COUNTY FINANCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 44, 21 February 1914, Page 5

COUNTY FINANCE.

[To Thf Editor Stratford Post.] Sir, —In your issue of last Wednesday, you had an account of that day’s County Council meeting, and some of the sayings seemed to me worthy of notice. The Chairman said things were going from bad to worse, and the Council was thousands of

pounds in debt. One councillor said as an apology for expenditure in ins Riding that they had spent £6OO in houses. This brought another councillor out of his shell, and ho said they had built two houses. He modestly refrained from saying how much they cost, but 1 believe it was in the neighbourhood of £BOO. Those two ingenuous confessions amount to £I4OO for houses. Then, later on, the Chairman said they would have to shorten hands. Now all this seems as if they had spent the money that • they had for making roads in building houses, and then they sacked the men that were to live in the houses, because they had no money to make roads. Of course this is genius or comic opera. It reminds me of the boy. and the showman, who was showing Daniel in the lions’ den. The boy said: “Please Mister Showman, would you tell me which is Daniel and which is the lion ?” “My little boy,” he said, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” And we are in exactly the same position. Still later on, the chairman ..said the Te'Popo bridge would want renewing, and where was the money .to come fioni. If this bridge went ; down, it would cut off communication j by road with New Plymouth. And still later on a settler appeared from Pukengahn and said the road was so bad that they could neither drive or ride, and had to walk. Had they told this settler that they had nearly three thousand pounds sunk in absolutely unnecessary houses, it would have been a solace and comfort to him and his wife when they wore walking through the mud. Now, to come to the serious side, I noticed your paper recently that a judge the Supreme Court decided that building a house was au illegal expenditure. County Councils wore constituted to make and maintain roads. My sympathies are with the back country settlors. I know th|> kind of houses they have to live in. And to take their rates and use thorn to build a house costing four or live hundred pounds for a road laborer seems to me shamefully unjust.—l am V etc., D. MAXWELL. Toko, February 20, 1914.