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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3756, 18 February 1928, Page 2

(To The Editor)

Sir, —Were it not a burning question with the big majority of ratepayers, I would treat the Town. Clerk’s answer as a joke. He says the ijroposition cannot fail to appeal to any business man. Now, Sir, no business man would take on a .’a ■-.ness unless he was assured j£ a return commensurate with his outlay and the profits thereto. The position at present is that the Co - uncil are goihg to bind the ratepayers to an expenditure of close on (that is taking the Town Clerk’s figures) £2,000 spread over seven years. I say that the act is il’egal. To expend public money without any guarantee of a return, and to do so without placing the proposals before the ratepayers whereby they are committed to it, is distinctly illegal; to lease is not to buy. The Town Clerk says the Town Hall is at present paying. Well, in the statement of accounts published in your issue of Tuesday, he has the Town Hall pictures in credit at £707 and the Town Hall in debit at £744. As the pictures, with little exception, are the sole revenue, the Town Hall on the figures he supplied, as above, how does he make the hall pay? Back to the question of lease. It is the general feeling that more lies hidden than appears on the surface. Further, on the facilities at the Town Clerk’s disposal for knowing the state of the finances and returns of the property to be leased, can he guarantee the recompense for the outlay to which the ratepayers willy nilly are committed? It seems to me that the Council has been stampeded into it. In the future there will be opposition, and with the subject of the lease tied round our necks, where will we be? Perhaps the Minister of Internal Affairs will provide the answer, when the full facts reach him. Sir, the time is ripe for a Ratepayers’ Association to guard their interests and prevent such business being pushed on them as a business deal. £250 a year for what? Further, how is the deficiency to be made up in this “business proposition” if it fails to return an income over and above its expenses? Does it come out of the ratepayers’ pockets or the pockets of the Councillors? Here’s a point I would like to make: The Town Clerk says the people havo the making of prices of admission in then* hands (since when?) and have sot the ratepayers a say in whether they are agreeable to an outlay of £250 per year or not? This question needs more light and it’s going to have it. Sir, I notice the Mayor is silent, why?—Yours etc. E. G. MARTIN.