The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1918. TOWN IMPROVEMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, 6 November 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1918. TOWN IMPROVEMENT.

(With which is Incorporated The Xaihape Post and Walavan-to Nows).,

We are glad to have criticism iof anything that appears in our editorial columns, more especially on those subjects which have direct bearing on the progress of this town and district In fact, we have invited criticism, or an expression of opinion for publication on several occasions, for it is only by such interestedness being displayed that the best can be arrived at; but we do hope that critics will confine themselves to something we have said, and refrain from introducing that which is quite foreign to the subject, whatever the object of so doing may be, because such a course may be ( taken by some readers as an effort to cloud the issue. Our remarks on the proposed loan for town improvement were about as directly to the point as it was possible to make them and no reader had occasion to be under any misapprehension about them, least of all the Mayor of the town. If the letter had come from some other source we should probably have accused the writer of disingenuousness, for it seems obvious from the conclud- | ing paragraph of the letter that the Mayor realises that our subject was the system of rating, not the rate struck. We had, and have nothing whatever to say about the rate levied in the borough, it would be sheer foolhardines to discuss what cannot be 'avoided and is incapable of improvement. It is only the Borough Council as a body that can by careful adminis- ! tration favourably vary the amount of the rate to be struck; we have nothing to say about that rate but what is 1 complimentary to the Council and its j administrative officer. After going to ' this length to make it plain to our 1 readers that Mr. Arrowsmith’s letter appearing in another column, while ! apparently discussing something we • have said, discusses something about j which we said nothing at all, there is ■ only the tip of the tail of the letter

that is left of a controversial nature. Our language is usually too plain to give wrong- impressions to anyone, and because our correspondent says it does that doesn’t alter the' fact. What Ave urge, and .we are strongly supported by the huge number of boroughs and counties in New Zealand which have changed from rating on capital value to rating on unimproved value since the empowering law was placed on the statute book, is that land is rated too low and that buildings are rated disastrously high; perhaps every reader will understand that. The cost of a building is not solely represented in so much material and labour; there is the fact that if a man, rich or poor, arranges to erect a building in Taihape, he is at once and for all time rated oh the outlay involved. A man having a section of land may borrow money to erect a house, but in Taihape he not only has to pay interest on the borrowed capital, but the local rating body comes down upon him for a penny-farthing in every pound he has borrowed and spent towards the town’s progress, not for once alone, but the penny-farthing with all special rates levied -arc • recurring yearly for ever thereafter. Is there anybody so daft as to say such rating is not a deterrent to building, to progress, and does not influence a meaner class of structure being erected? War conditions have nothing whatever to do with what we are contending for, and we have no concern with tire amount

of rate the Council finds it essential to strike, but every business man in the town and every man and woman that stands for progress should feel concerned about the old, unjust, unscientific economic fallacy of rating on capital value that is largely responsible for an undue number of for-lorn-looking vacant sections of land while families are living two and three in a building that is only large enougTx for one, while many who come to the town leave it in disgust because there are no houses to live in. The people that thus turn their back on the town are the very men that the town urgently needs; they are the self-reliant class, or they would crawl in somewhere. The Taihape housing problem has'no connection with the war, as it was just as extreme before the war, when building materials were cEeap, as it is to-day, and will be after the war if the old erroneous system of rating is net put on the scrap heap with the hundred or so of others that have gone before. If this old system were changed for a more just and scientifically economic system, the fictitious

values now placemen, borough land would rapidly change into .real values, at least, that is the experience in most boroughs that have made the change we strongly urge upon the notice of Taihape borough land-owners. A w>orking-man, after reading what wms stated in the article Mr. 'Arrowsmith takes exception to, said he was thinking of building with borrowed money, but he found that in addition to paying six or seven per cent interest on the money till it wms paid back, the Borough Council would rate him about two per cent till the crack o’ doom for being such a fool. Business men and firms have to seriously consider the ever-recurring tax on progress, more especially as the system that penalises them for every pound they spend on new buildings Or extensions also operates fatally against increasing the gross purchasing power of the community. Rating on capital values is against progress; against the erection of thcr-finest class of business structures in our business thoroughfares; prevents building of cottages for letting purposes; prevents increase of population a'nd, sequentially, the increase of business; it stands for unsightly vacant building plots, for mean looking houses and the extension of slums, and it stands for stagnation. To rate that which may be here to-day and gone to-morrow is obviously an economic blunder. When a building is destroyed is the 1 owner relieved from paying rates on it? Not at all, he goes on paying rates just the same, while other vacant land alongside is much under-rated. Even in countries where structures are almost entirely of stone and brick that security for rating is condemned by economists, what is the Taihape wooden security worth in comparison? From whatever angle rating on capital values is looked at it is against progress wherever It is in practice. To discuss the amount of rate struck is pettifogging in face of the hugely larger question of the system of rating. The reason houses were not built hefbre the war was because first cost and annually recurring cost rendered it unprofitable to let them at a reasonable rent when they were built It has never been our thought that rates were too high, and we have never said they were, but we do distinctly say the system of rating is distinctly bad, because it has proved itself to ho against progress wherever it was in vogue, Mr. Arrowsmith’s letter is. welcome, however, because it has enable# us to remove all doubt from his mind about this journal’s attitude to the rating and housing problem.