BOROUGH LOANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1921, Page 5

BOROUGH LOANS.

MONEY FOR THE HYDRO SCHEME. QUESTION OF INTEREST. Advice was received at' last night’s meeting of the New Plymouth Borough Council from the State Advances Office •that consent had been obtained to the raising of £142,000 and £9OOO, for repaying maturing loans and additions to electric light works respectively. Touching on the request for permission to pay interest at the rate of 7 per cent, on these loans, the department pointed out that in no ca.se had the Min.i«ter of Finance given his consent to the raising of loans within the Dominion at a rate exceeding 6J per cent. The Mayor said, the question was whether the council intended to raise the money inside the Dominion or abroad. Obviously the £142,000 loan would not be raised, in New Zealand. He remarked that if the predictions of Mr. Fearless (the resident engineer) regarding the cost of the present work came true it might not be necessary to raise the £9OOO loan. The council decided to refer the question of flotation of loans to the finance committee. The position of. the '£57,000 streets loan as at October 31 last was dealt with in a report presented .by the general manager (Mr. F. T. Bellringer). He stated that the actual amount raised was £25,000.. which was allocated among various works. The sum of £16,550 had been set aside for streets, and was divided as follows: Plant £5345 0s 9d, streets expenditure £5509 4s 7d, amount to complete works authorised £3189 10s 4d, street widening £2OOO, leaving available for contingencies a balance of £416 ss. Of the waterworks allocations the sum expended to October 31, was £5838 7s sd/ leaving a balance of £l6l 2s 7d. Out of the sewer vote of £lOOO the stun of £750 was devoted to taking levels for the comprehensive scheme, and the amount available for other work was £250. There was a credit of £1096 5s lid in connection with the streets loan, and this would be used to complete works already authorised. These include: Tarring Lemon. Street, from 'Eliot to Hobson,. £216; Courtenay Street, Hobson to Watson, £192 18»;‘ St. Aubyn Street, widening corner Queen Street (no estimate), £221; asphalting Gover Street footpath, Devon Street to Courtenay Street, £110; Liardet Street, tarring, £l'B4 2s Id;' Dawson Street, tarring,. £33. Allowing contingencies of £139 6s lOd on the above the whole of the credit will be exhausted. The report states, that in May last it was intended to utilise any balance available in this loan to continue the asphalting of the footpath on the north side of Devon Street to the Henui bridge. It was quite improbable; however, that anything like sufficienl money would be available for this work after the works already authorised wer< completed.