STRATFORD COUNTY.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 January 1922, Page 6

STRATFORD COUNTY.

WORK FOR THE MONTH. MEETING OF THE COUNCIL. The monthly meeting of the Strat' ford County Council was held on Saturday. Present: Crs. E. Walter (chairman), J. H. Thomas, J. O’Neill, T. R. Anderson, J. T. Belcher, W. H Were, J. Jacobsen and M. Davies. ENGINEERS REPORT. The engineer reported as follows: — North Rld’ing.—The portion of Beaconsfield from East Riding bounaary to the Stanley Road has been refaced with erushed metal from the Manganui depot. The refacing of the Mountain Road North has been finished. One hundred and twenty yards of metal will; be required for the erection of the Esk Road bridge: the reinforcing of ttis bridge has been ordered. The small bridge on the Croydon Road west required some attention. The shingle (for the new culvert) to replace the bridge has been carted, and the work of construction will be put in hand as early as possible. - Repairs have been carried out on the Manganui River bridge on the Mountain Road. On the removal of the decking it was found to be for the most part in good condition ; the trouble lay in the stringers, and considerable repairs have been necessary.

South Riding.—The Mountain Road and portions of tiie Bird Road have been patched and blinded, and the uumetalled part of Skinner Road has been trimmed up. Two hundred yards of sand have been distributed along the Mountain and Cheat roads. The contra'ct for tte supply of boulders near the Finnerty Road bridge is almost completed.

East Riding (Toko). —About 20 chains of the Ohura Road have been scarified, blinded and rolled. Tar-patching has also been carried out on portions of this road. Sand has been distributed on the Ohura Road for tar--61 inding.

East Riding (Douglas).—Water-tabling, culvert cleaning, and patching has been done on the Ohura, Douglas South, Crown and OkuraMungaehu roads, the greater portion of the time being spent on the latter road.

East Riding (Huiroa). —Owing to a portion of the Douglas North Road slipping away and reducing the width, it was necessary to do a considerable amount of work on the upper side to maintain the twelve feet roadway. Surface work has been done on the Douglas South, Makuri and Mohakau roads, on the latter of which a set of nine-inch pipes has been put in. The filling at Beauchamp’s bridge, Makuri Road, has been completed, and the new cut put through near the Huiroa station to divert the stream into the wooden culvert recently constructed. Two new caps have been, put in to replace the old ones, which were in a very bad state on the bridge noai Mr. Fraser's woolshed. The repairs effected to this bridge can only be treated as temporary, and the time is not far distant when it will be necessary to erect a new bridge.

West Riding.—Light coats of clay blinding have been placed on the Hastings, Waingongcro, Ronald, Rowan, Palmer, and Manaia roads. A set of earthenware pipes on the Lower Hastings Road had to be taken out and replaced with concrete pipes. The grades or. the clay portion of the Ronald Road have again been trimmed up. It was found necessary to replace with new timber seven of the old deck planks on the Kapuni, and four on the Kaipokonui bridges, Opunake Road. A track has been made to the Kapuni stream through Mr. Parson’s property, Manaia Road, and all available sand is being brought out to the road. A further amount of sand, about 22 yards, has been taken out of the Waingongoro stream, at Cardiff.

Mangaehu Riding.—The various roads in this riding have, where necessary, received attention and are in fair order, excepting portions of the Puniwhakau Road, where a few slips, caused by recent heavy rams, uuve come on to the road. The work of cleaning these off is well in hand. The unfortunate coilapse of Hodder’s bridge, Mangaetu stream, has involved a certain amount of work. A temporary line has been run over to enable the users to convey their milk acress. In order to lighten the weight suspended from the two cables, the whole of the decking has been removed. The bridge foreman will make a start on Monday with the re-erection of the bridge.

The chairman remarked in reierence to Hodder’s bridge, that the bridge had a span of 160 feet and would cost £3OO to replace. CORRESPONDENCE.

The Minister of Internal Affairs asked the council to take charge of contributions towards wedding gifts to Princess Malry.—'lt was decided thajt the clerk should open a list at the council office.

The Mines Department wrote pointing out that Mount Egmont, as well as the Pouakai Ranges, could furnish inexhaustible supplies of road metal of excellent quality. Te Wera limestone, whilst it might be useful locally, was much inferior to Mount Egmont rock for road making. There was no reason why this should cost more than it would cost to transport stone from the Hutt Valley.—No action taken. The district medical officer of health wrote asking for monthly returns of the number of rats caught, and the number of poison baits laid and taken.—Received.

The Selwyn and Ashley County Councils sent a resolution which was passed by a meeting of delegates of North Canterbury County Councils held in Christchurch in May Ipst strongly disapproving of calculating the hospital levy on capital values only and holding that the levy should be worked out on both the population and capital value.

The method of calculating the levy which the Ashley County now put forward was that the levy should be made at the rate of £13.8 per hundred of population and two-elevenths of a penny in the £ of capital value. “It seems to me that, it is only a fair thing that these counties are asking. The population of the county is not double that of the borough and the county is paying a levy of more than five times that of the borough,” said the chairman. Cr. Pitt also supported the resolution. There was a population of 5060 jn the county and the county was paying a levy of £1832 whilst the borough with a population of 3000 was paying a levy of £306. Other councillors favored the resolution. and it was resolved that the council should endorse the resolution and send their views to the member for the district, Mr. R. Masters. The Heathcote County Counci) forwarded a resolution urging the Government to amend the Counties Act of 1920 so as to include the section of the municipal Corporations Act which gave municipal bodies power to demand that before an owner subdivided land the subdivision should be approved by the council. —It was decided to support the resolution. Messrs. Booth, Macdonald and Co., ot Christchurch, wrote with reference to the duty on cement. —Received. Mr. Masters, M.P., forwarded a letter from the Minister of Customs regretting that as the tariff has now passed into law no remission can be made on the duty of cement imported for local bodies. —Received. Messrs. Belcher and Cameron, of Cardiff Road, waited on the council to draw attention to the state of the bridge over the Gentle Annie River on the Cardiff Road. Owing to the bridge beinn in its present state it* was impossible to take out sufficient manure and other necessaries for farms and so

the farmers had to cart these things to and fro in earts and so cut up the road. Apart from the bridge being rotten, it had been built at a very awkward angle, being nearly at right angles to the road and very dangerous, and accidents which might have been very serious were becoming much more frequent as the road became more used. Though the road in the past was only used by those who knew it well it was going to become a main road when it went right through. Ten years ago the bridge was not considered safe to take a steam roller over, so they knew what it must be like now.

The chairman said they had talked over the bridge a great deal and were it not for the financial position a new bridge would have been erected long ago. A similar position had arisen on the Esk Road and the settlers there, had raised a loan to build a new bridge which would be gone on with immediately. It would not be fair to the people in that district to make them pay a rate for buijding another bridge when they had already raised a loan to build one for themselves. He thought the north riding people should suggest some scheme of financing the building of a bridge and if ''they did something he thought. the council should subsidise tfie work. Cr. Pitt suggested that the deputation should interview the settlers and find out if tl>ey would be prepared to go into a small loan for ,the building of a bridge. The chairman reported that in regard to the engineer’s house the council had an option on a section in Ollivier Street and had made an application for the loan for the building of the .house but had received no reply so far. The ranger reported that during the month he had found 50 head of stock on the road, 45 cows belonging to one man, who explained that owing to his bridge being washed away he could not get his cows on to his grazing land. Referring to letters received from ratepayers asking to be let down lightly in the matter of rates, the chairman moved that the council regrets that it has not the power to deduct the ten per cent, interest on rates which are not paid. Contracts for procuring boulders for metalling were accepted as follows: No. 82. for Croydon Road, Messrs. Neilson and. Davidson; No. S 3, for Ruapehu Road, A. E. Burrows; No. 84, for Bird Road, A. E. Burrows.