GREATER AUCKLAND ADVANCES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 79, 24 June 1927, Page 8

GREATER AUCKLAND ADVANCES

W IT H the entr y mto the city of the Tamaki Road District so " overwhelmingly approved of by the vote of the ratepayers, another step has been taken toward a Greater Auckland. Slowly, hut surely, the outlying areas are being brought into the fold’ and the more that come in the harder will it be for the remainder to keep out. Will the future see an isolated Newmarket, the one survivor of the old boroughs, playing a lone, desperate hand, entirely surrounded by modern municipalism?’ Newmarket, tiniest of all the local bodies as to area, lias faced Greater Auckland with the attitude of David to Goliath, declaring its self-sufficiency, its independence, and its economically superior management, against all the arguments of amalgamation. Its Mayor, with the Mayor of Mt. Eden, went into the fray, making common cause against the enemy,-at Tamaki, but the ratepayers of that district made bold to take the chance to become citizens of the corporation and to bring their 6,390 acres within the city. Ponsonby, Karangaliape, Grafton, Archhill, Parnell, Grey Lynn, Remuera, Eden Terrace, Epsom, Point Chevalier—and now Tamaki! The writing is on the wall. Among those suburban local bodies that have not yet come in are the North Shore boroughs, Newmarket, Mt. Albert, Mt. Eden, Onehunga, Avondale and Otahuhu; the One Tree’lliil and Mt. Roskill road hoards, and Ellerslie and other town districts. Some of these will be “die-hards,” of course; hut nothing can stop the Greater Auckland movement, and the time must come when they will all be in, and for their own benefit. In a vigorous repudiation of amalgamation, the Mayor of Avondale suggests that Auckland City had better put its own house in order, rather than meddle with affairs beyond it, and he points scornfully to the City Council’s managerial failures in regard to transport, fish markets and other enterprises. There is much truth in his remarks, but the day is to come when the ratepayers will insist upon better business. And to hasten this day, what could be more effective than the amalgamation with the city of those enlightened local bodies that now stand out, bringing on to the city electoral lists their thousands of enlightened ratepayers'? The votes of these ratepayers would doubtless elect to the City Council, in place of the present unsatisfactory personnel, the enlightened Mayors and chairmen who now so successfully administer their own boroughs and boards and yet find time to analyse and criticise all the manifold faults of their erring bfg brother?