THE MANAWATU COUNTY COUNCIL

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5083, 9 July 1877, Page 3

THE MANAWATU COUNTY COUNCIL

TO TUB EIMTOK OP TOE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. SIB —[ fe d that a reply to your Foxton correspondent's letter in your issue of the 27th Juno is required from me, as a member of the Manawatu County Council for one of the riding seeking separation from that county. lu°tho first place, it is no sentimental grievance as to the choice of chairman or county town that has stirred up so unanimous a demand for separation on the part of the settlers in the Manchester and Kiwitea Hidings. On the contrary, it is the hard fact that a°large amount of the rates and equivalent subsidy of those two ridings (both newly settled and undeveloped as compared with the rest of the county) is, as shown by the chairman’s estimate, diverted to works to be executed within other ridings. The statements in your Feilding correspondent’s letter are questioned. But leaving their correctness or incorrectness on one side for the moment, let us look at the chairman’s official report of the 27 th June—a report avowedly framed to rebut assertions made as to the unfair appropriation of the county revenue, and to disprove the justice of our demand for separation consequent thereon —the best that the chairman of the county can make of the anti-separation case is; that we contribute to the estimated county revenue of £4355195, 7d. the sum of £1655 155., or rather more than one-third (a fact your Foxton correspondent carefully suppresses), and that we receive in expenditure within our ridings £llO4J)s. 2d., leaving an. amount diverted from us of £051155. Now, this sum, though a mere bagatelle iu our chairman's eyes, is a very large and important one to a district like the Kiwitea, with its fifty or sixty pioneer settlers struggling through the miid to their properties; and Mr. ’1 hynne’s attempted justification of the diversion of that sum from itslegitimateohjects reminds me very much of the nurse s excuse in Midshipman Easy,” “Please, sir.it was such a little one.” Of the £llO4 os. 2d. debited against the northern ridings by our chairman, the item, Awahuri to Feilding, £179, is maintenance on a road outside their boundaries. Stoney Creek to Gorge, our fair proportion is about £9O instead of £llO. Palmerston to Bulls, one-fourth of maintenance, £44 16s. 6d., is expenditure on a road nowhere nearer than four miles to our boundaries ; and contingencies, £BO, is an amount not yet voted by the Council, and not provided for in the estimates laid before the Council. I also dispute the fairness of the principle of charging each of the seven ridings of the Manawatu County with one-seventh of the working expenses of the county, thereby debiting a, thinly settled riding like the Kiwitea with the same proportion as the wealthier and more populous districts of Palmerston, Foxton, and Sandon, and absorbing all the Kiwitea rates and subsidy for that purpose, without any expenditure whatever on. roads. Again, £IOO out of the £350 estimated for the engineering* department, is an absurd amount to charge us for the supervision of .works to the a extent of £390, out of some £3002 set apart for road work. Taking our share of working expenses as one-fourth for the two ridings, except in the case ofjengineering, where about one-eighth, or £44, the amount proportionate ! to works is our fair debit, the account stands thus:—(After deducting expenditure on outside works charged against us in the Chairman’s report.) Contribution of Manchester and Kiwitea Hidings, £1655 155.; receipts, executive, £75 ; engineer, one-eighth, £44 ; dog tax collection, miscellaneous, hospitals, &c., £147 13s. 6d.; roads formation, £300; maintenance, £9O ; .ferries, £4O ; total, £696 13s. 6d., showing £959 Is. 6d. taken from us to he spent in a portion of the county where the main roads have been made and maintained up to the end of 1876 by the Government. In answer to your Foxton correspondent’s statement as to the percentage of working expenses or expenditure of the Manawatu Highway Board, I beg to submit to you the information supplied to me by the secretary.of that Board, viz.:—Total receipts, £3509 15s. 2d.; working expenditure, £259 13s. 2d., or a. fraction more than seven per cent. Your correspondent also misstates the facts relating to the sum of £350, appropriated by the Government to opening up the Kiwitea Block, and my action thereupon. The Government offered to place at the Council’s disposal a sum of some £7OOO or £BOOO, of which the £350 alluded to and another £lls, devoted to making approaches to the Manawatu bridge, were the only sums not contracted for or pledged to definite purposes. The Council unanimously agreed that it was inadvisable, in their then dearth of funds, to accept the large sum already due or falling due to contractors, with the concomitant expense of supervision, and refused the offer of the Government, leaving members to obtain for their respective ridings, as best they could, the smaller sums referred to above. My correspondence with the member of the House of Representatives for Manawatu, merely states the fact of the Council's refusal, and requests him to press upon the Government the necessity of expending the money voted for my riding. The Government again offered it to the County Council, and as this time it was unaccompanied by the amount offered before, their offer was gladly accepted. My letters to our member were all published in one of the local papers, and there is not one word of complaint of the Council’s action in them. We in this district *. feel- our helpless condition very deeply. No adjustment of representation can help us now. The County has taken over certain roads, and ,« they must be maintained. Delay on our part ‘'K in taking action for separation means a loss to ns of the, I fear, shortlived Government subsidy, as well as our rates, and the case of the Kiwitea Fading is an especially hard one, m that the land has been sold without any provision for road-making, beyond the rough bush tracks already cleared, which are quite impassable during the greater part of the year, and the cry of the settlers in that riding, that separation should be granted them, in order that they may have at least their rates and_ equivalent subsidy spent in opening up their district, is a demand which deserves every consideration on the part of Government. D. H. Macarthcr.