THE ST. AUBYN TOWN DISTRICT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 78, 11 July 1910, Page 3

THE ST. AUBYN TOWN DISTRICT.

To the Editor. Sir,—Your correspondent "Fair Play' thinks that the County Council has hit this district below the belt—and probably few will dissent from this view. But they are very badly in want of money and public bodies, like private individuals, are apt to yield to the temptation to put their hands in other people's pockets under such circumstances. Whether this coup will come off successfully will probably be decided in the Appeal Court. Certainly, we St. Aubym ratepayers are in an evil case, but having made our own bed we shall have to lie in it. Had there been anyone connected with the petition for forming the district that was acquainted with the law in the matter of the addition of haif-a-dozen words to it we would have been freed from the yoke of the County Council and their three-farthings rate. Bnt if we are in a me3s, the district commissioners are apparently in a muck worse one. Although at least one of their number was warned that the South road was in their jurisdiction, J with a haste than can only be accounted for by the fact that a majority of their number live on that thoroughfare, without waiting to call for tenders (by | which it as said 9d per yard could 'have been saved on the large quantity of metal required), or ascertaining if it were under their jurisdiction, the four members present began an outlay of some hundreds of pounds, which, being illegal, cannot be paid for out of the local rates. We may be thankful that the Act places 1 the duty of thus safeguarding our little, income in the hands of the AuditorGeneral, whose particular attention, we; may feel sure, will be called to this I vary' extraordinary action of the newj Board. Whether the fact that one of ( their number was at once called out of town and that thus >he is not implicated in the matter was a fortuitous coincidence in his favor, or whether he "smelt a rat," is of little purport. That the other four members are morally personally liable for any outlay they may be making on a county road seems quite certain; whether they all become legally 3o will, I suppose, depend on their future action, so far as some of them are concerned. Councillor Carter is reported to have said that the county must not deal hardly with them. The thought arises, does he know of any way by which the members of that body can relieve these unfortunates of their illegal expenditure without themselves becoming personally weighted with the same responsibility? It certainly looks as if their ignorance lias placed our representatives in a worse ditch than that into which they have let us.—l am, etc., B - ENROTH. ,