water supply: In the first place no one who has any knowledge of the subject would dream of endeavouring to get a mechanical pressure for a water supply in the place of one provided by nature, unless the difference in cost be totally out of all proportion; and as for Mr Pine saying a scheme will pump 24 hours without any attention, I know of no - gravitation that does not require such, let alone a pumping scheme. Again, several municipal bodies have or are contemdlating changing their schemes from a pumping to a gravitation one—notably the Christchurch people under the latter category and under the former New Plymouth has of recent years gone six miles further up the river and done away with its pumping scheme, which cost £25,000 in 1881. Further, the geological conditions of Te Kuiti are not at all likely, in my opinion, to yield artesian water, and it's the first time I have ever heard of artesian water generating power, and if the artesian pressure is so great as Mr Pine thinks, it would be unnecessary to build a reservoir. All you would have to do would be to sink a sufficiently large bore and connect up your main direct to it. Also if he wants to pump the water, does he imagine he will get it in the rockbound gorge of the Mangaokewa, as that is the only possible place to instal a pumping plant as he suggests, and the bore would have to be alongside. No; the scheme is, as I think 1 have shown, so chimerical, that I am afraid it is not at all likely to prove in any way feasible. Napier has had a pumping scheme for years, but had they had a possible gravitation source

nearer I suppose than 20 or 30 miles, no doubt they would have adopted it. You are always sure to find critics to any scheme, but you know "one swallow does not make a summer." Gisborne went 23 miles for their supply at a cost of £75,000, rather than pump."

The acting Town Clerk to the [ Napier Borough Council also wrote: — I "I am in receipt of your letter of j the 21st inst., and in reply have the j pleasure to forward the following j particulars re our water supply as j follows:—High reservoir, SoOft high, j capacity 500,000 galls, cost, £5000; | low reservoir, 150 ft high, capacity, j 270,000 gallons, cost, £3000; receivj ing tanks. 500,000 gallons, cost, £3000; 8700 ft 12in cast iron pumping majns, £2350; engine, 140 1.H.P., 2 pumps, 50 to 60,000 gallons per hour. £2070; 2 Babcock and Wilcox boilers, £1200; 2 Babcock and Wilcox boilers erection and supervision, £600; freight and customs, £2000; engine and boiler houses, £2000; total, £2l, 120; pumping costs about £IOOO per annum; gallons pumped. 400 to 500,000 per day; the supply is from 14 artesian wells which are picked up by a spiral pipe main 0? Gin, 9in and 12in diameter leading to the receiving tanks, laid at a cost of about £6OO, and the present cost of sinking at 3in well 200 ft deep is about £55." The Mayor said he thought there was nothing in the figures given to induce them to change from a gravital tion to a pumping scheme. At Hastings they were installing a pumping scheme at a cost of £40,000, but they had no option, except they went 24 miles. The engineer, to his surprise, said they were prepared to go that distance, but the water proved so unsatisfactory that they could not think of adopting it. Considering the short distance Te Kuiti had to go to get its water supply they were extremely fortunate in getting the service for £II,OOO.

Drainage.—Cost £3128. This had been thoroughly approved by Dr Makgi". Streets.—Cost £IO,OIO. This was a most necessary work to every ratepayer. They proposed to put practically every street under the control of the borough into a fairly satisfactory state of repair and to provide footpaths wherever necessary.

Lighting.—This had not been dealt with fully at the first meeting. The Council had authorised him to visit Waipukurau —a small town on the East Coast with 900 population—which had lately adopted a new system of lighting. Not new really, as air-gas was an old idea, but with the latest improvements making it a new system. On the Continent and in America it had been brought to a very complete state of perfection. The data he got at Waipukurau was sufficient to justify them in adopting the Dreadnought system. The light proved to be one of the best lights for streets or private use yet discovered. As compared with coal or acetylene it was much brighter and had none of the ohjectionble flicker which pains the eyes. Speaking to a type-setter of large experience he was told that after six hours constant work under the light not the slightest trouble had been experienced—a very significant test. He visited every public place in the town and discussed the gas with all manner of people. In most com munities there are some cranks, some malcontents, some critics. He did not find one solitary objector in Waipukurau. They were proud of their light. They were charging 5s a 1000 feet for the gas and for places with more than ten lights 4s 6d a 1000 feet. It could be installed as cheaply as acetylene, and as it was much cheaper to the consumer it was preferable, Waipukurau commenced with the Twentieth Century light which proved unsatisfactory. Two' local men invented a process which entirely eliminated the trouble and there was absolutely no corrosion of burners or pipes. Waipukurau started with 60 consumers and now had 85. The chairman of the Town Board and the Town Clerk told him that assuming they had 150 to 200 consumers they could easily produce the light for sale at 3s a 1000 feet. That might look doubtful, but the actual cost of production was only Is 3d per 1000 feet, and it only took a man half-an-hour a day to make sufficient gas for 24 hours consumption. It was no stretch of the imagination to say that it could be produced for sale at 3s. He did not think the Council would start so low as that, but if the scheme was carried and the light installed they would have not only an up-to-date and satisfactory light, but the cheapest in the known world to-day. Waipukurau, atfer paying working expenses and interest, showed a net profit of £l4 odd on the six months' work ending June 30th. The whole of the plant installed in the present buildings in Te Kuiti would be used, only altering the burners, and that would be the only expense. At Waipukurau two large acetylene plants had been put out and the new gas installed and the landlady of one hotel told him she would not go back to acetylene light ing for anything. Not only was it cheaper, but ic was free from danger, from a health point of view and was non-explosive. It burnt S7 per cent, of atmospheric air and 3 per cent. of petrol. It wa3 hardly possible to detect any smell with the light. The £2OOO set aside would instal the light and put the main through the part of the town immediately requiring it. If they got 100 consumers they would start on a paying basis. The railway department at Waipukurau had thrown out acetylene and adopted the light and in other places such as Wellington, people had done the same. It was quite evvident the light had passed through the experimental stages, and was ready to adopt. Fire Brigade.—As soon as they got the high pressure water supply it would be necessary to have a firebrigade for the prevention of firts; £225 was a very small sum but would be diffident to build the necessary buildings and purchase a fircboll. Engineering and Land Purchase. — £3137 was allotted for these purposes, I making a total of £29,500.

j No questions were asked. | Mr N. C. Matthew moved, and Mr i M. J. Jones seconded: -"That in the i opinion of this meeting of ratepayers j the proposal to borrow the sum of j twenty-nine thousand, five hundred I pounds (£29,500) for water supply, drainage, street improvements, light, j firo brigade equipment, contingencies, ! engineering, acquiring Sand for public j works, etc., is acceptable to the rato- ; payers, and hereby requests the (n.on- . cil to take a poll of the ratepayers j without delay." j The Mayor said the poll would take j place on November 17th, and he hoped ; the ratepayers would show sufficient | interest to roll up in large numbers i and vote. Apparent ap-ithy was very i disheartening and for that reason he j hoped for a large vote expressive of satisfaction with the action the Council had taken. The resolution was carried unanimously.

The Mayor expressed thanks, on behalf of the Council, for the confidence shown in them, and the meeting terminated.