GRANTS FOR ROADS.
DIFFERENT SYSTEM ADVOCATED. The Waiapu County Council has circularised local bodies asking their cooperation in an endeavor to bring about the abolition of the system of Government grants for roads, as now in operation, and to have substituted some more acceptable system. The present system, it is stated, leads to vexatious delays and disappointments? and entails annually on local bodies and public departments a large amount of work in preparing applications, etc., a great part of which work is wasted, as the moneys allowed are to a great extent not expended, or, at any rate, the expenditure is delayed. 'Settlers naturally expected that when moneys appeared on the estimates they would be available for immediate expenditure, but often years elapsed before authority to expend is issued. The present system was abo defective in that grants appeared to made on no definite principle, but wpre entirely at the option of the Government for the time being in powsr, and as' long as that remained so there wouldbe a suspicion of political influence and undue favoring of some districts. That this was so in the past would scarcely be denied. The Waiapu County Council suggested that the assistance given local bodies should be entirely automatic, and that it should take the form of a subsidy on rates, or that its amount should be calculated on some reasonable and acceptable basis, in which the development or backwardness of the district should be taken into account, and that from part of the ordinary revenuo of local bodies and its expenditure be free from all special conditions. The matter came before the Egmont County Council at its last meeting, w"hen councillors expressed the opinion that there was a good deal in the contention.
The chairman did not consider that an automatic system would work. Counties near the railway that had good facilities for getting their produce to the market d'd not need the same assistance f.* those in the bac-.kblocks At present the Council knew that they would have their rates and the subsidy thereon as revenue, but any other votes depended on the will of the Minister of IPublic Works. The Egmont County Council did not require many grants, save for special requirements, and these they did not get without considerable delay, as instance the Wiremu road.
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Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1917, Page 2
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386GRANTS FOR ROADS. Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1917, Page 2
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