High School Leases.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4502, 11 December 1909, Page 3

High School Leases.

AN IMPORTANT POINT. MUST BE FOR 21 TEARS. In connection with a matter that has been nnder consideration by the High School Board of Governors on the matter of leasing endowments, etc., an important point has been raised, and this has been detailed to the Board by Messrs Miller and Son as nnder : '* 1° compliance with your instructions Wa have given careful consideration to the niki.-.ar of the proposed leases of your Board’s endowment lands at Waiorongomai, including the provisions for renewals up to a limit of 50 years with for improvements. We carefully considered your committee’s special report on the matter, and the several provisions and conditions of the forms of leases granted by the Crown Lands Board and by the School Com-

missioners, and we are now in a position to submit a form of lease for your Board’s approval containing the resuisite provisions ■ for renewal with periodical revaluations and for payment of compensation for improvements. Before we submitted the document to you, however, there appeared to us to be one point Jcat required further consideration, and this we now fear will prove an obstacle m carrying out your Board’s wishes in this matter By * Thames Boys’ and Girls’ High School Act, 1878,’ under which your Board is constituted, and by virtue of which the endowment lands are vested in your Board, your Board has power to lease for any term not exceeding 21 years. Also by the ‘High School Reserves Act, 1880,’ section 6, your Board has power to lease your lands being rural or pastoral lands and not exceeding 21 years. By section 3of the Public Bodies’ Leases Act, 1908 (under which Act your Board has been declared to be a leasing authority) it is provided as follows, namely. ‘ The powers conferred by this Act by a leasing authority shall be in additiou to and not in substitution for any powers vested in that authority by any other Act for the time being in force, whether passed before or after the passing of this Act, or by any trust, whether created before or after the passing of this Act. save that no power conferred by this Act shall he exercised by any leasing authority if the exercise W that power would be contrary to the provisions of any such Act or trust.’ Now the latter part of this section seemed to us to prohibit your Board from granting a lease for any term longer than 21 years. The question was whether a lease for any term with a right of renewal, granting altogether a term exceeding 21 years was contrary to the provisions of the Acts of 1878 and 1880 above mentioned, which limited your Board’s power of leasing to a term not exceeding 21 years. The powers given by the Public Bodies’ Leases Act certainly appeared to us to be much more extensive, and therefore in that respect contrary to the provisions of the said Acts. In order that the question might be settled definitely before any further expense was incurred in connection with the new leases we submitted the matter to the District Land Registrar in Auckland, as the question would of necessity, come before him whenever the first of the new leases was presented to him for registration. The Registrar took time for consideration, and has now intimated to us that he considers there is no doubt at all that the provisions of the Public Bodies’ Leases Act, 1908, and accordingly that he. would be obliged to refuse register any lease that exceeded the limit of 21 years, prescribed by the said Acts of 1878 and l88'). If j'our Board is dissatisfied with the Registrar’s decision on this question we thiuk that the matter can be further tested by means of an application to the Supreme Court under section 3 of' ‘ The Declaratory Judgments Act, 1980.’ On such on application any order that might be made determining the construction ot tbe above mentioned provisions would have the effect of a judgment of the Supreme Court, and be binding accordingly. Apart from this procedure tbe only available means of rectifying tbe matter 6eems to us, to be the passing cf an attending Act extending the limit of 21 years laid down in your Board’s Act of 1878. We await your further instructions in the matter.”