MUNICIPAL FINANCES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3159, 10 April 1909, Page 5

MUNICIPAL FINANCES.

A REPLY TO CR HUNTER.

(To the Editor). Sir,—-1 merely desire to state u few facts lest any person may be misled by the column or so of fallacies over the signature of Mr Hun« ter. That gentleman presumes that the accounts totalling in round figures £763—passed for payment by the Council on last Tuesday night should have been deducted from the reduced overdraft. Mr Hunter is absolutely wrong; the £763 referred to was rightly to the credit of the Council on the 31st of March; those accounts were not payable on that day, and ,as a matter of fact, the major portion of them were only payable last Wednesday. Again, considerably over £230 of'the amoun passed was chargeable to loan money and would have no effect whatever on the general account of the Borough. The reduction in the overdraft is correctly shown by the Town Clerk as £2,038, and not £1,274 as suggested by Mr Hunter, who has simply made a bloomer in that instance of some seven hundred odd pounds. Further on he says"The Council collected during the past year £3,374 as water rate." The Council did not do anything of the sort, the water rate colleotedfduring the year amounted to £2,831, and Mr Hunter has thus made another little mistake of £540. The foregoing are the main points Mr Hunter attempts to make. They are both absolutely contrary to fact, and if Mr Hunter does not know it, then ha should know it, and it he does know t, ana is trying to mislead the people, his tactics are not commendable. The remainder of his statements are-just about as incorreet as those above mentioned. If the suggestion of Mr Hunter is true, viz.:— That the Town Clerk runs the "whole show," then it is a decided compliment to the Town Clerk, for most persons are quite satisfied that the "show" is being run on up-to-date and economical lines (notwithstanding the opposition of Mr Hunter), and if the Town Clerk and Borough Engineer has become such a fine organiser, administrator and leader in so short a time, then his success in a public position is a striking con trast to Mr Hunter's public career in Masterton. Mr Hunter has occupied mora of the Council's time, and has accomplished less than any other member of the Council, in which he ijow has a following of one whose name he couples with his own, and moans pathetically that they were both omitted fuom a certain press report. For the past twelve months Mr Hunter has been a member of the Council, whose operations he now attempts to deride, and it is usually an undesirable aid always an unsavoury bird that besmears its own nest. Finally, Mr Hunter's letter is merely the unjustifiable action of a dissatisfied Borough Councillor to attack the Town Clerk through the columns of the press. Mr Hunter has been an obstructionist in the Council for the past year; Council meetings that should have been over by 9 o'clock were unnecessarily prolonged till 10 p.m., while weary Councillors and disgusted reporters sat and listened to the dismal *drivel!ings of Councillor Hunter, drivallings that began nowhere and produced absolutely no result except a headachs for his unforunate listeners. Most Councillors know that Mr Hunter has consistently opposed and harrassed the Town Clerk in the duties of his office, and he now carries his unwarrantable attack on that officer into the newspaper, where he knows the Town Clerk is debarred from replyingjto him.—l am, etc., ™ ® JOHN ,YARR; -