RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUES. Not Quite All that Fancy Painted.

Free Lance, 30 March 1901, Page 8

RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUES. Not Quite All that Fancy Painted.

THE Wellington Trades and Labour Council has got a bee m its bonnet. Nothing surprising in that, of course. But the particular bee that is buzzing there now is worth a little attention. It is called the rating on unimproved values. The Council is quite enamoured of it, and wants to have the principle locally introduced and adopted with the least possible delay. And so it is promoting and canvassing for signatures to a mandate calling upon the Mayor to submit the question to a poll of the ratepayers. It has been called a petition, but, as the signatures explicitly "demand" a poll, the term "petition" is misapplied. * • • However, that is neither here nor there. If a sufficient number of ratepayers sign the document the Mayor will, of course, take the necessary steps to test public opinion on the matter. It seems to us the public are not prepared to express an opinion. At the request of the Trades and Labour Council, the subject was brought up at the meeting of the Ratepayers' Association the other night, and, although a Ratepayers' Association ought to be well up on "rating," one member, at the fag end of a desultory discussion, stated the obvious fact that not one in ten of those present understood the question. Therefore, they postponed it. * • • The Trades and Labour Council has commenced at the wrong end. Before demanding a poll, it would be just as well to call meetings of the ratepayers, and establish a good and sound case for the innovation they are so desperately eager about. It is now getting a trial up North, and opinion there does not appear to be unanimous, by any means, touching its alleged merits. Devonport, the largest of the marine suburbs of Auckland, has had the principle in operation for some time, and, at a recent public meeting in Auckland, one of the speakers declared there are more empty houses now in Devonport than there has been at this season for the previous five years. The result of adopting the rating on unimproved values in Devonport was that now they could not sell property over there. He was speaking of what he knew, because, only the previous week, property at Devonpoit was offered by auction, but could not be sold. His own house would not now sell for within ,£IOO of what it would have brought before rating on unimproved values was adopted * • • Under the circumstances, prudence is the wisest policy. In several places where the rating on unimproved values has been adopted, it is freely stated that some very sharp individuals kept in the background while they incited others to work the strings of action. They knew the effect would be to make land practically unsaleable, and their little game is to pick it up while it is going a-begging, and then, when the public are thoroughly satiated with the new nostrum, pull the strings again for another poll to throw it over, and hark back to the old state of things It requires people to keep their eyes wide open, and walk warily. Above all, let them be sure where they are going to land before they jump.