Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 79, 16 August 1873, Page 3

New Advertisements. QUADRILLE ASSEMBLY. MEMBERS are invited to meet the Committee THIS EVENING at the Argyll Hotel, to receive accounts for the past quarter, and other business. H. E. WEBB, Hon. Treasurer. WANTED. ANTED—To LEASE or PURCHASE an area of BUSH for splitting purposes. Apply by letter to A.B.C. Post-office, Gisborne. SALE BY AUCTION. the MART THIS DAY, at 12 o’Clock, POTATOES, MAIZE, SADDLERY, 30 APPLE TREES, And the GOODS remaining from last sale. W. S. GREENE, Auctioneer. [advertisement.] To the Ratepayers of the Poverty Bay Highway District. AT the meeting of the Highway Board on the 2nd inst. it came under the notice of the Board that there was an error in the statement of receipts and expenditure laid before you at the Annual Meeting on the 21st ult. : and a member having called the notice of the Board to a letter and to an article which appeared in that day’s issue of the STANDARD newspaper, I was desire d to inform you as to the occasion of the err< r having been overlooked, anel to take notice of the article and reply to the letter. On the morning of the Annual Meeting the Board met to receive the accounts before eubmittii% them to you; and found that owing to the illness of one of the Auditors, they (the Auditor.) had been unable to examine the accounts until the evening previous ; and that although they hid audited the books and found them correct, they had not had time to enquire into the statemen's of assets and liabilities, and receipts and expenditure, which were however to come under their consideration before the meeting commenced. This latter portion of their work was hurriedly performed, and the papers were placed in my hands only a moment before being read to you. No member of the Board was aware of any error in the statements until last Saturday, nor was anyone aware of it until after they had been submitted to the meeting. The nature of the error and its correction are recorded in the minutes of the last Board meeting, which minutes will probably be published in the local paper as usual. But this explanation is deemed necessary for the reason that the Editor of that paper, with the mixture of insolence, impertinence, and strict disregard of truth, which so eminently characterises his writings, informs the public that the statements laid before you were known to be false by the Board, and that it wak “palming off a piece ” of wilful deception upon you. Had the Editor of the Standard merely expressed his opinion that the members of the Bos,rd were dishonest, it would rather have been a proof of their integrity, and no notice need have been taken of it; but since he averts that they admit themselves to be rogues, it is due to them and to you, who elected them, to inform you that it is a charitable invention of his own. By whom, and to whom “ discrepancies ” that were not known to exist, could have been “ admitted ” I do not know. I venture to believe that the Editor of the Standard is the only ratepayer in the District who would bring such a charge against the body of gentlemen who constituted your Highway Board last year; and I feel certain that each of those gentlemen would denominate as a piece of infamous rascality, what he, according to his standard of right and wrong, calls a little proceeding. The inaccuracy he states to exist in the printing and advertizing account I leave in the hands of the Auditors appointed by you ; but I may say that the Board for its own satisfaction proved that it does not exist. With regard to the letter signed “ Civis.” The meeting held on the 21st ultimo was public, and one which so generally affected the interests of the District that it is a natural assumption that the local paper would make it its business to furnish its readers with a report of the meeting, and an abstract of papers laid before it. These papers were at the disposal of the Editor of the Standard, but judging from a remark in his article of the 2nd inst., he preferred to wait until an error which had occurred should be rectified. Were it necessary for the Board to advertize its statements, the Provincial Government Gazette would be the proper medium. Jas. B. Poynter, Chairman P.8.H.8.