MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3166, 17 April 1909, Page 5

MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS.

CR HUNTER'S CHALLENGE. CR YARR IN REPLY. To the Editor. Sir, —Regarding the letter of Mr Hunter, in your paper of the 12th of April, at the last meeting of the Borough Council, the Town Clerk made"a statement showing a reduction in the overdraft on General Account of £2,038. Mr Hunter was present at that meeting, and he did not question the statement, or make any comment thereon. Since then he has taken up a most extraordinary attitude for a public man—that of challenging the statement of the executive officer of the Borough Council, and an apparent desire to submit some statement to an outside auditor. Mr Hunter's grievance (if he has one) has never been before theJjCouncil, the responsible officerof the Council has had no opportunity to reply to it, and now Mr Hunter flounders into the newspaper to ventilate some wild cat idea of his own, and to try and bespatter the work of his own Council and its responsible officer. Mr Hunter waves a ten pound note above his head, shouts "Hoop-La," and names sundry auditors, Mr Hunter thereby cheaply advertising the fact that he has ten sovereigns to spare. My reply to Mr Hunter's invitation is just this:—As a public man I have some idea of the responsibility of the position, and I am prepared to support the responsiblej)fficer of the Council in the properexecution of his duty. I am in no immediate need of the assistance of an auditor to interptet the affairs of the Borough. If Mr Hunter requires the services of an auditor to explain to him the Borough finance, he can doubtless rfpend for that purpose part or all of that ten pounds he flourishes so jubilantly around his hat. I, however, take the statement of the Town Clerk as being correct, and I have absolutely no intention, now or at any future time, ofi submitting the accounts of the Council, of which I am a member, to any other auditor than the one appointed by law for that purpose—the Government auditor. Mr Hunter makes some allusion to myself and the closing months of last year. I have not the faintest idea of what Mr Hunter is trying to suggest, and in any case there jb no apparent connection between the last months of 1908 ar.d the Borough overdraft of the 31st of March, 1909. In the opening paragraph of his letter Mr Hunter says that he had expected the Mayor to reply to him. I venture to doubt that remark for the simple reason that the Town Clerk had announced that his Worship the Mayor would be away from Masterton on a holiday for a fortnight. In the face of this, it looks very much as if Mr Hunter hustled in with his first letter, knowing that the Mayor was away, and the Borough offices were closed, and thus hoping to get his rigmarole through the paper without incurring the danger of a reply. He also infers that I am a seeker after notoriety. The transparency of that mis-statement will be abundantly clear when I say that during the past twelve months I have taken up practically none of the Council's time, while Mr Hunter has wasted hours and hours of the time of the Council in the repetition of monotonous mumblings. That during the same period I have been before the public on but one occasion, and then only to make a personal explanation. On the other hand Mr Hunter has been before the public almost continually during that time, and has apparently earned a very uopleasant notoriety. In the concluding paragraph of Mr Hunter's letter he has the supreme impudence to ask your readers "to excuse my style." When I require to be excused by your readers I will make the request myself In the meantime Mr Hunter would be much better employed in craving for himself the indulgence of ysur readers. Regarding the whoop of Mr Hunter that he is prepared to meet me on the public platform, I have'much pleasure in saying that I have no intention whatever of meeting Mr Hunter on the same platform either on this question or on any o,ther. In a weak moment in the past, before I knew the nauseous methods of that gentleman, I offered him the use of my platform (for which he paid half the rent of the Hall like a man). On that occasion Mr Hunter faced the biggest and the most intelligent audience he ever faced in his life, and I have a distinct recollection that as soon as he commenced his speech, about half the people promptly got up and left the Town Hall. Now, if Mr Hunter wants to prove things from the platform, he knows where the Town Hall is, but he must get his own meeting together a3 best he can, and so far as I amjjconcerned, I'll promise him that

he will very promptly get the necessary reply from me. In the meantime it is he who is challenging the statement, and it is for him to move in any way he chooses. The public in the interval will doubtless note the fact that Mr Hunter, as mentioned by himself, has a "tenner" to flourish in the breeze in the vicinity of Masterton. This, however, will hardly blind them to the fact that Mr Hunter has been the most complete and up-t-odate "frost" as a public man that Masterton has ever known, that he has not been able to carry a single motion of any consequence during his term of office, and that if he moved a motion "to sweep the floor of the Council Chamber" he would most likely be miserably defeated, and that now, after 12 months public life, he comes out on the eve of the election a whimpering and a disappointed man. —I am, etc,, JOHN YARR.