MOA RIDING BRIDGE LOAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1919, Page 4

MOA RIDING BRIDGE LOAN.

To-morrow the ratepayers in the Moa Hiding of the Taranaki County will be called upoii to vote on the proposal to raise £8550 for erecting six concrete bridges in the riding. AH the bridges which these will replace have already been condemned, so that there is. no question as to the necessity for the loan, the money for which has already been provisionally approved by the State Advances Department. The security for this loan is a special rate of threesixteenths of a penny in the pound, so that each £IOOO of capital value will only be called upon to contribute fifteen shillings and sevenpence a year towards interest. The alternative is to raise the money by direct rate, but as this would entail spreading the expenditure over at least four years and the imposition of an increase of three-farthings in the pound, the ratepayers would be severely penalising themselves by turning down the proposal, for instead of the annual payment on each £IOUO of capital value being 15s 7d it would be £3 2s Cd. It is quite possible that in view of the proposal to form a separate county some of the ratepayers may consider the loan should be held over. Such a course would not only endanger public safety, but would be an unwise policy, as the new county, in the event of being constituted, would have all the benefit of the new bridges without having to take the preliminary steps. It is important for the settlers to realise that there should be no delay in constructing these bridges, £")81(i of the loan being required for the Ngatoro and Maketawa bridges on the Junction Road, the important highway of the district. By voting for the loan, ratepayers will be studying their best interests, for it is a proposition that forwards their prosperity and safety by the most economical means possible.