MT. ROSKILL LOANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 1, 23 March 1927, Page 16

MT. ROSKILL LOANS

OPPOSITION FROM RATEPAYERS TIMES TOO HARD Despite the pressure of opposition from various ratepayers’ organisations and adverse action within its own membership, Mount Roskill Road Board has decisively declared adherence to its recently-announced intentions regarding the combination of two loans for road-making, which the ratepayers at the forthcoming polls, on the ordinary election day, are to be asked to sanction. A deputation of seven members of the Progressive Association and the Western Ratepayers’ Association attended last night’s meeting of the board and petitioned that, instead of lumping together the two proposed loans of £19,980 for Three Kings Road, and £52,000 for Mount Albert Road, the board should, for the present, suspend action with regard to one road, and simply ask for one loan, that concerning Three Kings Road. As president of the Progressive Association, Mr. J. T. Chadc.erton maintained that, in the present period of stringent finance, general unemployment and other circumstances of distress, the expenditure of such an enormous sum of money would be most injudicious and improper and would impose an unfair burden upon the ratepayers. If the board forced the proposal for two loans, it would be rejected at the polls; whereas there was every promise of the one loan being sanctioned as a sufficient outlay for the present. The chairman expressed his desire to have it clearly known that he intended to support the two loans or nothing. Other speakers included Messrs. S. Wilson, C. W. Walker and A. E. Roxburgh, all members of the association, whose general arguments centred upon the assertions that the two loans would incur an increase upon existing valuations to the extent of over £3 in the £I,OOO, which the ratepayers would flatly turn down by hundreds of votes. At a later stage in the meeting, Mr. L. A. Tozer moved that the following motion, passed at a meeting of the board on February 8, be rescinded’.'— “That the proposal to concrete the Three Kings Road and Mount Albert Road be presented as one proposal, and that the work be spread over a period of three years.” The motion was seconded pro forma by Mr. T. S. Lamont and on being put to the meeting was lost, the mover and seconder alone voting for it.