CORRESPONDENCE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 604, 20 September 1913, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

Loiters lor publication, and articles .tor inseruori, j must bo accompanied (not necessarily for publication), by the name of the writer, and, provided ' ihev are not offensive in anv way. will be oublished as space permits. The Editor docs !o; identify himself with the opinions expressed ; by correspondents, and accepts no responsibility tor them. ' The Editor. I Sir, —In reference 10 Mr C. K. | Wilson's letter of September loth. j which appeared in your columns, I would crave your indulgence to reply. The statement to which Mr Wilson takes exception was written by a Chronicle representative as the result j of a casual conversation after my re- | turn from Wellington.' I had no in i tention of deprecating Mr Wilson or \ the present Government in any way. 1 was speaKing of coanty matters gene rally from a County Council point of view. Mr Wilson says the statements j are incorrect. I say they are not incorrect to the ordinary thinking man. But they may not be explained Nearly enough for Mr Wilson. I referred specially to the Kio Kio loan, which has beeii cut down to £2OOO, and if we get a subsidy of £2OOO, making £4OOO in all, we will still be £6OOO short of carrying out the scheme which the ratepayers formulated. If the reduced amount is accepted on the security of a smaller special area the Council could not go on with the schema without getting a fresh consent from the and going through the preliminary steps all over again. Most of the other loans are in the same position. I maintain that the cutting down of the amounts complicates matters very greatly from the county point of view. The idea of the council is that which was recommended by the Backblocks Local Bodies Association to devise a roading scheme in each district as far as possible, and to include the whole of the district in the special rating area, consequently fairly large loan 3 are necessary in order to carry out these schemes. What is the difference in getting the money in one loan or in having it divided into several small loans? It must be apparent to even Mr Wilaon that obtaining it in a number ,of small loans must materially increase the cost of administration and render it much more difficult to promote the various schemes on an equitable oasis. This principle was stnngly advocated by Mr Wilson when the big scheme for metalling the main road and the roads of the Pio F;o,Aria,and Managotaki districts was being discussed. Then again as to tho obtaining of part of the money from the State Advances Department and part from outside sources at different rates of interest. To anyone who is acquainted with local body affairs it must be apparent that this is going to complicate the work and increase the expense very greatly. With respect to subsidies I had no intention of saying that if money was raised outside the department the county would lose the subsidy. What I wished to explain was that if there was a £SOOO subsidy we must have a £SOOO loan to enable us to lift the whole of the subsidy. If we could only borrow £2OOO we would lose £3OOO of the subsidy. It is not always possible to borrow from outside sources and this i 3 a position which might easily arise. I am fairly conversant with these matters now, and wen discussing the position only wished to point out the difficulties with which the Council wa3 confronted. It is premature to enter into a discussion about th 9 different administrations referred to by Mr Wilson, but I would like to correct him in an error. Mr Wilson says that last year the Waitomo Council was granted £2905. This is incorrect. Last year the Council could not get any money at all from the Government. 1 am surprised that Mr Wilaon so far forgot himself in making some of the statements. During the Ward administration the Waitomo County Council was granted loans amounting to £30,905. These loans were subsidised £ for £ to the amount of £29,955. The present Government refused to grant us any further loans unlil quite recently, the excuse being that we had already borrowed considerably over the limit. They would not even entertain an application for an extra 10 per cent, on a loan of £750. This may be explained from the fact that we were trying to borrow from a department that the Government are stated to have borrowed £200,000 from to carry on the administration of the country, and the same explanation might apply to many applications from settlers tor advances that were hung up, and in many cases reduced. It might be interesting to know how many eettlers throughout the Dominion had to seek .the assistance of the private money lenders, probacy paying exorbitant rates of interest as the result of the sbovementioned action of the Government. A3 regarda the Ward Government borrowing from the Post Office, surely, as a matter of finance it compares favourably with the Massay Government borrowing from the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile. However, since the present Minister of Finance was successful in raising a loan on the London market under most favourable circumstances, a refund has been made to that particular department, and as Mr Wilson says, We have just recently had provisional approval for loans j amounting to £IO,OOO odd. But let me point out to Mr Wilson that it will totally depend upon how the Estimates treat us in regard to subsidies as to how much of that money will be spent in this county. The settlers are doing their part admirably: it remains with the Government to do theirs. I am. etc., A. SCKOLES, I Chairman Wtiitomc County Council.