PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1881. BOROUGH OF PATEA.

Patea Mail, 12 February 1881, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1881. BOROUGH OF PATEA.

A petition of householders is to be prepared for presentation to the Governor in Council, praying that the town of Carlyle, with extended boundaries, be proclaimed a municipal borough. The petition is to be signed by at least one hundred householders within the proposed area, and the prayer will and must be acceded to unless a counter petition signed by a greater number be presented within two months after the first. The new borough will therefore be in a state of probation during the two months following its petition; and at the end of that time, if there be no sufficient opposition, the borough will be proclaimed. The petition will ask that the town be called the Borough of Patea; and this request must also be acceded to in ordinary course. An endowment of two thousand acres of land should give the town a substantial revenue from that source, whether as a basis for a loan or as an estate leased in sections at a rental. It is estimated that the actual revenue from other sources, including present rents and the licenses which will be transferred from the County Council to the new borough, will amount to £IOOO a year as a beginning. The land endowment can hardly produce less than £SOO a year, if the land be suitably selected. A total revenue of £ISOO a year will be more than three times the present revenue of the Town Board, and will leave more than three times the present amount to spend on town improvements. The boundaries suggested by Mr Sherwood, who brought this matter before the Town Board, are about two miles across on the average, running back from the sea to the Spaniard’s garden northward, but not including it; and crossing the town in the other direction by stal ling from Rhodes’s land on the west side, and crossing the river to the upper ridge of the Station swamp on the cast. Starting from the sea shore, the west boundary of the new borough would include two-thirds of the extensive flat belonging to Rhodes’s trustees, this land being most desirable as small sections for working men, though now a dismal waste; continuing northward and crossing the road near the Spaniard’s garden, going thence towards the river along the road past Patterson’s farm, crossing the river and running through Coutts’s farm to the sea along a line which just includes the ridge and swamp known as Carlyle extension, and of course including the Railway Station; the boundary continuing thence to the seashore. This area is of very moderate extent as compared with most new boroughs which have been created under the Act of 1876. The boundaries should follow clear and natural land-marks where practicable, rather than form a straight stupid line on the map, like most towns drawn by surveyors who disregard natural features. A committee of the Town Board is to fix the boundaries and draw up the petition. The public will then have the matter in their hands, and we have no doubt that the hundred signatures will be got without a single refusal. As to opposition from those outside the present town boundaries and within the extended boundaries, there is no sign at present.